Creating New Representations of Yugoslav national Territory: Dragutin Gostuški's Symphonic Poem Belgrade

Open Access

Abstract

In the following I will discuss symphonic poem Beograd (»Belgrade«) composed by Serbian author Dragutin Gostuški in 1951, and afterwards used for аmusical »documentary television film« in 1969, in the context of the processes of building new representations of the state territory of socialist Yugoslavia. I will firstly discuss the particular political and social issues of territorial trans-formation in the early socialist Yugoslavia, reflecting on the theoretical issues of nation-state territorial authority and space representations. I will then specifically point out how the new territorial narratives of partisan warfare and rebuilding and development featured in the most poignant and all-pervading musical genre of the time, the mass song. Analysing Gostuški's symphonic poem, I will show how the topoi established in the mass songs penetrated his symphonic idiom, positioning this work as a part and parcel of the representations of space in the socialist Yugoslavia. Finally, referring to the two versions of the ›script‹ for the documentary film from 1969, I will discuss how the cult of labour and the rising cult of enjoyment were portrayed as parallel to the narrative of partisan warfare and positioned as a part of lived experience of the new socialist urban utopia.