Evocations of ritual in Serbian solo song, 1968–2005
Ana Stefanović, Faculty of Music, Belgrade
Serbian solo song from the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century draws deeply on folkloric tradition and its generic models rooted in music's ritual function. These compositions establish connections with the most ancient layers of vocal music, what Mircea Eliade would call a "sacred," mythic phase. Crossing the musical legacy of the Balkans with modern artistic language, these works recall incantation, invocation, and the dirge. They are shaped as affective monodies using vowel sounds, vocalise, or a limited set of disconnected syllables — often without strict semantic content in the verbal text.
By treating sound as a carrier of emotional affect, the vocal part becomes a curve that serves ritual purpose. The musical language relies on repetitive melodic and rhythmic formulas drawn from folk practice, echoing both the expressionist heritage and the avant-garde or minimalist currents of art music. Within the solo song genre, these stylistic elements create the backdrop for affective monody, yielding a distinctive sound anchored in local tradition.
The paper examines several representative works: Basma (Incantation) from 1968 by Mirjana Živković, Dve Tužbalice (Two Dirges) from 1997 by Djuro Živković, Rukoveti (Garlands) from 1999 by Isidora Žebeljan, and Song “without” words (2005) by Branka Popović.
Comparing Greek folk-popular singers through musicology and computation
Georgios Kokkonis, Nikolaos Ordoulidis, and Asterios Zacharakis, University of Ioannina and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Four iconic voices of Greek post-war urban folk-popular song are the focus of this work. Prodromos Tsaousakis and Stelios Kazantzidis are often seen as connected through an informal "teacher–student/continuer" bond within the urban popular world. The second pair, Marika Ninou and Sotiria Bellou, were leading figures in Vassilis Tsitsanis' repertoire during the era when bouzouki stood at the center of the Athenian musical scene, distinguishing this school from the so-called "rebetiko of Smyrna."
The study compares the two pairs across voice placement, idiomatic characteristics, ornamentation practices, and phrasing techniques. These comparisons are set against critical historical shifts: the move from the model of the powerful songwriter to the singer-star as the dominant figure in the music industry, and major technological developments that became tools of expression for singers.
A computational extraction of audio features from algorithmically separated vocal tracks complements the musicological analysis. The findings reveal that while Ninou and Bellou differ substantially in pitch range, vibrato characteristics, spectral distribution, and inharmonicity, the acoustic differences between Tsaousakis and Kazantzidis are much more subtle.
Mediterranean Contemporary Music Days in Istanbul
Dilara Pal, Istanbul Technical University, Center for Advanced Studies in Music
Contemporary music composition since the early twentieth century has preserved its ties with the Western Art Music tradition while becoming an international practice driven by Westernization, globalization, and digitalization. Musicological literature has debated its role in constructing cultural identities of nation-states as well as its claims to trans-traditionality, though parallel histories of this debate in distant cultures are rarely addressed together.
This study examines contemporary music — especially modernist tendencies — in the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkan region through the case of the Mediterranean Contemporary Music Days held in Istanbul from 2003 to 2008. Drawing on the discourses of representative composers from Turkey, Greece, Spain, Italy, Albania, and Croatia, as well as the musical tendencies visible in concert programs, the research discusses how expressions of cultural identity are constructed through relational positions. It asks how the notions of center and periphery function in this construction, and how these relationalities shape a cumulative representation of Mediterranean contemporary music in the twenty-first century.
Karamanli Turkish Polychronisms of Sultans in psaltic editions
Merve Kara, Independent Scholar
Music was a shared cultural heritage of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. Interaction between the two cultures and their mutual contributions to musical development existed from their earliest establishment. This paper investigates a compositional genre known as "external music" — the Polychronisms of Sultans — published in psaltic editions.