Yugoslav Avant-Garde Music, 1945–1991

Informed by fascinating interviews, photographs, and previously unexamined archival materials, this book reveals a compelling story of Yugoslav avant-garde and experimental music from 1945 until 1991, ending with the year when all artistic activities came to a sudden halt with the start of the Yugoslav wars. It examines the political, social, and cultural events that gave rise to the flourishing avant-garde scene in the country and follows the emergence and development of Yugoslav cultural programs in the postwar period that made the republic a magnet for cultural exchange, through to the sudden and violent dissolution of those programs with the collapse of the political state. The book is the first full-length book in English on the subject and provides an indispensable, interdisciplinary resource that will contribute to the preservation of this legacy. It will be invaluable for readers of Cold War Eastern European studies, music history, musical modernism, composition, music and politics, and music and identity.

Laura Emmery is Associate Professor of Music at Emory University. She is the author of Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 1 (2025), The Origins of Yugoslav Musical Minimalism, co-authored with Ivana Miladinović Prica (2024), Elliott Carter Speaks: Unpublished Lectures (2022), and Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets (2020).