Slavko Osterc as a Myth of the Avantgarde of the Sixties

Abstract

The group of composers forming Pro musica viva was the first in Slovene music to start implementing new, modernist compositional principles. Already at the time of its arrival on the musical scene the group entered as a unified body with characteristic avant-garde principles accompanied by declaratively professed variety of concrete compositional-technical solutions. In doing this it relied on contemporary foreign models and on the Slovene pre-war modernism symbolized by Marij Kogoj and above all by Slavko Osterc. Osterc's name is to be found on almost all programmatic notes of the group. In spite of this it is possible to state there were few performances of his works and that no genuine traces of his opus are to be found in the works of its members. In fact the identification with Osterc was going on predominantly on the ideational level. At one time in the past ideationally conceived and in the sixties ideologically uplifted figure of Osterc as a characteristic avant-garde modernist has now started to crack, while the obliteration of such a great myth entials also broader consequences. With this symposium it is probably also the Slovene musicology which is irrevocably taking leave of modernism.