Forms and Patterns of Musical Changes and Acculturation: case study of Sarajevo musical theater during 19th century

PROGRAMME

h 16.00, Laboratorio di Filologia musicale 

In the history of music of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the nineteenth century is considered as a period of turbulent socio-political happenings characterized by the end of Ottoman (1463–1878) and the beginning of Austro-Hungarian rule (1878–1918). In the period of Ottoman administration, the musical life proceeded in the segment of traditional music, while connections with musical trends typical of the rest of the European continent are less common. The first traces about musical theatre refer on 1867 and Martin Đurđević, who in his Memoari (Memoirs) described the International Theatre of English consul Holms. The Theatre  was supposed to host performances of operas and comedies within the narrow diplomatic core.
In the Austro-Hungarian period musical life was transformed and conditioned by settlers' needs. It led to the development of a new model of musical life, which implied formation of the music audiences, building concert spaces, and establishing the public musical theatre.  Public music theatre, called Community Center, became a clear point of acculturation, which was a result of immigration and demographic changes, due to which settlers began to accept segments of the local culture, as well as of “cultural imitation” by means of which the local population accepted cultural features of the settlers.

BIO

Lana Šehović completed her undergraduate studies and holds master’s degree in Musicology from the Academy of Music, University of Sarajevo. In 2014 she received her PhD with a dissertation on Musical Life in Sarajevo during the Austro-Hungarian rule. She started her engagement at the Department of Musicology of the University of Sarajevo’s Academy of Music in 2007, where she currently holds the position of an Associate Professor. Her duties at the Academy have included those of the Vice-Dean for Concert Production (2016-2017), and the Head of the Department for Musicology and Ethnomusicology (2017-present), as well as the Editor-in-Chief of the internationally recognized and only Bosnian scientific musicological journal Časopis za muzičku kulturu Muzika (2014-2019). In 2019 she was part of the expert team to enlist Sevdalinka in the UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The same year she published her first book Female Identities in the Musical Life of Sarajevo during the Austro- Hungarian rule,  the first and only book on gender and position of women in cultural and musical life in Bosnia and Herzegovina.