Page 227 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2024. Glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes ▪︎ Music Criticism – Yesterday and Today. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 7
P. 227
doi: https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-299-2.227-244
“A Critique of Criticism”: An Attempt to Outline
“More Appropriate” Sociopolitical Guidelines
in Post-World War II Slovenian Music Criticism1
Jernej Weiss
Univerza v Ljubljani / Univerza v Mariboru
University of Ljubljana / University of Maribor
The socialist respectively communist period in Yugoslavia – which lasted
from the end of the Second World War until the country’s break-up in 1991
– was not characterised by a uniform attitude towards the arts on the part
of the authorities. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Yugoslav politics
and, consequently, culture were strongly based on the Soviet model. It was
effectively a direct importation of an ideological programme, the respon-
sibility for which lay with the Department for Agitation and Propaganda
(Agitprop), founded in 1945 with the primary function of ensuring the ide-
ological and political education of the masses along the lines of the Sovi-
et cultural doctrine of Zhdanovism. As early as 1948, however, following
the split between Tito and Stalin, there was a break with the Soviet Comin-
form, and consequently a greater political reliance on the West. 1
Following the dissolution of Agitprop in 1952, the direct influence of
politics on culture in Slovenia was much smaller than it was in the Sovi-
et Union. With the exception of the phenomenon of the “mass song”, one
cannot talk about a uniform model of socialist realist art in Slovenia. For
1 The paper was presented in a shorter version entitled “Vprašanje avtonomnosti glas-
bene kritike v slovenskem dnevnem časopisju ob praizvedbi kantate ‘Stara pravda’
Matije Tomca: med estetsko sodbo in političnim konstruktom” [Functional and au-
tonomous in music at the premiere of Matija Tomc’s cantata Stara pravda] at the in-
ternational musicological symposium “Functional and autonomous in music: imag-
es and meanings” (19–20 October 2006, Musicological Institute at the ZRC SAZU)
and published in De musica disserenda 3, no. 1 (2007): 101–15, https://doi.org/10.3986/
dmd03.1.09.
227
“A Critique of Criticism”: An Attempt to Outline
“More Appropriate” Sociopolitical Guidelines
in Post-World War II Slovenian Music Criticism1
Jernej Weiss
Univerza v Ljubljani / Univerza v Mariboru
University of Ljubljana / University of Maribor
The socialist respectively communist period in Yugoslavia – which lasted
from the end of the Second World War until the country’s break-up in 1991
– was not characterised by a uniform attitude towards the arts on the part
of the authorities. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Yugoslav politics
and, consequently, culture were strongly based on the Soviet model. It was
effectively a direct importation of an ideological programme, the respon-
sibility for which lay with the Department for Agitation and Propaganda
(Agitprop), founded in 1945 with the primary function of ensuring the ide-
ological and political education of the masses along the lines of the Sovi-
et cultural doctrine of Zhdanovism. As early as 1948, however, following
the split between Tito and Stalin, there was a break with the Soviet Comin-
form, and consequently a greater political reliance on the West. 1
Following the dissolution of Agitprop in 1952, the direct influence of
politics on culture in Slovenia was much smaller than it was in the Sovi-
et Union. With the exception of the phenomenon of the “mass song”, one
cannot talk about a uniform model of socialist realist art in Slovenia. For
1 The paper was presented in a shorter version entitled “Vprašanje avtonomnosti glas-
bene kritike v slovenskem dnevnem časopisju ob praizvedbi kantate ‘Stara pravda’
Matije Tomca: med estetsko sodbo in političnim konstruktom” [Functional and au-
tonomous in music at the premiere of Matija Tomc’s cantata Stara pravda] at the in-
ternational musicological symposium “Functional and autonomous in music: imag-
es and meanings” (19–20 October 2006, Musicological Institute at the ZRC SAZU)
and published in De musica disserenda 3, no. 1 (2007): 101–15, https://doi.org/10.3986/
dmd03.1.09.
227
