Music Theory in Serbia: Tracing the Legitimation of the Disciplinary Identity

Abstract

In comparison to the (Western) European tradition, the development of music theory in Serbia has been quite short. Milan Milovuk’s works, dating from the 1860s, were the first published theoretical writings in Serbian. Nevertheless, this development was substantial, leading from basic music theory in Milovuk’s pioneering works to an interdisciplinary field of research that is fully integrated into today's global map of the discipline. Through this expansion, the status reconfiguration of music theory in Serbia took place from propaedeutics to an autonomous scientific field. However, the transformation of the discipline was not the subject of scientific research until recently. The questions about the nature of a musical-theoretical work, on what basis and with what convictions it is carried out, what kind of knowledge it produces, and what the impact of that knowledge is can be considered an exception in music theory writings in Serbian. Likewise, the legitimisation of certain types of musical-theoretical work about the discipline as a whole or its relevant parts has only recently become represented in our scientific literature. In this article, I investigate the reasons for the indicated epistemological certainty of music theory in Serbia and study the traces of its disciplinary legitimation in both diachronic (historical-developmental) and synchronic (theoretical–conceptual and methodological-epistemological) perspectives.