Music of Serbia
Music of Serbia represents the musical heritage of Serbia, both historical and modern. It has a variety of traditional music styles, which are part of the wider Balkan musical tradition, with its own distinctive sound and characteristics.
Music of the Middle Ages
Church music was performed throughout medieval Serbia by choirs or individual singers. The songs performed at the time were derived from the Octoechos, a collection of religious songs dedicated to Jesus. Composers from this era include nun Jefimija, monks Kir Stefan the Serb, Isaiah the Serb, and Nikola the Serb, who together belong to the "Serbo-Byzantine school".Aside from church music, the medieval era in Serbia included traditional music, about which little is known, and court music. During the Nemanjić dynasty era musicians played an important role at the royal court, and were known as sviralnici, glumci and praskavnici. The rulers known for the musical patronage included Emperor Stefan Dušan and Despot Đurađ Branković. Medieval musical instruments included horns, trumpets, lutes, psalteries, drums and cymbals. Traditional folk instruments include the gajde, kaval, dajre, diple, tamburitza, gusle, tapan, šargija, ćemane, zurla, and frula among others.
Sung Serbian epic poetry has been an integral part of Serbian and Balkan music for centuries. In the highlands of Serbia and Montenegro these long poems are typically accompanied on a one-string fiddle called the gusle, and concern themselves with themes from history and mythology. After the Ottoman conquest of Serbia, music was enriched with oriental influences at the expense of Serbian folk music. During Ottoman rule, Serbian faith and folk music went underground so to speak since the people were forbidden to own their property, to learn to write and read and were also denied the use of musical instruments. The Serbs however were stubbornly tenacious enough to maintain an oral history through folk poems and songs recited with the accompaniment of the Gusle. These brave defenders of Serbian art and culture in these arduous and treacherous times were the peasants who played the Gusle, a one-stringed instrument in the shape of a lute. As their punishment for playing a musical instrument, many of these musicians were blinded by their oppressors. Denied music or dance, the Serbs invented a silent kolo in which the syncopation of the pounding of the feet became an instantaneous musical accompaniment to the folk dancers. This particular dance is still being performed today. The German poet Goethe so admired Serbian poetry and folklore that he learned to speak Slavonic-Serbian, the common language then spoken by Slavs in the Balkans and northern regions of the Austrian Empire. Goethe and Grimm's works were also the major inspiration in encouraging Brahms, Carl Loewe, Tor Aulin, Anton Dvorak, Leos Janacek, Josef Suk, Peter Tchaikovsky and Josef Maria Wolfram to create compositions based on Serbian folk poetry and literature. Brahms' famous lullaby is derived from a Serbian folk poem. When the Jews fled Spain the Serbs provided a hospitable environment in which they could resettle and prosper, particularly in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. The oldest Jewish Choir in the modern world is located in Belgrade. The formation of the Pančevo Church Choral Society in 1838 and the Belgrade Choral Society in 1853 resulted in each becoming centers for nurturing young talent. The first music schools were founded through the efforts of these choral societies.
From the Habsburg rule, Serbia was enriched by Western music.
Classical music
Composer and musicologist Stevan Stojanović Mokranjac is considered one of the most important founders of modern Serbian music. Born in 1856, Mokranjac taught music, collected Serbian traditional songs and did the first scholarly research on Serbian music. He was also the director of the first Serbian music school and one of the founders of the Union of Singing Societies. His most famous works are the Song Wreaths, also known as Garlands.During the 19th and 20th centuries numerous bands, both military and civilian, contributed to the development of music culture in Belgrade and other Serbian cities and towns. Prior to Mokranjac's era, Serbia's representatives of the Romantic period were world-renowned violinist Dragomir Krančević, pianist Sidonija Ilić, pianist and composer Jovanka Stojković and opera singer Sofija Sedmakov who achieved success performing in opera houses of Germany in the 1890s. For example, the promenade concert tradition was first established by The Serbian Prince Band founded in 1831, and its first conductor was Joseph Shlezinger, who composed music for the band based on traditional Serbian songs. This was a period when the first choral societies, then mostly sung in German and Italian language, were being organized. Later, the first Serbian language works for choirs were written by Kornelije Stanković.
The Serbian composers Petar Konjović, Stevan Hristić and Miloje Milojević, all born in the 1880s, were the most eminent composers of their generation. They maintained the national expression and modernized romanticism in the direction of impressionism.
The best-known composers born around 1910 studied in Europe, mostly in Prague. Ljubica Marić, Stanojlo Rajičić, Milan Ristić took influence from Schoenberg, Hindemith and Haba, rejecting the "conservative" work of prior Serbian composers, seeing it as outdated and the wish for national expression was outside their interest.
Other famous classical Serbian composers include Isidor Bajić, Stanislav Binički and Josif Marinković.
Several notable composers used motifs from Serbian folk music and composed works inspired by Serbian history or culture, such as: Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Arthur Rubinstein, Antonín Dvořák, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Schubert, Hans Huber and others. In 1788, just before the start of the Habsburg–Ottoman War, a classical period composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed the La Bataille K. 535 , which was most likely inspired by previous sieges of Belgrade, while some scholars state that the composition was used to support the war effort. Thanks to Miloš Obrenović's good contacts during his stay in Vienna, Johann Strauss II composed the Serben-Quadrille intended for Serbian balls. During the Serbian–Turkish Wars, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed the Marche slave, which was based on several Serbian folk songs. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov used some Serbian folk tunes to compose the Fantasy on Serbian Themes.
Serbian folk music
Ethno music
The ethno genre encompasses both vocal and non-vocal music. Instruments include bagpipes, flutes, horns, trumpets, lutes, psalteries, drums and cymbals such as: Frula, Diple, Gajde, Zurna, Duduk, Tambura, Tamburitza, Gusle, Kaval, Davul, Bouzouki, Tarambuke. Balkanika, Balkanopolis, Dvig, Slobodan Trkulja, Belo Platno, Teodulija, Kulin Ban are known Serbian musical groups that use traditional Balkan musical instruments and perform traditional songs and songs based on traditional music elements.Old folk
The Serbian folk music is both rural and urban and includes a two-beat dance called kolo, which is a circle dance with almost no movement above the waist, accompanied by instrumental music made most often with an accordion, but also with other instruments: frula, tamburica, or accordion. The Kolos usually last for about 5–13 minutes. Modern accordionists include Mirko Kodić and Ljubiša Pavković. Some kolos are similar to the Hungarian csárdás in that they are slow at the onset and gradually increase their speed until reaching a climax towards the end.Famous performers of Serbian folk music are Predrag Gojković Cune, Predrag Živković Tozovac, Miroslav Ilić, Lepa Lukić, Vasilija Radojčić, Šaban Bajramović, Staniša Stošić, Toma Zdravković and others. Yugoslav singer, actress and writer, Olivera Katarina, has performed music of various genres, varying from Serbian traditional to pop music, and in numerous languages. She held 72 consecutive concerts in Paris Olympia.