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Dr. MILENA BOZHIKOVA
(Assoc. Prof. , Institute
of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
SENSE AND MODIFICATION OF THE TERM "BULGARIAN
VANGUARD"
IN THE LIGHT OF VASSIL KAZANDJIEV'S MUSIC
As we have defined a certain epoch in Bulgarian music as being "vanguard",
the analogy with the Vanguard declared decades earlier worldwide can only
be made on the basis of exterior criteria, on the basis of its "novelty"
in a specified historical and cultural context - for example, the 60's
in Bulgaria. The Vanguard in Bulgaria at this time, however, has not been
appreciated as a sign of historical, social, or cultural change, it has
rather been used as a discriminative label attached to some intellectuals.
The doctrine of the Vanguard is no longer a problem of the present
day, and not only in our country. It passed along with the twentieth century,
named "not a calendar, but historical twentieth century. The century of
the Vanguard, an embodiment of the European".
After the First World War, after the decadence - the last artistic
movement in European culture, which began at the period of the last years
of 19th century, and the first years of the 20th, ending during the 20's,
the Vanguard found its place of a leading European cultural movement influential
on any sphere - cultural, social, and cultural.
This term is used everywhere, and like many other terms, it is somewhat
relative and ambiguous. It is often replaced with Modernism, or Postmodernism;
if being identified, it clarifies simultaneously the terms and their time
limits (see Trostnokov 1997). The scientific point of view on their essence
is not explicit and totally clear, this is the reason why these terms are
mutually replaceable. Discussing one of them, Michel Foucault declares
that he finds it difficult to answer the question "What do we call Postmodernism?",
because he never really knew what Modernism was. The same holds true for
the abilities to be stylistically perspicuous in the aspect of a belated,
and consequentially "mixed" professional music culture after the 50's in
Bulgaria.
The so called "Bulgarian Vanguard" has its own characteristics, compared
to its European analogues. It is very specific, yet conditioned phenomenon;
it did not appear as a form of protest, but definitely does not stand by
the primitive and trite ways of thinking in music, by the simplified interpretation
of art, by the apologetics related to the folklore as a national symbol,
and so on. The Vanguard becomes a musical position for certain composers,
it reacts to the imposed criteria of academism in its conservative aspect,
and to "instructive" tastes. (Let us not forget, however, that this conservative
academism has so-called Bulgarian Vanguard becomes a fashion and gives
an opportunity for the imitation and the pseudo positions to be legitimized.
Around the 60's of the century, in the nonconformist (or vanguard)
musicians' circles, composing in atonality, or 12 tonal mode was a stylistic
indication. Here we present an already well known fact from the biography
of one of the so called "modernists" - Vassil Kazandjiev. During the years
of his higher education, he wrote a Concerto for piano, saxophone, and
orchestra simultaneously with the common tonal compositions necessary for
his graduation. This Concerto was neither structurally flawless, nor without
effects in the instrumental balance, but it was approved and accepted by
the "nonconformists", and the "partisans of the unrealistic art", namely
Konstantin Iliev and Lazar Nikolov. According to them, Kazndjiev's was
the right way. L. Nikolov says: "Vassil had started to compose a Concerto
for Piano, saxophone and Orchestra prior to entering the Academy. Judging
by the way he had written the First part, and maybe a part of the Second,
we decided that he had stepped on the right way. If we have to be honest,
Vassil was a very gifted person. But after he began his studies at
the Academy, he did not resist the pressure of the "socialistic realism",
and, in my opinion, he composed some quite "realistic" works. They were
a manifestation of his great composing abilities that distinguished him
from his colleagues, yet, he already "swam in the realistic waters". This
was due to the atmosphere at the Academy of Music, and even more due to
the teachers there - that inevitably had its effect on the students. After
graduating from the Academy, Vassil finished his Concerto, composed with
an entirely deferent technique".
I would pay attention to the definition of the "realistic", used by
Lazar Nikolov, and which would be a subject of our discussion again at
the end.
The history with the performance of this Concerto in no less indicative
of the "Bulgarian touchstone" for the Vanguard and its manifestations.
Milcho Leviev tells some facts from the premiere: "During the 60's, at
the time of Hrushchov, Vasko wrote a Concerto for Piano, Saxophone and
Orchestra. At its first perform, the pianist Olga Shevkenova appeared at
the Stage, but Kostadin Chilev (Koko) who had to play the saxophone was
no where to be found. The concert began, and we found Koko hidden behind
the kettle-drums. The Party secretary had ordered this "jazz and bourgeois"
instrument "not to be seen, otherwise there would be no concert". The poor
man did not know that the saxophone was invented long before jazz music…".
Kazandjiev himself, just like Lazar Nikolov, says that he always relies on his intuition when making his "art decision", without being influenced by theories and other styles: "I remember, I was 12, and I began to compose atonally. I even showed off one of my themes to K. Iliev and Dimitar Nenov which impressed them both. It had about ten bars and two parallel tonalities: F-sharp major, and D minor. I had not even imagined such a dodecaphonic system of composition existed. I was not acquainted with Schoenberg's music or the ideas of the Nouvelle Viennese School. But from the very beginning I began to repeat the tones. I guess something had prompted me to make it this way. Even today, the latter fact surprises me".
It is interesting that a big number of the European musicians whose
style was characterized as "Vanguard" during the second half of the twentieth
century refuse to be such, or to be more modernists, rather than traditionalists.
Kazandjiev himself does not pretend to be modern, and in Stravinsky's words,
"lives today and writes contemporary music". Contrary to this statement,
during the 50-80's he was proclaimed a formalist, a modernist, a vanguard
composer, a transmitter of pernicious foreign influence. He really declared
his will not to create conventional music, but he did not define himself
with the superficial and ambiguous images of these categories at all. Kazandjiev
has manifested his creative duality indeed, but it cannot be so simply
divided into realistic and vanguard. He himself says: "It is not obligatory
for any work to be innovative. The examples can be found in Bach's or Brams'
music. Bach summarizes everything achieved 150-200 years before him, and
so does Brams with the achievements of a century. They make use of the
good old means, they add almost nothing new, but their being innovative
is their ability to generalize. That is exactly the thing that I believe
has to be done at this stage of the contemporary music. A few decades have
passed since the Vanguard discoveries, and it is high time that these experiences
were generalized and new, spontaneous works were created, because this
is the essence of music. It is an emotional art, it can be fully displayed
with time, this is why music has to stream from itself.
After all the revolutionary changes during the second half of our century,
music will probably "land" itself. These are all quite natural stages of
its development. After the incredible "elevation" and clarity found at
the works of the Viennese classics, Romanticism comes. The latter is again
followed by a period of reaction, of "pseudo classicism", with extremely
rigid constructions and forms that can find their place even today. The
conscious attempts to run away from Romanticism are probably finished for
the present century. This explains to a great extent some composers' ambition
to let some Romantic spirit in. From my point if view, great music is essentially
Romantic. But this does not mean we should return to Glazunov, Frank, Chopin,
or Tchaikovsky. It is rather an attempt to make music sound more romantic,
more singing and sentimental (something which was missing during the last
half of 20th century), on the basis of the huge amount of knowledge collected,
and the opportunities of our time".
"Vanguard" for Bulgarian after the 50's is quite conditional a term.
Vassil Kazandjiev (and we may also add here the name of Lazar Nikolov)
breaks off with the melodic and harmonic function of the tones in their
classical-romantic understanding, but in his thinking and in organizing
the material on all levels he relies on the prototypes or adapts them.
Besides, the sonorics, aleatorics, neomodality and all their reflections
that differentiated after the 50's, turn out to be the most favorable basis
upon which to resurrect the precompositional ways of making music. To many
of the methods used in the dodecaphony it is attached a distant folklore
analogue. (The second Boulez' sonata, for example, which was composed entirely
in a serial technique, has drawn its principles of organization of expressional
means solely from composers whose art has a lot to do with folklore: Stravinsky,
Bartok, Jolivet, Messian). Vassil Kazandzhiev's sonorous technique, for
example, reproduces almost entirely some folklore approaches, more specifically
such from the song folklore.
Of course, we may continue with the examples. They will also spoil
the common formulations of the Vanguard, in particular Bulgarian Vanguard
as being above all something conscious, intentionally in opposition.
In order to differentiate between the Vanguard, and the music which
keeps in a way some continuity of the tradition, it is used a comparison
with the Mannerism (as a characteristic of the 20th century music).
In fact, nowadays this term lacks sense as a qualification in the forms
of art and life, it is only a terminological cliché. As for its
being regarded as a symbol of the century, this gives rise to new questions
regarding the Vanguard in the other spheres - social and economic. Robert
Hunter, the American ambassador in NATO, speaks about one of the aspects
of Vanguard, besides the cultural one: "Our enemy", he says, "is the 20th
century. We do not want to live through it again" (in Trostnikov 1997).
Now, as the Modernism and Postmodernism are already past, we are being
offered something, the roots of which can be traced in history - at the
dawn of 21st century, we hear an appeal for "Realism", an even more amorphous
and vague term.
The short opinion exposed does not give answers, it questions the characteristic
"Vanguard intellectual", given to Vassil Kazandjiev as a creative label
(we may also add Lazar Nikolov and Konstantin Iliev) from two viewpoints.
The first is the adequacy of the term in the moment of discussion, i.e.
- on the eve of the 21st century, and from the position of a witness of
the art's being collected for the past few decades. This art can be interpreted
as an opposition (to the "semi-official"), if we have in mind the artificially
imposed barriers during the 50's and 60's. But after the conventions and
the ideological hindrances have been eliminated, the qualification of the
"opposing connotation" of the Vanguard becomes anachronistic (perhaps due
to the new professional stage in Bulgarian music).
The second viewpoint may be a subject of discussion more than the first.
On one hand, the Vanguard is no longer associated with the images of the
rapid and harsh 20's - 40's innovation in West European music; on the other
hand - the historic moment of the appearance of "Bulgarian Vanguard" is,
after all, a postfactum of the European. (As early as 1897 Malarme wrote
"Casting Dice", in this book he foretells the principles of the late Vanguard
- the hazard creation, the importance of sound, the interest in noises
and so on.). Let us not forget that the Vanguard introduces some new styles,
styles owning purely technological characteristics, descriptive of the
aesthetic innovation. These are, for example: "activism", "antagonism",
"nihilism", "agonism", "futurism" etc. Vanguard (having created different
movements in almost all spheres) comes with its own, distinct means of
expression. According to C. W. E. Bigsbey, a professor of American studies,
these are manifesto, poetry based on phonetic principles, or visual poetry,
music created of noises, provocative spectacles, experimental methods in
use during the 60's the pop art an happening. It is not occasional that
the Vanguard creators are being distinguished from other, "non conventional",
whose music is consequentially defined as "experimental". Paul Grifiths
(Grifiths 1980), for example, calls Karlheinz Stockhausen and Harrison
Birthwistle Vanguard composers, putting them at a completely different
place from the one of Cage and La Monte Young. The latter, in his opinion,
created "experimental" music. The term unites composers with a radical
attitude towards the technique, expression, tradition. (Which is a thing
that can be said for some composers since Ars Nova until nowadays. In Paul
Grifiths' opinion, this holds true for Wagner and Debussy, if we have in
mind this criterion only.). But the 20th century Vanguard exists with some
specific compositional criteria: dodecaphonic and serial technique, aleatorics,
sonorics, usage of electronic instruments or sound transformation, new
ways of treating time and space, besides, it is accompanied by theoretical
manifestations (as it was with the early Vanguard of the 20's, and the
post-war as well-namely these of Boulez, Stockhausen, Rochberg, Brown,
Ligeti and so on).
The apologetics of the Vanguard art gives an impression of immortality.
Malevitch, contradictory to his own statements in the 30's, goes back to
the realistic portrait art. The explanation of the "utopian" radicalism
of Russian Vanguard is fed by two complexes: national inferiority and national
exceptionality. This to a significant extent may be said for any other
national Vanguard.
These conclusions in no case aim to underestimate the works of the
Bulgarian composers mentioned above. On the contrary - they emphasize their
talent and originality: "The original author is like a plant - he grows
spontaneously out of the living root of the genius, and he does create
itself, but grows up". I am totally agree with the following statement:
"Today we seem to regard the Vanguard not as a project of our, or the future
world, but rather as an expression of the personal creativity of distinguished
artists" (Bergson 1996: 227). The method is individual, not universal.
In literature, the problem of the Vanguard does not hold a central
position anymore. There are numerous reasons for this. In his book "Cultural
Contradictions of Capitalism" Daniel Bell says: "… The impulse of the Modern
is perfectly exhausted, the era of the Vanguard has reached its end; even
if it continues to spread some influence, its creativity is past". (Bell
1976:125).
Notes:
BELL, Daniel 1976: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism.
New York.
BERGSON, Anri 1996: Tworcheskata evolutsija (Creative Evolution),
Sofia.
GRIFITHS, Paul 1980: "Avant-garde". New Grove Dictionary, London
1980.
TROSTNIKOV, M. V. 1997: Poetologia. Moskva.
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