Page 409 - 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
P. 409
a serbian composer in france: national identity and cosmopolitanism ...
as is shown in a text by Victor Hugo.14 Paris managed to maintain a high
cosmopolitan status after World War 1, when it had even been called “the
capital of the nineteenth century” by Walter Benjamin (1935/1939).15 The
city was able to appreciate and support a great number of outstanding art-
ists and writers coming from all over the world – let us just mention here
Igor Stravinsky, Manuel De Falla and Bohuslav Martinů. Together with the
French-born composers who were, of course, in the majority, they contrib-
uted in a significant way to the status of Paris as one of the most cosmopol-
itan cities in the world. One should not forget, however, that Paris has not
always lived up to these proclaimed ideals. The threatening international
political situation between the two world wars gave rise to nationalism and
xenophobia, as in many other countries, which, according to Kenneth Sil-
ver, influenced artists to distance themselves from pre-war modernism and
embrace neoclassicism as a form of conservativism.16 Such a view has been
challenged recently by Ihor Junyk, who maintains that artists, mostly for-
eign artists living in Paris, interpreted neoclassicism in a subversive way,
putting forward the values of cosmopolitanism, hybridity and transience.17
Whichever interpretation one chooses to adopt , it cannot be disputed that
episodes of intolerance towards foreigners living and creating in Paris were
short-lived and that, for the most part, the metropolis understood the val-
ue of modernism.
One of the first works Damnianovitch composed in France, when still
a student, was Liturgie (Liturgy) for eight voices and percussions. Judging by
the inscription “Belgrade-Paris, 1980–81” in the score, it was conceived and
started in Belgrade, showing the composer’s early inclination towards reli-
14 Hugo wrote the following in an introduction to the book accompanying the World
Exhibition in Paris in 1867: “The logarithm of three civilizations reduced to a sin-
gle equation, the penetration of Athens into Rome and of Jerusalem into Athens, this
sublime teratology of progress pressing toward the Ideal gives this monster and pro-
duces this masterpiece: Paris.” […] “Humanity needs the cerebral place, the genera-
tor of initiative, the organ of will and liberty, that acts when the human race is awake
and, when the human race sleeps, that dreams. […] We need a city of which everyone
is a citizen. The human race needs a universal reference point.” Quoted from: Kirk-
land, Cosmopolitanism in the Culture and Planning of Second Empire Paris.
15 The essay with that title was published posthumously for the first time as: “Das
Passagen-Werk” von Walter Benjamin, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt: Suhr-
kamp Verlag, 1982)
16 Kenneth Silver, The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–
1925 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989)
17 Ihor Junyk, Foreign modernism: Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Style in Paris (To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 7.
407
as is shown in a text by Victor Hugo.14 Paris managed to maintain a high
cosmopolitan status after World War 1, when it had even been called “the
capital of the nineteenth century” by Walter Benjamin (1935/1939).15 The
city was able to appreciate and support a great number of outstanding art-
ists and writers coming from all over the world – let us just mention here
Igor Stravinsky, Manuel De Falla and Bohuslav Martinů. Together with the
French-born composers who were, of course, in the majority, they contrib-
uted in a significant way to the status of Paris as one of the most cosmopol-
itan cities in the world. One should not forget, however, that Paris has not
always lived up to these proclaimed ideals. The threatening international
political situation between the two world wars gave rise to nationalism and
xenophobia, as in many other countries, which, according to Kenneth Sil-
ver, influenced artists to distance themselves from pre-war modernism and
embrace neoclassicism as a form of conservativism.16 Such a view has been
challenged recently by Ihor Junyk, who maintains that artists, mostly for-
eign artists living in Paris, interpreted neoclassicism in a subversive way,
putting forward the values of cosmopolitanism, hybridity and transience.17
Whichever interpretation one chooses to adopt , it cannot be disputed that
episodes of intolerance towards foreigners living and creating in Paris were
short-lived and that, for the most part, the metropolis understood the val-
ue of modernism.
One of the first works Damnianovitch composed in France, when still
a student, was Liturgie (Liturgy) for eight voices and percussions. Judging by
the inscription “Belgrade-Paris, 1980–81” in the score, it was conceived and
started in Belgrade, showing the composer’s early inclination towards reli-
14 Hugo wrote the following in an introduction to the book accompanying the World
Exhibition in Paris in 1867: “The logarithm of three civilizations reduced to a sin-
gle equation, the penetration of Athens into Rome and of Jerusalem into Athens, this
sublime teratology of progress pressing toward the Ideal gives this monster and pro-
duces this masterpiece: Paris.” […] “Humanity needs the cerebral place, the genera-
tor of initiative, the organ of will and liberty, that acts when the human race is awake
and, when the human race sleeps, that dreams. […] We need a city of which everyone
is a citizen. The human race needs a universal reference point.” Quoted from: Kirk-
land, Cosmopolitanism in the Culture and Planning of Second Empire Paris.
15 The essay with that title was published posthumously for the first time as: “Das
Passagen-Werk” von Walter Benjamin, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt: Suhr-
kamp Verlag, 1982)
16 Kenneth Silver, The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–
1925 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989)
17 Ihor Junyk, Foreign modernism: Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Style in Paris (To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 7.
407
