Reenvisioning Tradition: Ideology and Innovation in Early 20th-century Church Music in Serbia and Bulgaria

In this paper I discuss the way in which composers of church music in Serbia and Bulgaria during the earlier part of the XX century, such as Stevan Hristić, Kosta Manojlović, Milenko Živković, Petar Dinev and Dobri Hristov, endeavoured to reconcile the traditional demands of writing in this genre – the need for liturgical appropriateness and for a sense of connection with the past – and ideas of modernism. The work of influential cultural theorists such as Chavdar Mutafov in Bulgaria and Ljubomir Micić in Serbia, while not directly affecting church music, was nevertheless a significant part of this, and in parallel with a renewed interest in the history of both countries (symbolised in Serbia by Mokranjac’s vast historical survey concert in Belgrade in 1903), formed the basis for nationalist, pan-Slavic and ‘Byzantine modernist’ aesthetic positions. These ideas will be explored and their impact on these and other composers will be discussed, as well as their continuing importance and ideological influence in the post-Communist period.