Page 15 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2018. Nova glasba v “novi” Evropi med obema svetovnima vojnama ?? New Music in the “New” Europe Between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 2
P. 15
oi: https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-7023-72-5.13-15
New Music in the “New” Europe
Between the Two World Wars
Jernej Weiss
University of Ljubljana / University of Maribor
The focus of the present monograph is an exploration of the diversity of
styles and compositional techniques that characterised the interwar peri-
od and the establishment of a causal relationship between the specific sty-
listic characteristics of individual segments of history and social changes in
the “new” Europe of the period following the First World War. The latter
did not only redraw the boundaries of Europe, it also led to a gradual trans-
formation of the national ideologies and mental frameworks of the majori-
ty of the European population of the time. Following the Great War, in the
new cultural and political reality of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slo-
venes, we Slovenes broke our ties with Vienna, or as Igor Grdina, an expert
on life in the Habsburg Monarchy, wittily puts it: the umbilical cord tying
us to the capital on the beautiful blue Danube was finally cut.
Certain stylistic and aesthetic shifts in practically all artistic fields had,
of course, been prophetically predicting the start of the First World War
for decades. In the cultural historical sense, the twentieth century in many
ways represented a break with the essential features that had marked the
nineteenth century, although in some senses it actually intensified specific
characteristics. This applies above all to the emphasis on subjectivism and
the desire for innovation. The call for the new, in fact, became one of the
central aesthetic postulates of twentieth-century modernism. As a result,
the period is marked not only by a retreat from the traditional forms of ex-
pression that for the most part still characterised the nineteenth century,
13
New Music in the “New” Europe
Between the Two World Wars
Jernej Weiss
University of Ljubljana / University of Maribor
The focus of the present monograph is an exploration of the diversity of
styles and compositional techniques that characterised the interwar peri-
od and the establishment of a causal relationship between the specific sty-
listic characteristics of individual segments of history and social changes in
the “new” Europe of the period following the First World War. The latter
did not only redraw the boundaries of Europe, it also led to a gradual trans-
formation of the national ideologies and mental frameworks of the majori-
ty of the European population of the time. Following the Great War, in the
new cultural and political reality of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slo-
venes, we Slovenes broke our ties with Vienna, or as Igor Grdina, an expert
on life in the Habsburg Monarchy, wittily puts it: the umbilical cord tying
us to the capital on the beautiful blue Danube was finally cut.
Certain stylistic and aesthetic shifts in practically all artistic fields had,
of course, been prophetically predicting the start of the First World War
for decades. In the cultural historical sense, the twentieth century in many
ways represented a break with the essential features that had marked the
nineteenth century, although in some senses it actually intensified specific
characteristics. This applies above all to the emphasis on subjectivism and
the desire for innovation. The call for the new, in fact, became one of the
central aesthetic postulates of twentieth-century modernism. As a result,
the period is marked not only by a retreat from the traditional forms of ex-
pression that for the most part still characterised the nineteenth century,
13
