Pārskats par 20. gadsimta modernisma attīstību Baltijas valstu mūzikā un tā lomu sovetiskās normatīvās estētikas pārvarēšanā: 1940–1990
The Development of 20th Century Modernism in the Music of the Baltic Countries During 1940–1990 and Its Role in Overcoming Sovietic Normative Aesthetics

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses innovation in musical aesthetics and style, with a focus on how Western European modernist trends influenced the musical creativity in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and, after undergoing certain modifications, helped to get rid of the Socialist Realism dogma. Even though the latter was holding the art of music spellbound by its own romantic myths, the Iron Curtain was unable to prevent the impact of innovative music on the sovietized Eastern European cultures. Musical expressionism, which had arisen in Western Europe as an art of catastrophism, was transformed into a voice of human individuality after entering the Eastern bloc where manifestations of subjectivity were then persecuted. Neoclassicism with its intellectually generalized baroque feeling of life and dynamic musical pattern helped to overcome the stagnant romantically contemplative thought in the musical creativity of the Baltic countries, and to strengthen the dynamically procedural aspect as the basis of musical expression. The 1960–1970s in the Baltics saw the flourishing of another trend of Neoclassicism or rather Neoromanticism – a retrospection and lyrical interpretation of the creative principles of Renaissance, which meant an attempt to offer to the present day something that could be saved from destruction by recording and redoing. This tendency was close to the most widespread innovative phenomenon of that time – namely, Neofolklorism which, unlike the romantic folklorism that had subjugated folklore material to the principles of European professional music, derived new types of musical structures from the archaic folk material. The impact of the above-mentioned modernist trends gradually diluted Socialist Realism and introduced Postmodernism, and eventually the stylistic pluralism of the music of today.

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