Description:
<p> Summary: Slavenski and the Aesthetics of Music at the Turn of the Century. The work of Josip Štolcer Slavenski is considered as part of "music in transition" creating (according to J. Samson's definition) "radical changes in the language of music whose central (...) development was the breakdown of traditional tonal functions and (...) the principles underlying those functions". As such, at least within the framework of Croatian music, it is the only to which the notion of the historical avant-garde (1910-30) can be fully applied, as clearly defined earlier for events in Croatian literature. Recent research into the composer's opus and his few theoretical discourses, most of them unpublished, have imposed a comparison between this "outsider" musical thought based on postulates inaugurated only a few years earlier by Ferruccio Busoni in his "Sketch for a New Aesthetics of Music". More a literary aesthetic reflection than a closed music and aesthetic system, Busoni's "Sketch" as well as Slavenski's aesthetic concept as possible to reconstruct from various sources, have many points in common in terms of music material, tonal system and the technological aspect of the new sound; certain relationships can be established between Busoni's Nietzsche-esque notion of the "music of the spheres" and Slavenski's predominantly para-scientifically shaped visionary involvement in "astro-acoustics". Although it is not possible to entirely exclude the possibility of Busoni's influence on Slavenski, though certainly indirect (Busoni - Stančić - Slavenski), no facts are known about this and there are no concrete proofs. For that reason the attempt proposed here of a comparison should be seen as a contribution to the thesis on spontaneous simultaneity of similar generative intellectual and creative impulses in the course of historical development, and within traditionally very different cultural circles. </p>