Serbia and Montenegro: May 2006 Report
Project: The Choral Production Of Southeast Europe: A Dedication to Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac (1856-1914)
The immediate cause for this project is a great jubilee – the 150th anniversary of the birth of Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac (1856-1914), the first prominent author of Serbian artistic, primarily choral, music, whose music has been performed abroad since the late 19th century. Seeing as he was an author who drew on traditional folk music of different origins, his influence can be recognized in the contemporary production and choral practices of not only Serbia and Montenegro, but the entire region. We have launched the entire project having in mind that choral production and vocal practices are today still vital in almost all the countries of the region. We were particularly motivated by the fact that it is precisely this field of music that allows one to interpret the specificities of historical, multicultural, ideological and political circumstances characteristic of Southeast Europe.
It will be an extensive project that will include the following components:
- An Electronic database of 19th and 20th-century Serbian choral music, which currently exists as a pilot project, would be developed during 2006 and 2007, from the already existing operative database Serbian and Montenegrin Composers and their Works of the SOKOJ's Music Information Center and gradually expanded by data on the choral production from the entire region.
- The international magazine for music Novi Zvuk/New Sound no. 28 (II, 2006), published by SOKOJ-MIC, would entirely be dedicated to works by music experts from the region on the subject of CHOIR – Individual-Collective/Traditional-Contemporary. We already have titles of articles from our musicological colleagues in Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, and we are preparing this issue for November 2006.
- We also plan to organize two concerts and publish two CD editions. The first CD, which usually accompanies the magazine New Sound, will feature works illustrating the content of the magazine, while the second will include works by contemporary Serbian composers inspired by Mokranjac's work.
