TONALITY AS A PARADIGM

TWO TYPES OF MUSICAL EXPRESSION IN THE WORKS OF MILAN MIHAJLOVIĆ DATING FROM THE EIGHTIES AND NINETIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The paper examines and indicates two types of musical expression of Milan Mihajlović (1945) present in his works from the 1980s and 1990s. With undoubtedly tonal provenience, the musical expression of this composer is based on the structures from Skryabin’s scale sequence as well as on the specific features of this composer’s individual style formed as early as the beginning of the eighties of the previous century. However, along with the features of the composer’s individual style preserved from the previous decade of creativity, the compositions from the 1990s reveal one altogether different and specific relation to tradition. While addressing it on the level of a postmodernist work of art with a sample, a model, and an exemplar, the tonality of Mihajlović acquires new dimensions. With successful integration of different musical pasts, his tonality is still based on the structures of Skryabin’s scale sequence, with the presence of entire tonal complexes within a musical course which not so rarely convey outlines of standard functional relations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Still in the status of paradigm, the tonality of Mihajlović is defined by the strongly present elements of impressionist stylistic method. Demonstrative analysis includes six composer’s works created in the period of 1986-1996: Bagatelle (1986), Тhree Preludes (1986-1989), Еlegy (1989), of the eighties, and works Little Mourning Music (1990), Memento (1993) and Silenzio (1996), of the nineties.