Authors

Ivana Medic¹;  ¹ Institute of Musicology, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia

Discussion

Since 2013, I have researched the personal and professional histories and destinies of Serbian and other former Yugoslav art music composers who emigrated after 1991, i.e. after the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and subsequent wars. Their reasons for leaving the scattered remnants of the once large and prosperous country were either personal, economical, political, or a combination of all three. Many of these composers have long abandoned any idea of ever returning to their homeland and allowed themselves to be integrated into their naturalized countries' music scenes and discoursive environments. In this paper, I aim to analyse several types of 'disruptions' caused by emigration, including changes in personal styles, adaptation to new market circumstances, creative crises, and difficulties in integrating into their new environments, but also attempts to maintain at least some types of professional connections with their previous setting. Among more than seventy Serbian composers who now live abroad, I will single out as case studies the ones whose personal and professional trajectories best illustrate the disruptions mentioned above.