Institute of Musicology
The SASA Institute of Musicology was founded in 1948 at the initiative of Academician Petar Konjović, one of the most prominent composers in the history of Serbian music and a prolific author of works on music. It is the first and only institute of musicology in the Republic of Serbia and the oldest in the former Yugoslavia.
The goal of its founders was to establish an institution that would organize research into the history of Serbian music and musical folklore. The Institute has three departments: Archival-Historical Department (history of Serbian artistic and church music and contemporary Serbian music), Ethnomusicological Department, and Theoretical Department (general musicological issues).
The Institute is one of the most important centers of Byzantine music studies in Eastern Europe.
The Institute of Musicology is engaged in intense publishing activities. It has published over thirty scholarly monographs and thematic collections of papers. A prominent place among them is held by the book Vreme umetnosti (The Time of Art) by Dragutin Gostuški, the pioneering book in the field of comparative theory and art history.
Great attention is paid to fundamental research and publication of sources. This is attested by the publication of the complete works of composer Kornelije Stanković, edited by Danica Petrović.
The Institute of Musicology is the first institution in Serbia to have started organizing scholarly conferences on musicology and ethnomusicology. The Institute’s work has also found its place within a broader, international, framework. This is attested by a series of scholarly conferences of international character. The collective monograph, Aspects of Greek and Serbian Music, was published in Athens in 2007 in Serbian, English and Modern Greek, the first book on Serbian music published abroad. The chapters related to Serbian music were written by four associates of the Institute.
Studies of folk songs and dances are based on field research that has been going on for many years. One of the greatest achievements of the Institute’s Ethnomusicological Department is the thematic collection of papers, Muzičke prakse Balkana (Musical Practices in the Balkans, 2012).
Since 2001, the Institute has been issuing the international journal, Muzikologija (Musicology). So far, twenty issues have come out. Studies, treatises and articles published in the journal are written by leading Serbian and foreign scholars, in Serbian and major world languages.
The Institute has an archive with over two thousand documents of various kinds, a collection of microfilms and photographs of neumatic manuscripts, an immensely rich archive of ethnomusicological notation and sound recordings, a library with over ten thousand books, journals and sound editions. Along with the Library of the Faculty of Music, Belgrade, it is the richest music collection in Serbia. Particular attention is paid to the preservation and protection of the crucial holdings of the archive and library through digitalization projects.
The Institute of Musicology is also active in the fields of culture and education. In addition to numerous public lectures on and courses in church music in Serbian towns, mention should also be made of the Institute’s Studijski hor (Study Choir), which performs and records old and more recent Serbian music.
Currently, the Institute employs thirteen musicologists and ethnomusicologists.
| Director: | KATARINA TOMAŠEVIĆ, PhD |
| Address: | Knez Mihailova 35, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia |
| Email: | musicinst@music.sanu.ac.rs |
| Website: | www.music.sanu.ac.rs |
| Telephone: | +381 11 2639-033 |
| Fax: | +381 11 2639-033 |