Page 408 - 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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glasbene migracije: stičišče evropske glasbene raznolikosti
types of music is very much present in everyday life, as well as in the media.
On the other hand, diversity is much less pronounced and is essentially a
different kind in art music that belongs to the so-called high art of Western
origin that has spread globally. With regard to compositional work, we may
ask ourselves how much and what kinds of diversity can contemporary art
music absorb. High diversity is typical of postmodern music, but Damni-
anovitch is a modernist who builds his work mainly on the heritage of Lu-
tosławski, Ligeti and minimalism. He rejects avant-garde trends, but this
doesn’t make him a postmodernist, as he essentially creates a personal syn-
thesis of 20th century modernism.
In this article I expressly wish to examine how a contemporary com-
poser of art music, coming from a modest cultural environment of a pe-
ripheral European country, creates strategies aimed at finding his place in
a rich cosmopolitan environment. The early music training in this kind of
music is the same everywhere in the world, but the paths to a successful ca-
reer are much more solid and certain in countries with longer traditions
that can also invest large sums of money into contemporary creativity.
France is the country Alexandre Damnianovitch chose as his second
home, considering himself to be a “Serbian composer in France”, which
may seem strange in light of his almost thirty years of continuous living in
France, since a very early age. However, it is just such an open, non-prob-
lematic perception of dual national belonging, characteristic of his national
positioning, that indicates that Paris, together with some other smaller cit-
ies he lived in, is rightly regarded to be a cosmopolitan city with the pow-
er to attract many composers and artists of quite diverse strivings and aes-
thetics and to give them all an equal chance to succeed.
Paris, the city in whose vicinity Alexandre Damnianovitch lived and
worked for most of his years in France, could stand as a symbol for cosmo-
politanism for most artists and historians, at least since the mid-19th centu-
ry. According to Baron Haussmann, Paris was to be the true Rome of that
time.13 He was not alone in thinking that way in the Second-Empire France,
13 “This immense city has the pretension to be the head of modern civilization; the
principle seat of the sciences and the arts; the masterpiece of architects and engi-
neers; the model of sound administration; the veritable Rome of the present centu-
ry.” Quoted from: Stephane Kirkland, Cosmopolitanism in the Culture and Planning
of Second Empire Paris, 2012. Accessed March 15, 2016, http://stephanekirkland.
com/cosmopolitanism/#sthash.3JCPWIZW.dpuf.
406
types of music is very much present in everyday life, as well as in the media.
On the other hand, diversity is much less pronounced and is essentially a
different kind in art music that belongs to the so-called high art of Western
origin that has spread globally. With regard to compositional work, we may
ask ourselves how much and what kinds of diversity can contemporary art
music absorb. High diversity is typical of postmodern music, but Damni-
anovitch is a modernist who builds his work mainly on the heritage of Lu-
tosławski, Ligeti and minimalism. He rejects avant-garde trends, but this
doesn’t make him a postmodernist, as he essentially creates a personal syn-
thesis of 20th century modernism.
In this article I expressly wish to examine how a contemporary com-
poser of art music, coming from a modest cultural environment of a pe-
ripheral European country, creates strategies aimed at finding his place in
a rich cosmopolitan environment. The early music training in this kind of
music is the same everywhere in the world, but the paths to a successful ca-
reer are much more solid and certain in countries with longer traditions
that can also invest large sums of money into contemporary creativity.
France is the country Alexandre Damnianovitch chose as his second
home, considering himself to be a “Serbian composer in France”, which
may seem strange in light of his almost thirty years of continuous living in
France, since a very early age. However, it is just such an open, non-prob-
lematic perception of dual national belonging, characteristic of his national
positioning, that indicates that Paris, together with some other smaller cit-
ies he lived in, is rightly regarded to be a cosmopolitan city with the pow-
er to attract many composers and artists of quite diverse strivings and aes-
thetics and to give them all an equal chance to succeed.
Paris, the city in whose vicinity Alexandre Damnianovitch lived and
worked for most of his years in France, could stand as a symbol for cosmo-
politanism for most artists and historians, at least since the mid-19th centu-
ry. According to Baron Haussmann, Paris was to be the true Rome of that
time.13 He was not alone in thinking that way in the Second-Empire France,
13 “This immense city has the pretension to be the head of modern civilization; the
principle seat of the sciences and the arts; the masterpiece of architects and engi-
neers; the model of sound administration; the veritable Rome of the present centu-
ry.” Quoted from: Stephane Kirkland, Cosmopolitanism in the Culture and Planning
of Second Empire Paris, 2012. Accessed March 15, 2016, http://stephanekirkland.
com/cosmopolitanism/#sthash.3JCPWIZW.dpuf.
406
