Contemporary Music Without Theory? Bulgaria’s Musicology and its Relationship to the Bulgarian avant-garde in the first three decades of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria
Contemporary Music Without Theory? Bulgaria’s Musicology and its Relationship to the Bulgarian avant-garde in the first three decades of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria

Summary/Abstract: Considering Bulgaria’s avant-garde in the first decades of the second half of the 20th-century, one of the least fruitful sources to turn to are publications by Bulgarian musicologists at the same time. To make matters worse, there is an apparent lack of self-theorization on behalf of Bulgarian avant-garde composers, too. Yet, a closer look at source materials like correspondences and auto-biographical reveals that this lack is owing to an absence of public podia. Instead of dismissing this lack with a nod to classical accounts of totalitarianism as prohibiting free expression, this contribution ties in with current research to overcome monolithic and binary models to understand music culture in socialist countries during the Cold War. Recognizing the distinct division of labour between composers as providing creative works and musicologists as the sole professional authority to theorize those works, as well as by comparing Bulgaria’s specific situation with the simultaneous lack of serious – as opposed to popular – scientific research on avant-garde music in West Germany, the notion of totalitarianism makes way for a disciplinal model of Musical Bulgaristics as envisioned by the Bulgarian composer Ivan Spasov.

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