Shaping national memory: The beginning of memorizing Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac in Serbian music (1919-1923)

The organization of musical life of Belgrade as the capital of the newly founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was characterized by efforts towards a material, economic and cultural consolidation of the city after a war disaster; thus the mapping of continuity with pre-war traditions acquired a special significance. The first joint performance of Belgrade choirs in peacetime conditions, organised by the Belgrade Choral Society (1919) and dedicated exclusively to Mokranjac?s output testified to that effect. Soon there followed four similar events (1922- 1923), and then a manifestation of the transfer of Mokranjac?s remains from Skopje to Belgrade (1923). The aim of this article is to examine these events as the first, though belated (due to war circumstances) cases of memorizing Mokranjac after his death in 1914. This research has taken into account the processes of canonization of Mokranjac that had begun even during his lifetime, and the critical examination of the canon is complemented by theoretical elements from memory studies, because these events are about a (re)interpretation of the canon of national art music through strategies of memorialization. Concerts and narratives that are directly related to them are marked as artistic memorials to Mokranjac; afterwards, I analyzed the commemoration ceremony itself. Considering the results of the analysis, I concluded that these were two types of memorizing Mokranjac, one of which was in the domain of the professional music elite, while the other one acquired the proportions of the national-state event. Accordingly, they also offered two kinds of national memory. On the one hand, the version presented by the representatives of the elite contributed to the canonization of Mokranjac and the creation of national memory within the dominant group in the field of music which, through its narrative about Mokranjac, expressed its own aesthetic orientation and reinforced its social positions. On the other hand, the mass gathering of various representatives of the state, civil institutions and citizens pointed to the apposite narratives of glorifying Mokranjac, while loading the ideology of the official state apparatus and putting memories of Mokranjac into desirable Yugoslav frameworks.