Един живот не стига за обичта към пеещия български народ – разговор с Елена Стоин

Author(s): Lozanka Peicheva,Ventsislav Dimov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2015

The article presents an interview with Elena Stoin (1915 – 2012) conducted on 4 June 2007 at her home in Sofia, at 21 Ivan Vazov Str. The authors have opted for this form of an open-ended conversation so that to allow for figuring out the human dimensions to great personalities and historical events Elena Stoin has got in touch with: intimate pictures of her family life and her career, her personal experience of a researcher and song collector. At the time of the interview Elena Stoin was 92, sharp-witted, with fast reactions and as lively as ever after two hours of conversing. The conversation broaches issues related both to the history of Bulgarian folk studies and the personality of Elena Stoin, her father Vasil Stoin and their milieu. The subheadings in the interview give an idea of the content of the conversation: the family, her career at the institute, My Father in Me, Vasil Stoin and his willpower, folk song classification, folk musical dialects, Elena Stoin’s book of the same title, her favourite poets and artists, fieldwork and affection for the singing Bulgarian people, sound recording technology, her childhood memories, international contacts with renowned researchers and composers, male polyphonic singing, Raina Katsarova, Philip Koutev, radio and financing of the work of a folk song collector, stage and media formatting of folk music, Mita Stoicheva and other popular folk singers, the new schools and the vanishing old voices, politics, Gypsies, applied ethnomusicology... Elena Stoin’s word of mouth, recorded in the interview, presents a meeting with a unique eyewitness of the academic life in three ages of modern Bulgaria and the conversation conducted by the participants in it provides a document of the dialogue between different generations in Bulgarian folk studies.

„Нови идеи в етномузикологията”

Author(s): Ivanka Vlaeva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2015

The article points out the important stages in the development of ethnomusicology in Bulgaria. This is done in order outline the place and role of the already well established seminar “New ideas in ethnomusicology.” It is created and organized by the research group “Ethnomusicology” at the Institute of Art Studies – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The aim is to meet the need for dialogue in a community of like-minded people united by common ideas and topics in the ethnomusicological research. The article also presents a meeting at the seminar, that discusses the Bulgarian participation in the ICTM (particularly in the Study Group “Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe”), as well as prospects of the Bulgarian group in the ICTM and establishment of a national committee.

Ценка Йорданова: „Музикалната идея І”

Author(s): Kristina Yapova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2015

The reviewed book includes studies representative of the author’s area of research interests, which have been published in Bulgarian academic journals over the last decade. In terms of their contents, three groups of issues are discernible: the first one, which is also the main, is on the twentieth-century New Music. This issue is treated in: On truth and method in the twentieth-century New Music; Ideologemes at the turning point of the twentieth-century New Music; The twentieth-century New Music on the horizon of two leading thematic projects of Modernity: Fragments; Dichotomies and polarizations in Schoenberg’s holistic autonomous and terminological system and The concept Musical Idea (musikalischer Gedanke) in Schoenberg: an attempt for interpretative reading. The second group of issues is outlined through the construction by the author of a new area in musicology: the study The paramusical sphere as a subject field of semiotics. The third group is related to those of the phenomena generated by the post-modern culture that fit into the general term World Music: the study The World Music concept and the ethnocentric model. Being various and even establishing relations of opposing to each other, the phenomena subject to description and exploration in the three categories, are united by Yordanova’s general view and the approach related to it. This view is beyond doubt musicological, in a fundamental sense though. In it, musicology expands its philosophic horizons in order to bring up not only theoretical issues of musicology, but also those of the men of music. Within such horizons, the author goes beyond the boundaries of the aesthetical subject of music, referring to beauty, to study it as a language capable to speak of the truth of existence.

Комиксът като базов контент на трансмедийни проекти

Author(s): Vida Delcheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2015

Presently, new technologies and new modes of using information make the interest of the audiences ever more volatile and passing. Attracting and maintaining their interest necessitates new methods of creating content in new media formats, transmedia storytelling. Comics are media using two semantic systems and a succession of representations, which makes them quite filmable. Seriality is typical of comics and for this reason some of the most successful transmedia projects venture to transform comic scripts into multi-platform scripts in development. The paper analyses the potential of comics as a basic content of transmedia projects seeking to define the position of comics within the new media reality, their role of a basic content and their function of a multi-platform script in development. The study deals with the successful comic scripts that have become successful transmedia projects, using the example of the film universe of marvel. It’s in fact a series of movies about superheroes, comics and shows, based on characters and subjects of marvel’s comics. Various media formats merge and succeed each other in transmedia storytelling, incorporating new types of media on the way. That is diversifying storylines rather than media. Still, this diversification is not final, alternating with mergence of storylines in a single story: departure from the original script is not typical of transmedia.

Привилегията да бъда близо до Райна Кацарова

Author(s): Lozinka Yordanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2016

The article traces the author’s personal contacts with Raina Katsarova, giving reflections on the significance of some of her studies to the Bulgarian and world science. Yordanova recounts her own personal memory of holding the Koprivshtitsa Folk Fairs to accentuate Raina Katsarova’s role in the staging of these events. Raina Katsarova’s contribution is highlighted as a researcher of folk traditions, songs, ring dances, popular puppet shows, and tradition bearers. Invaluable personal impressions of Raina Katsarova’s stand on teaching folk arts at school are provided along with her role in Prof. Dr. Ivan Shishmanov National Ethnopedagogical Association.

Спомен за Райна Кацарова сред кукерите от Турия

Author(s): Asen Atanasov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2016

A photo story about one of Raina Katsarova’s latest fieldworks: watching masked games in the village of Turia, Kazanluk region on Shrove Sunday, 1977 by a participant in the event, who was assigned to take pictures of the ritual.

Ганка Неделчева: Две издания посветени на ноктюрните за пиано от Димитър Христов

Author(s): Elisaveta Valchinova-Chendova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2016

Prof. Ganka Nedelcheva’s studies of the cycle of 12 nocturnes by Dimiter Christoff are related to her activities of a pianist. Over the last decade and a half Prof. Ganka Nedelcheva has been the premiere performer of a number of Dimiter Christoff’s pieces. The author has had a unique chance to theoretically figure out her interpretational and pedagogical experience. Her first book, Dimiter Christoff’s nocturnes for piano in Bulgarian and international experience. Interpretational polysemy of the technological parallel with Chopin’s nocturnes is a theoretical study. Nocturne is treated as an idea, a title existing over time to tempt composers. For the purposes of her study, the author spells out the term nocturne, specifying it terminologically. Her rationale for treating it as a title, relates more often than not to a broader creative interpretation of the known characteristics of the genre of short piano pieces. The approaches to nocturne are traced in the context of the nineteenth- and the twentieth century Bulgarian music and musical experience. Her text has also an informative value with the large amount of examples, placed historically and stylistically. The two time span benchmarks in the study, Fryderyk Chopin and Dimiter Christoff, are treated through technological aspects of expression. Night with Chopin and Christoff is not just a parallel: through the title nocturne Chopin’s arguments of romanticism suggest parallels with the contemporary compositional project of Dimiter Christoff at the turn of the twenty-first century. The author asks as to whether the turn of the twenty-first century has not given rise to a new romanticism, to a new avant- garde that is mostly aesthetical, being achieved musically and technologically through new idioms. The emergence of Dimiter Christoff’s 12 nocturnes for piano is significant both to Bulgarian and world music with its cyclical form. The 12 faces of night in Dimiter Christoff’s nocturnes for piano. A possible performative vision contains facsimiles of the author’s scores with a thorough semantic and concrete pianistic interpretational analysis of each of them (p. 52). This idea is brilliantly vindicated, which makes it especially valuable to potential performers and researchers.

Опити върху настоящето. За книгата на Камелия Николова „Театърът в началото на ХХІ век”

Author(s): Asen Terziev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2016

The Musical Activities of the Congregation of the Resurrection’s Mission in Bulgaria (mid-19th – mid-20th c.)

Author(s): Stefka Venkova / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2014

The paper presents the musical activities of the Congregation of the Resurrection’s Mission in the context of the cultural life of the Eastern Rite Catholic Church in Bulgaria. Their abundant and active musical work has a considerable contribution to the development of the musical tradition in the Catholic community as well as in the entire Bulgarian society. The paper is focused on the musical education at the Bulgarian-Catholic High School in Adrianopolis and at the Catholic school in Malko Tarnovo. It emphasizes the significance of the school choirs and orchestras in the forming of the musical traditions in Bulgaria. The figures of father Tomasz Brzeska (1818-1900) and father Konstantin Patronov (1905–1991) are outlined.

„Когнитивни подходи към музикалния слух и музикалната памет”

Author(s): Andrey Diamandiev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2015

Angelina Petrova’s book corresponds to the most up-to-date and topical studies on solfeggio worldwide, without breaking the relation with the traditional teaching practices in Bulgaria. The categories of musical understanding, hearing, aural training, consciousness, the latest scientific approaches used in the creation of the so-called neural network structures and neural maps, the terminological and structural study of musical memory, of the so-called ‘auditions’, as well as ‘F0 listeners’ or ‘spectral listeners’ present solfeggio in a completely different light, keeping nonetheless its substance in the strict music educational practices. In Chapter 1, Philosophic and Musical Hermeneutics and Ear for Music the author comments on the postmodern philosophy and its interpretations of musical hearing, drawing on the modern and postmodern theories of Theodor Adorno, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and later also of Gille Deleuze and Félix Guattari, making the important distinction in German language between ear for music and musical hearing, which in the Russian and Bulgarian traditions are fused into the former term, ear for music. In Chapter 2, Ear for Music in the Light of Contemporary Cognitive Psychology solfeggio is studied through cognitive psychology, shaping of musical perception and of musical notions in accordance with the cognitive and neuropsychological studies. Chapter 3 deals with musical memory, broaching the paramount views of cognitive psychology of musical memory: its definition, types, assumptions about its dynamic structure, the issues of the long-term musical memory and the correlation between it and melodic dictation. Chapter 4, Tonal Syntax and Ear for Music interprets melodic dictation, basic theoretical notions in music aural analysis, an ​analytical aural method in dictation are considered, with the study focusing here on its practical part: 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-part dictation. The section dealing the specifics of the dictations by ‘parameters’ in some systems of West-European methods is especially valuable. Chapter 5 explores the models of the post-tonal ear for music and melodic dictation in post-tonal music. The chosen thematic line evinces the author’s innovative methodology drawing on various modern views and models, e.g. Pierre Boulez, Utz and Kleinrath, including also postmodern composers in the process of solfeggio training such as Stockhausen, Ligeti, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough.

Individualized music therapy – theoretical and practical aspects in medicine

Author(s): Cecilia CURIS / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Beyond the existence and the possibility of using some technologies applicable in medicine that have pushed the boundaries of knowledge and the possibilities of intervention further than we could have imagined relatively recently, its evolution consists mainly in perfecting the second dimension it owns, namely, the humanist one. Today we cannot talk about the medical act without including communication, the therapeutic relationship and why not, the creativity in its implementation. The intrinsic dimension of the medical act is one related to the art of healing and consequently, its complexity stems from its triple action - relational (with the patient), scientific (the need to have medical knowledge) and creative (conceptualizing the clinical case, choosing the right treatment by combining all existing possibilities and customizing it). The progress of knowledge was greatly favored by the emergence of interdisciplinarity which allowed the horizon of knowledge to grow and above all, the acceptance of the combination of fields once considered incompatible, to be possible. This register also includes the use of music as a means of therapy. What is surprising is not its effect in therapy, but the rediscovery and acceptance of its therapeutic potential by the medical world. The scientific certification of the healing effects of music is due both to the progress of the neurosciences and to the reconceptualization and paradigm changes in the sciences, an aspect that can be considered defining for the evolution of current thinking.

Contributions to the development of national professional networks in the field of music theory (TSD)

Author(s): Veronica Laura Demenescu,Ion Alexandru Ardereanu,Cosmina Silvia Stitzl / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

The national professional networks are a landmark in the development of teaching practice, based on standardized values and procedures, in order to obtain performance indicators with reference values. A first step in this regard took place in Timișoara, between February 6 and April 6, 2024, during the meetings organized by Casa Corpului Didactic (The Teachers Forum) of Timiș County.

The film industry and its critical reflections in biographical dramas

Author(s): Lenka Rusňáková,Zuzana Kvetanová / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

The film genre called biographical drama (abbreviated as biopic) focuses on depicting the unique fates and professional achievements or failures of public figures, including popular figures in the music industry. Given the long-term success of these film narratives, there is a need to explore biographical audiovisual narratives about musicians of the past and present. The main aim of the study, therefore, is to elucidate the conventional genre patterns and iconography of the film genre of biographical drama in the form of a critical reflection on feature films, contemporary biopics from the music industry that resonate in the world of cinema. To fulfil the stated aim, the first step is to explain key concepts and processes closely related to the issue at hand. In a follow-up case study, we explain the ways in which the music industry collaborates with the film industry in the application of qualitative content (narrative) analysis of selected research materials. We work on the assumption that biographical dramas about music personalities have the potential to create financially and audience successful media content, reaching relatively high qualitative levels, despite their generally low reputation by the professional public. This assumption opens up a debate about ways of working with the relevant genre iconography. We are also interested in answering the question of how and whether the meaning of the presented facts changes to dramatize the plot, and to what extent the examined film narratives referring to real life stories of selected persons fulfil their informative-educational character. In fact, we believe that the representation of reality in the media reality (represented by audiovisual images of the described genre) is modified to a certain extent. For this reason, we consider it necessary to approach the interpretation of cinematic works in a critical manner.

Jews and Music-Making in the Polish Lands

Author(s): Hankus Netsky / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

Review of: Jews and Music-Making in the Polish Lands. Hrsg. von Francois Guesnet, Benjamin Matis und Antony Polansky. (Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Bd. 32.) Liverpool University Press—Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Liverpool – London 2020. XIII, 552 S., Ill., Notenbsp. ISBN 978-1-906764-73-9. (€ 51,–.).

Cindy Bylander: Engaging Cultural Ideologies

Author(s): Michał Piekarski / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2025

Review of: Cindy Bylander: Engaging Cultural Ideologies. Classical Composers and Musical Life in Poland 1918–1956. (Polish Studies.) Academic Studies Press. Boston 2022, 343 S. ISBN 979-8-88719-022-8. ($ 149,–.)

Muzyczne portrety depresji i samobójstwa: analiza międzykulturowa

Author(s): Paweł Piotrowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 9/2024

The article addresses how different musical cultures approach the themes of depression and suicide, while also analyzing the social and psychological consequences of such content. Music, as a universal means of expression, plays a multifaceted role in its relationship with the topic of mental health crises, serving as a therapeutic tool, a warning signal, and, at times, negatively affecting sensitive individuals. Different cultures and musical genres present these challenging topics in diverse ways. In Western cultures, the narrative is often raw and introspective, particularly in rock and grunge, where emotional honesty dominates. In Asian genres such as K-pop, the theme of depression is portrayed subtly and metaphorically, reflecting a cultural tendency to avoid direct confrontation with mental health issues. Folk and traditional music embed depression and suicide within moral and social narratives, often as a cautionary element, while hip-hop delivers brutally honest, autobiographical accounts, highlighting the links between mental health crises and social contexts such as violence and poverty. Music can serve a therapeutic role by helping individuals express their emotions and fostering a sense of community support. However, it also carries the risk of negative influence, particularly in the context of romanticizing suicide. Social reactions to such content vary widely—from recognizing its value as an educational tool to concerns about its impact on emotionally vulnerable individuals. Narratives also differ between musical genres: pop often combines emotional introspection with a universal message of hope, classical music conveys emotions in a universal and symbolic manner, and folk and ballads function as moral storytelling. The article emphasizes that music, regardless of cultural or genre context, has significant potential to shape perceptions of depression and suicide, offering both a platform for dialogue and a means of reflecting on mental health. The author highlights the need for conscious use of music in mental health prevention strategies, taking into account its impact on different social and cultural groups.

Opening Books, Opening Minds. Cortot’s Library and Its Influence on Piano Performance

Author(s): Cristina Eleonora Pascu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Exploring Alfred Cortot's library's profound impact on piano performance, this article delves into the symbiotic relationship between literature, intellectual enrichment, and musical interpretation. Cortot's unconventional approach to interpretation transcended mere fidelity to the score, encouraging interpretive freedom and epistemic flexibility through deep engagement with the creative process. Drawing on literary and philosophical sources, Cortot advocated for a holistic approach to musical education that embraces the transformative power of ideas and culture. In an age of digital proliferation, his reverence for the printed word serves as a poignant reminder of the enduring significance of deep reading in nurturing creativity and critical thinking.

The Importance of the Principles of Femininity and Feminism in The Development of Young Ballerinas

Author(s): Polina STĂNESCU-DINDELEGAN / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Many young ballerinas at the beginning of their adolescence and during the adolescence pass through physical changes. These changes in many cases come as a result of weight and body shape changes. Because they do not have a good support in managing these changes, they end up having mental or physical problems trying to maintain their weight by means of unhealthy methods. I propose that teachers come up with healthy solutions for the delicate period they are going through, not just with superficial pressures. I think that the two books "My Life" by Isadora Duncan and "The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir should be mandatory reading for teenage ballerinas for a better knowledge of the development of a woman's body. The last part of this paper contains role building methods based on the information from the first two parts of this article combined with precious pieces of advice of the famous stage director Stanislavski.

What Links Can Be Made Between Relationships in Early Childhood And Music Therapy Practice?

Author(s): Lois Paula Văduva,Catherine Warner,Mirjám Borzási / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

This paper analyzes the most important theories linked to early childhood development and how music therapy can address and support communication and attachment challenges. This study combines fundamental theories in attachment, attunement, communicative musicality while illustrating these concepts through case study vignettes.

Didactic Strategies That Could Be Used to Increase Pupils’ Interest In Classical Music

Author(s): Diana-Crina Marin,Maria-Paula Bocoș / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

This article outlines the benefits of stimulating the naturalistic intelligence of primary school pupils during "Music and Movement" lessons. Recent studies have revealed that, at this age, primary school pupils are very interested in the life of animals and like to spend time in nature, which indicates that their naturalistic intelligence is welldeveloped. The purpose of our research is to establish how we can stimulate the naturalistic intelligence of the pupils to increase their interest in listening to classical music. The research involved 19 primary school students, aged 8 to 9 years old, enrolled in second grade. The study revealed that most of the second graders were happy to listen to masterpieces composed by W. A. Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, that are mentioned in the school curriculum of the discipline "Music and Movement". The most effective didactic approach was listening to the songs in the presence of pets or from videos where animals were filmed while enjoying listening to music. After viewing the videos, pupils were interested in finding out more information about the music that they were listening to. The results could not be generalized, but the article can stay at the base of future research in the field of Educational Sciences. The content of the article is useful for teachers who can use similar strategies during "Music and Movement" lessons in order to increase the interest of their pupils in classical music.