Shaped in complex social circumstances and in accordance with the postulates
of baroque historicism, Serbian ecclesial art has expressed clear tendency
toward nationalization of Serbian religious identity during the 18th century.
Due to general musical illiteracy of the clerics, the real conditions for the
development of chanting art in Serbian Church were nonexistent. However, by
the end of 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century the myth of
authentic Serbian national Church singing, being the result of special
?Serbian folk piety?, was established. The construction of Serbian Church
chanting tradition was primarily initialized by the growing distance from
Greek psalmody in Serbian worship. In other words, because there was no
historically relevant form of singing, the ancient singing of Fruska Gora and
Krusedol, i.e. the singing of Karlovci, had to be constructed as an
antithesis to Byzantine- Greek musical tradition. By comparing historical
facts and critically reading the narrative of the origins of national Church
music in the time of Metropolitan Stefan Stratimirovic of Karlovci, a new
interpretation of common stereotype about Serbian musical reform and its main
protagonists was produced. This paper offers an original analysis of the
origin of: 1) the singing of Fruska Gora, in the context of the belief that
Fruska Gora, with its monasteries which preserved the memory of the golden
age of Serbian history, are sacred spaces - Serbian Mount Athos; as well as
2) the singing of Karlovci, where was the centre of Metropolitanate of
Karlovci and first Ecclesiastical Seminary which was connected the ungrounded
belief that it was nursery of a magnificent form of church chanting by the
end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. This paper, also for
the first time, pointed the relationship between the monasteries of Fruska
Gora, as Serbian sacred spaces of great importance for national identity, and
their abbots Dimitrije Krestic, Dionisije Cupic and Jerotej Mutibaric, who
were, according to oral tradition, the creators of singing of Karlovci. The
adequate music and historical sources that would offer us an insight into the
process of musical reform that was conducted by them do not exist, but their
contributions in constituting national self-awareness and ?Serbian piety? are
well known and documented. In conclusion, by the end of the 18th and the
beginning of 19th century, but also during the entire century of
?nationalism(s)?, the prayers in Serbian Church were chanted for the glory
of God, although with a clear tendency to emancipate a new religious identity
of Serbian people. However, the catholic ecclesial spirit of Tradition was
repressed in order to fulfill the goals of ideology of religious nationalism.
Relativizers as markers of grammatical complexity: A diachronic, cross-register study of English and German
