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CHAPTER 14 Choral Societies and National Mobilization in Nineteenth-Century Bulgaria Ivanka Vlaeva Compared with the histories of many national movements in nineteenth- century Europe, in Bulgaria the industrial revolution was delayed and modern culture arrived late. Lagging behind most other Europeans, the Bulgarian population had to compensate for its lack of modern cultural development. Thus, one important characteristic of Bulgarian culture is its evolution at accelerated rates. Before liberation in 1878, for almost five centuries the Bulgarian lands were under Ottoman rule, without their own governmental and religious institutions. Foreign rule, a feudal economy, a weak middle class, and the absence of national cultural institutions were serious obstacles to the development of a new culture on the western European model. The most important aims for the Bulgarians (led by educators, intellectuals, and revolutionists) were to struggle politically against Ottoman governance, economically for new industrial processes in the Ottoman Empire, and culturally for a national identity. The lead- ers of the revolutionary movement called for a struggle not against the Turkish people, but against Ottoman rulers and foreign clerks.1 These historical processes resemble those elsewhere in Europe, especially in the central and southeastern regions. Nineteenth-century Bulgarian culture therefore needs to be considered along with that of the Balkans more gener- ally because of the cultural similarities, interactions, and fluctuations in this region.2 The establishment of a new economy and the fight for modern education were among the main priorities in Bulgarian communities. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the so-called Revival period in Bulgarian cultural development, strongly influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. As the conservative culture with its predominantly religious 1 According to a popular revolutionary platform advocated by the Bulgarian national hero Vassil Levski, Turks, Armenians, and other ethnic and religious communities were to enjoy equal rights in the Bulgarian state. 2 Many politicians and scholars now prefer the term “Southeastern Europe” to “the Balkans” because of its pejorative connotations; Todorova (2009), 28. © Ivanka Vlaeva, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004300859_016 Ivanka Vlaeva - 9789004300859 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-NDDownloaded 4.0 license. from Brill.com10/02/2021 11:06:54AM via free access 242 Vlaeva consciousness shifted slowly from a theocentric to a humanistic perspective, secularization and rationalism provided opportunities for modernization. Traditional values coexisted with more modern attitudes, and the native coexisted with the foreign to create a basis for contemporary musical culture in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Revival encouraged democracy and tolerance, and a mul- ticultural Empire with a decentralized cultural life was a good medium for Bulgarians to assimilate different traditions. Initially the monasteries and their small schools were centers of enlightenment and especially music, but from the 1820s and 1830s most new developments in culture, education, and music took place in the towns. Urban circumstances and urban life opened new horizons and perspectives for establishing a modern culture in which modern education could be realized and secular art and culture could flourish. The Bulgarian Revival was a process of Europeanization and Westernization in which a Bulgarian national identity and national culture were constructed through the assimilation of foreign traditions (mostly from the West) and through a process of self- development. Urban cosmopolitan musical traditions and imported novelties formed the core of the new Bulgarian musical culture. Popular songs and mass musical culture were important vehicles for the Bulgarian Revival, as against the higher genres that were important in other regions in Europe. Choral Singing from the 1830s to the 1870s The Bulgarian musical tradition in the early nineteenth century was predominantly monophonic. Its main elements were, on the one hand, instru- mental performances and the folk tradition (with some regional exceptions for two-part singing), and on the other, church monody chanting with the ison (drone). The development of a Bulgarian language was the basis for the national revival. All the holy texts for the year-round ritual cycle were trans- lated into modern Bulgarian by monks from Rila, one of the oldest and most important Bulgarian monasteries. New fiction and poetry were also published in the Bulgarian vernacular. The period from the 1830s to the 1850s also witnessed the growth of Bulgarian schools. Music was included in the syllabus, and in the following decades choral singing played an increasingly important role. The Greek influence on education was replaced thanks to the development of Bulgarian institutions and specialists. In a few decades some 1,500 primary schools and dozens of secondary schools were established in the Bulgarian lands, set up Ivanka Vlaeva - 9789004300859 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 11:06:54AM via free access Choral Societies And National Mobilization In Bulgaria 243 on advanced European models such as the Bell-Lancaster method. Along with traveling to schools in Tzarigrad (as Istanbul was known by Bulgarians, liter- ally “the town of tsars”), thousands of Bulgarians enrolled in high schools and universities abroad, in Austria, France, Germany, Romania, Russia, and Serbia. Some returned to their homelands, and soon a highly educated cultural élite was formed. The earliest extant writings about choral singing in Bulgarian communities date from the 1830s. Neofit Rilski founded a church choir at the school of Gabrovo (1835) and in Koprivshtitza.3 At about the same time, Catholic mis- sionaries in the town of Plovdiv founded a church and established a choir in 1839 on the initiative of a Czech, Joan Ptachek. In the 1840s, in the town of Kotel, Sava Dobroplodni organized two students’ choirs, one to sing at each side of the church.4 The Bulgarian choral movement was thus rooted in two different church traditions: the monody of the Eastern Orthodox church and the polyphony of Catholicism and later Protestantism. The choral movement was also stimulated by the need for musical and cultural activity, social life, and modernity. These first choral ensembles show the connection between the church and the school, and between church singing and school singing. The same groups of singers would sing in both institutions. Early in the nineteenth century the Bulgarian schoolteacher and the priest were often the same person. To some extent this fact reveals the more secular character of Bulgarian church life at that time.5 At first the repertoire was mixed, and the first initiators of choral singing were teachers and priests (or monks). Among the most important centers for musical education and choral development were the thriving towns of Plovdiv, Shumen, Samokov, and Varna. In some towns the population was in the spheres of influence of superpowers like France and Great Britain, which had their own interests in the region. Various religious missions also worked there. Russia had a strong effect on Bulgarian culture after the 1830s, and its intellectual impact overlay the previous Greek influence. The Pan-Slavic idea of closer relations with other Slavic lands began after the Russo-Turkish War in 1828–29 and continued especially after the next two wars. This idea was later developed with different manifestations in music and other arts, as well as in the field of choral singing. In the Ottoman Empire, Bulgarian schools and choral ensembles had been set up without subsidies from either a state tax or the official Orthodox Church under Greek rule. All expenses for school construction and other costs were 3 Balareva (1992), 19. 4 Hlebarov (2003), 65. 5 Hadzhiiski (1974), 486–94. Ivanka Vlaeva - 9789004300859 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 11:06:54AM via free access 244 Vlaeva paid with donations from Bulgarian patriots or church communities whose budgets were dependent on voluntary contributions. In many places the Bulgarian local community paid for all school expenses. School singing was a part of the secularization of Bulgarian society, but it co-existed with church patterns in the school practice. Choral songs were sung in schoolrooms (at the end of the school year, for example), but performances were also held in churches or outdoors as part of traditional community festi- vals (for Christmas, St. Lazar’s Day, or the welcoming of important guests). The idea of a concert as a special event on a special stage was unknown to most Bulgarians at that time. Choral singing was only one element of the celebra- tions. The Bulgarian population was not yet ready for this form of entertain- ment, and circumstances in the Ottoman Empire did not support such social forms of aesthetic and leisure activities. Among other reasons were the lack of expertise and sometimes a lack of understanding from Bulgarian society, which saw multi-voiced singing as a symbol of the foreign (Western) church. This is evidence that the Bulgarians assimilated selectively from western traditions, and chose to accept principles of secular culture from the West as a way to move forward. Choral singing symbolized modern musical culture for the most educated Bulgarians, but it was accepted with difficulty because of the local tradition which had a different type of

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