Page 403 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2017. Glasbene migracije: stičišče evropske glasbene raznolikosti - Musical Migrations: Crossroads of European Musical Diversity. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 1
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A Serbian Composer in France:
National Identity and Cosmopolitanism
in the Works of Alexandre Damnianovitch1
Melita Milin
Srbska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, Beograd
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade
Even before the outbreak of the crisis and wars in Yugoslavia during the
last decade of the 20th century, there had been individual composers and
musicians who emigrated to the West in search of better opportunities. Al-
though Serbia, as part of the federal socialist Yugoslavia, was a relatively
“friendly” country for artists and composers, it was, nevertheless, a periph-
eral European country, at a time when so many exciting and progressive
movements were being introduced and tested in the main Western artistic
centres. Therefore, it was always tempting for composers, especially young
ones, to get to better know what those renowned cities had to offer their in-
quisitive and ambitious minds. However, the chances to obtain a scholar-
ship in order to stay in those cities were very rare, so that only a handful
of Serbian composers found a way to stay there for any amount of time, al-
most all of them returning to Belgrade after one or two years. Interestingly,
only rarely did composers go to Germany or Italy, while more of them tried
their luck in France, the Netherlands, the US and the UK.
In this paper the focus will be on the case of the composer Alexan-
dre Damnianovitch (b. 1958), whose career has been developing differently
from that of the great majority of his Serbian contemporaries, thanks to his
early decision to move to France. I will attempt to answer the question re-
garding how, precisely, did his leaving Belgrade affect his career as a com-
1 This article was written as part of the project ON 177004, funded by the Ministry of
Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia.
401
National Identity and Cosmopolitanism
in the Works of Alexandre Damnianovitch1
Melita Milin
Srbska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, Beograd
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade
Even before the outbreak of the crisis and wars in Yugoslavia during the
last decade of the 20th century, there had been individual composers and
musicians who emigrated to the West in search of better opportunities. Al-
though Serbia, as part of the federal socialist Yugoslavia, was a relatively
“friendly” country for artists and composers, it was, nevertheless, a periph-
eral European country, at a time when so many exciting and progressive
movements were being introduced and tested in the main Western artistic
centres. Therefore, it was always tempting for composers, especially young
ones, to get to better know what those renowned cities had to offer their in-
quisitive and ambitious minds. However, the chances to obtain a scholar-
ship in order to stay in those cities were very rare, so that only a handful
of Serbian composers found a way to stay there for any amount of time, al-
most all of them returning to Belgrade after one or two years. Interestingly,
only rarely did composers go to Germany or Italy, while more of them tried
their luck in France, the Netherlands, the US and the UK.
In this paper the focus will be on the case of the composer Alexan-
dre Damnianovitch (b. 1958), whose career has been developing differently
from that of the great majority of his Serbian contemporaries, thanks to his
early decision to move to France. I will attempt to answer the question re-
garding how, precisely, did his leaving Belgrade affect his career as a com-
1 This article was written as part of the project ON 177004, funded by the Ministry of
Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia.
401
