Dragutin Gostuški’s Theories of Time and Space Within the Historical and Cultural Context of American Modernist Aesthetics

„Искошени угао“ Драгутина Гостушког (2024) (181-208)

AUTHOR(S) / АУТОР(И): Laura Emmery

Download Full Pdf   

DOI: 10.46793/DGOST23.181E

ABSTRACT / САЖЕТАК: 

This paper contextualizes Dragutin Gostuški’s theories on time and space with those that have influenced the thinking and compositional processes of modernist American composer Elliott Carter (1908–2012) around the same time (the postwar decades of the 1950s and ‘60s). Carter, known for his radical exploration and manipulation of time in music, was inspired by composers, poets, playwrights, novelists, and filmmakers. Interested in exploring the human experience of time in music, Carter turned to philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Gisèle Brelet, Michel Butor, Charles Koechlin, and Pierre Suvchinsky in his inquiry. Similarly, Dragutin Gostuški (1923–1998), a prominent Serbian composer, musicologist, and aesthetician, critically examined the topics of musical meaning, semiotics of music, and musical time in his writings, most notably in his groundbreaking book, Vreme umetnosti [The Time of Art] (1968). In this study, I examine Carter’s and Gostuški’s approach to understanding musical time, how they applied their theoretical understanding to their compositions, and how their innovative thinking is a reflection of their sociocultural context.

KEYWORDS / КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ:

Dragutin Gostuški, Elliott Carter, musical time,

REFERENCES / ЛИТЕРАТУРA:

  • Barry, Elizabeth. Beckett and Authority: The Uses of Cliché. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
  • Beckett, Samuel. Proust. London: Chatto and Windus, 1931.
  • Beckett, Samuel. “Memory, Habit, Time.” In Marcel Proust: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, edited by Harold Bloom, 17–36. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1987.
  • Bergson, Henri. Matière et mémoire. Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1896.
  • Bergson, Henri. Durée et simultanéité: À propos de la théorie d’Einstein. Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1922.
  • Bergson, Henri. The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp, 1946.
  • Bernard, Jonathan W. “Elliott Carter and the Modern Meaning of Time.” The Musical Quarterly 79, no. 4 (1995): 644–82.
  • Bralović, Miloš. “Dragutin Gostuški: Concerto accelerato kao ogled o vremenu u muzici” [Dragutin Gostuški: Concerto accelerato as an Experiment on Time in Music]. In Iskošeni ugao Dragutina Gostuškog [The Acute Angle of Dragutin Gostuški], edited by Katarina Tomašević and Bojana Radovanović, 235–55. Belgrade: Muzikološki institut SANU, 2024. [cyr]
  • Brelet, Gisèle. Le temps musical: essai d’une esthétique nouvelle de la musique, 2 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1949.
  • Bugarski, Ranko. “Semiotički pristup muzici. Beogradski naučni skup o semiotici muzike” [Semiotic Approach to Music: Belgrade Colloquium on Music Semiotics]. Kultura no. 23 (1973): 146–49.
  • Butor, Michel. Essaies sur les modernes. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1960.
  • Carter, Elliott. String Quartet No. 1 [score]. New York: Associated Music Publishers, Inc., 1951.
  • Carter, Elliott. “Music and the Time Screen (1976).” In Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937–1995, edited by Jonathan W. Bernard, 262–80. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
  • Carter, Elliott. “The Rhythmic Basis of American Music (1955).” In Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937–1995, edited by Jonathan W. Bernard, 57–62. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
  • Carter, Elliott. “String Quartets Nos. 1, 1951, and 2, 1959 (1970).” In Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937–1997, edited by Jonathan W. Bernard, 231–35. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
  • Carter, Elliott. “The Time Dimension in Music (1965).” In Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937–1995, edited by Jonathan W. Bernard, 224–28. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
  • Carter, Elliott. “Time Lecture (1965/94).” In Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937– 1995, edited by Jonathan W. Bernard, 313–18. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
  • Cocteau, Jean, dir. Le Sang d’un poète. The Criterion Collection, 1930.
  • Eddington, Arthur. The Nature of the Physical World. New York: Macmillan Company, 1928.
  • Emmery, Laura. “Rhythmic Process in Elliott Carter’s Fourth String Quartet.” Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung no. 26 (2013): 29–33.
  • Emmery, Laura. “Beyond Long-Range Polyrhythms: Harmonic Process in Elliott Carter’s Fourth String Quartet.” Contemporary Music Review 38, no. 3–4 (2019): 316–43.
  • Emmery, Laura. “Elliott Carter’s First String Quartet: In Search of Proustian Time.” The Musical Quarterly 102, no. 4 (2019): 440–80.
  • Emmery, Laura. Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets: A Study in Sketches. New York: Routledge, 2020.
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. Dve igre za klavir [Two Dances for piano] (music score). Belgrade: Savez kompozitora Jugoslavije, Edicija udruženja kompozitora Srbije, 1954.
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. “Bitne karakteristike ritma u okviru problema muzičkog vremena” [Important Characteristic of Rhythm Observed in Relation to the Problem of Musical Time”]. Glasnik SANU VII (1956): 114–16. [cyr]
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. “Suština i funkcija ekspresivnog akcenta” [The Essence and Function of the Expressive Accent]. Glasnik SANU VII, br. 2 (1956): 231. [cyr]
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. “Osnovne odlike kvalitativnog ritma” [Basic Characteristics of the Qualitative Rhythm]. Glasnik SANU IX, br. 2 (1957): 193–94. [cyr]
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. “Elementi teorije o akcentu” [Elements of the Theory of Accents]. Glasnik SANU IX, br. 3 (1957): 271–72. [cyr]
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. “Inercija muzičke memorije” [Inertness of the Music Memory]. Glasnik SANU IX, br. 4 (1957): 441. [cyr]
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. “Asimetrični ritmovi u okviru opšte teorije kvalitativnog ritma” [Asymmetric Rhythms within the Frames of the General Theory of Qualitative Rhythm]. Glasnik SANU X, br. 4 (1958): 531. [cyr]
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. “Definicija pojma muzičkog tempa” [Definition of the Notion of the Musical Tempo]. Glasnik SANU XI, br. 1 (1959): 100. [cyr]
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. “Problem vremena i muzike” [The Problem of Time and Music]. Život IX, br. 11–12 (1960): 809–18.
  • Gostuški, Dragutin. Vreme umetnosti. Prilog zasnivanju jedne opšte nauke o oblicima [The Time of Art. Contribution to the Foundation of a General Science of Form]. Belgrade: Prosveta–Muzikološki institut SANU, 1968.
  • Hasty, Christopher. Meter as Rhythm. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
  • Ivić, Milka. Lingvistički ogledi. Belgrade: Prosveta, 1982.
  • Ivić, Pavle. Die serbokroatischen Dialekte, ihre Struktur und Entwicklung. The Hague: Mouton, 1958.
  • Ivić, Pavle. Srpski narod i njegov jezik [The Serbian People and Their Language]. Belgrade: SKZ Beograd, 1971.
  • Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1929 (1787).
  • Knussen, Sue. “Elliott Carter in Interview.” Tempo no. 197 (1996): 2–5.
  • Koechlin, Charles. “Le temps et la musique.” Revue Musicale 7, no. 3 (1926): 45–62.
  • Landy, Joshua. “‘Les Moi en Moi’: The Proustian Self in Philosophical Perspective.” New Literary History 32, no. 1 (2001): 91–132.
  • Lerdahl, Fred, and Ray Jackendoff. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, 2nd ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
  • de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
  • Mailman, Joshua B. “Temporal Dynamic Form in Music: Atonal, Tonal, and Other.” Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 2010.
  • Medić, Ivana. “The Ideology of Moderated Modernism in Serbian Music and Musicology.”  Muzikologija-Musicology no. 7 (2007): 279–94.
  • Milin, Melita. “Cultural Isolation of Yugoslavia 1944–1960 and its Impact on the Sphere of Music: The Case of Serbia.” Muzikološki zbornik 51, no. 2 (2015): 149–61.
  • Oja, Carol J. Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • Poulet, Georges. Studies in Human Time. Translated by Elliott Coleman. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1956.
  • Proust, Marcel. À la recherche du temps perdu. Paris: Grasset and Éditions Gallimard, 1913–1927. [Remembrance of Things Past, Vol. 1: Swann’s Way & Within a Budding Grove, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and T. Kilmartin. New York: Random House, 1981. Vol. 2: The Guermantes Way & Cities of the Plain, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and T. Kilmartin. New York: Random House, 1982. Vol. 3: The Captive, The Fugitive & Time Regained, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff, T. Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor. New York: Random House, 1983].
  • Radovanović, Bojana. “Between East and West: Dragutin Gostuški’s Musicological Work.” In Music, Individuals, and Contexts: Dialectical Interactions, edited by Nadia Amendola, Alessandro Cosentino, and Giacomo Sciommeri, 329–37. Rome: Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2019.
  • Schiff, David. The Music of Elliott Carter, 2nd ed. London: Faber and Faber, 1998.
  • Suvchinsky, Pierre. “La notion du temps et la musique.” Revue Musicale no. 20 (1939): 310–20.
  • Tomašević, Katarina. “Vreme umetnosti Dragutina Gostuškog. Odnos prema filozofiji i estetici Etjen Surioa” [Dragutin Gostuški’s The Time of Art: The Relation to Étienne Souriau’s Philosophy and Aesthetics]. In Srpska estetika u XX veku [Serbian’s Aesthetics in the 20th Century], edited by Mirko Zurovac, 137–48. Belgrade: Estetičko društvo Srbije.
  • Tomašević, Katarina. “Dragutin Gostuški and the Semiotics of Music.” MuzikologijaMusicology no. 22 (2017): 177–97.
  • Tomašević, Katarina. “Dragutin Gostuški. Skica za portret – Prilozi za biografiju: iz malo poznatih izvora” [Dragutin Gostuški. A Sketch for a Portrait— Contributions to Biography: From Little-Known Sources]. In Iskošeni ugao Dragutina Gostuškog [The Acute Angle of Dragutin Gostuški], edited by Katarina Tomašević and Bojana Radovanović, 3–36. Belgrade: Muzikološki institut SANU, 2024. [cyr]