”Dragutin Gostuški’s Theories of Time and Space Within the Historical and Cultural Context of American Modernist Aesthetics”

Laura Emmery (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0483-3240)

Искошени угао Драгутина Гостушког, уредиле Катарина Томашевић и Бојана Радовановић, 181-208.

Београд: Музиколошки институт САНУ, 2024.

https://doi.org/10.46793/DGOST23.181E

Abstract: This paper contextualizes Dragutin Gostuški’s theories on time and space with those that have influenced the thinking and compositional processes of modernist American composer Elliott Carter (1908-2012) around the same time (the postwar decades of the 1950s and 1960s). Carter, known for his radical exploration and manipulation of time in music, was inspired by composers, poets, playwrights, novelists, and filmmakers. Interested in exploring the human experience of time in music, Carter turned to philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Gisèle Brelet, Michel Butor, Charles Koechlin, and Pierre Suvchinsky in his inquiry. Similarly, Dragutin Gostuški (1923-1998), a prominent Serbian composer, musicologist, and aesthetician, critically examined the topics of musical meaning, semiotics of music, and musical time in his writings, most notably in his groundbreaking book, Vreme umetnosti [The Time of Art] (1968). In this study, I examine Carter’s and Gostuški’s approach to understanding musical time, how they applied their theoretical understanding to their compositions, and how their innovative thinking is a reflection of their socio-cultural context.

Keywords: Dragutin Gostuški, Elliott Carter, musical time, time theories, time dimension, Proustian time.