Byzantium as a Metaphor for Identity in Serbian Music

Abstract

The archaicizing ‘Byzantine thread’ in Serbian art music since the 1950s has proven to be an important one, although it has not been represented by a large number of works. Composers of such works aimed at creating a spiritually-infused atmosphere emanating from evocations of medieval times, and they achieved this goal by employing various modernist techniques. Those composers regarded the culture of Byzantium not only as a metaphor for spirituality and the inscrutable past but also used it as a means of self-identification, not least because Byzantine identity was of broader scope than national identity. Most of the Serbian composers who belonged to that thread, even if only with a handful of works, used melodic fragments either from medieval Serbian and Byzantine church chant or from Serbian present-day chant with roots in the Byzantine tradition, but which were subject to change after the fall of Byzantium. In this article, the ‘Byzantine thread’ in Serbian art music is socially and culturally contextualised.