Three String Quartets by Ivana Stefanović—Three Aspects of Serbian Music in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

The three string quartets by eminent Serbian composer Ivana Stefanović (b. 1948) were composed during three distinct periods of her oeuvre: modernism, avant-garde, and postmodernism. As such, they are paradigmatic for the development of Serbian modernist and avant-garde tendencies in the second half of the twentieth century. The First Quartet (1969–70) is a student work influenced by Enriko Josif, her professor of composition who was a member of the first modernist wave that appeared in Serbian music in the 1950s. The Second Quartet, Harmonies (1976), indicates Serbian avant-garde features with arched forms and music that ‘emerges’ from silence before ‘drowning’ in it. The Third Quartet, Play Strindberg (1993), is a departure from the previous two—it is a tonal piece with a clear form, written for a theatrical play. The dramatised musical story carries with it an emphasized need for the literarisation of musical form and a typically postmodernist attitude towards styles such as romanticism and modernism.