Ivan Hlebarov’s Music Historiography between Marxism and Nationalism: “Bogomilism” and its Demise
Ivan Hlebarov’s Music Historiography between Marxism and Nationalism: “Bogomilism” and its Demise

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines attempts of the Bulgarian musicologist Ivan Hlebarov to merge Nationalist and Marxist notions of history in his research during Bulgarian Communism. The alleged “Bogomilism” of Bulgarian music and composers is the crystallization point of Hlebarov’s endeavours, and its changing significance structures the approach of this text. A view on exemplary state-of-the-art literature describes how Marxist and Nationalist conceptions of history appear as incompatible. However, the amalgamation of Marxism and Nationalism became a central part of the Bulgarian Communist Party’s hegemonic discourse and self-legitimization strategy. Therefore, Hlebarov’s approach is concurrent to the particularities of more general debates in post-World War II Bulgarian society. However, no later than 1980, “Bogomilism” loses its appeal for Hlebarov all of a sudden. Thus, the demise of this term in his research coincides with Hlebarov’s attempts to create the new research paradigm of cultural studies that becomes the token of post-ideological musicology after the end of Communism in Bulgaria.

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