TOWARDS THE NEW MILLENIUM WITH HOPES AND APPREHENSION
The cultural heritage of every nation is a
reflection of their wisdom and the legacy of one generation to
another. It unites everything created by mankind throughout the
centuries and contains everything that will be kept for the future.
The care for this heritage confirms the enthusiasm and the creative
spirit of the humanity.
Bulgaria is apart of the world culture and civilization. It is a part
of our collective home-the Earth. We owe it to the Earth to maintain
everything that makes us proud of the fact that we were born and live
in our small part of the planet. The real and exact estimate of our
cultural heritage requires erudition, farsightedness and wisdom.
Spiritual remembrance reminds the man, who is deeply drawn in his own
historical period, the great creative movements also happened in the
past and living persons, individuals, with whose help we need to
conquer a new existential level.
This should be our suggestion for the young and this is what we should
try to cultivate in them.
This is the time of mutual recognition, making efforts for adjustment
to the reality of these two worlds and creating a clime for dialogue,
openness and togetherness. This meeting just confirms largely
everything stated before.
Art as a language embraced by all for personal statements, but also
for a dialogue with one’s time and the spiritual is a realistic way
towards cosmopolitanism. This is a part of the delivering giantesses
of the end of the millennium. It is them that define the system of
values in art at the threshold of the new millenium in a world in
which there exist so many different economic, social and cultural
positions in the East and in the West.
The distinctness, the dynamics and the directions of the Bulgarian
culture were always of a great interest for me. As a musician and
pedagogue with years of long experience, I feel morally obliged to
direct my students and to show them the route they need to follow as
representatives of our national culture. They are the people who
imitate and flirt with the modern.
After a large number of journeys, meetings, concerts, competitions,
festivals and tours in the past years, I am convinced in the mutuality
of the process of getting to know each other at the end of the 20th
century. The interest is shared and entirely natural. It is not only
we who aspire to become part of Europe; Europe is also intrigued by
us. The world is interested in us. Every author-musician has a need
for presentation, contacts and experiences realized in a completely
different cultural and social context. We should move on with this
conviction.
The emancipation of the cultural connections from the complete
patronage of the state, the self-initiative of the authors and the
constitution of such structures as this forum are among the most
significant achievements in establishing real dialogues between people
who belong to art.
These achievements represent not only the representational interests
of the state, but also the specific interests in the authors, their
identity and art which remain in the center of the communications.
Only the prominent individuals in the culture have the chance to model
freely the general clime and standards of communication. The
individuality is not only a biological and psychological category, but
possesses ethical and spiritual aspects.
The existence of individuality is grounded on freedom. This freedom is
not only the freedom of the will, but also the freedom of choice.
Man’s individuality is based on human dignity.
Thus, learning about the world, we learn about ourselves.
I am trying to convince my pupils and students that in the newly
created conditions, art is measured with demands and activities, but
the prize must not be the loss of the human dignity and reliance on
false values.
One of the basic functions of the education is finding a suitable
place for each individual in the society.
The transformations in the search for the new meaning in this
sometimes-chaotic journey from the past into the future should be
completely clear to us. This concerns, above all, Southeastern Europe
here; it is very difficult to apply ready models.
In this knowledge, one of the two worlds called ‘today’ can become
a dangerous trap for our tomorrow if we do not support it with
soberness and wisdom.
What are my fears and what gives me hope at the threshold of the new
millenium? What are the challenges that we, the pedagogues, and our
students-the synonyms of the contemporary maxim about the man at the
end of the 20th century need to face? Above all, this man
should bear the responsibility for his existence and fulfillment, he
himself and not the state or the institutions.
The way the intellectuals are ranked in the society is a symbol of its
system of values.
The humiliating social status of the teacher and the author expose the
spiritual chaos in the post-totalitarian landscape of the transition
time.
That is an alarming problem and a priority that is still waiting of
resolution. That causes the doubt and the fear among the young. The
departure of the talents from Bulgaria is also alarming as well as the
fact that the intellectual potential of the nation is unnecessarily
dispersing.
We are left with the problem of those who have not left unrealized
intellectuals-understood as victims and not as a group that needs
fulfillment through reforms realized at home.
The people who are rather consumers that creators of art, crate
specific snobbish atmosphere around art which becomes a witness of the
lost freedom of the sound. We ask ourselves why?
There are people who live in admiration of the beautiful in art. This
might be connected with the sole essence of the mankind, but it might
also be a result of the desire to imitate or be fashionable and a
result of the influence of a certain situation in their environs.
The mass accepts the technical achievements very quickly and uses them
with pleasure, but it finds it difficult to adopt the spiritual
culture.
The technology surrounding our lives often has a devastating effect on
the culture making it faceless.
In the concert halls, which represent a privileged social space, the
rich and influential in the audience should be able to accept the
rules of the civilized society.
The most negative impression i have had in the last several years in
the annoying ringing of the mobile phones in the middle of concerts,
theatre plays or exhibitions.
The concert hall as a public space gathers people of different age,
different personal maturity and social status and as such focuses and
registers the changes of the types of audience. In addition, the
audience is really changing. This ringing of mobile phones is a part
of the everyday life while the act of entering the concert hall is a
symbol of the opportunity to remove oneself from it and to dedicate
oneself to Art and its pleasures. The laws of freedom of choice are
such that allow one to enter a hall and if the things do not please
one, also to leave. That is normal. However, it is impossible to turn
the concert hall into a place ruled by the laws of the street.
One or the ways for the people understood as ‘Homo Faber’ to leave
the everyday world and arrive in the world of ‘Homo Ludens’ is
through music. To achieve this, we need to talk very long and very
responsibly on these themes because that is the way of creating
criteria for the new society-the one we are building together with our
students.
In the stormy historical epochs and the epochs of the spiritual
revolutions, the musician can not avoid taking part in the struggle
for the spiritual. He is obliged to. Moreover, freedom is something
difficult to reach.
The free person should be in the center of the spiritual world.
Through the spiritual liberation of the person only, we can experience
fulfillment of the human individual.
The meaning of art is in its aim to go further and to prepare for the
transformation of the world. In the difference from the everyday life
precisely, lies the liberating meaning of art.
Art frees us from the slavery imposed by everyday life. Nevertheless,
we should know that art is not something easy. It does not remove
every obstacle before a person. On the contrary, art is accompanied by
enormous problems, but they are different from those of the everyday
life. Thus, art becomes not only prey, but victory also.
Young Bulgarian musicians have the freedom and the opportunity to
travel and play at concerts abroad and to participate in international
festivals and competitions.
The world is open for them. They are no longer hostages of the
state-controlled culture.
I am convinced that these are the individuals who constitute the
dynamics of our cultural landscape.
They are becoming symbols of Bulgaria and its art.
We should believe that perhaps the new millennium will bring other
outlooks and other tendencies, but we will be able to embrace them
fully only if we approach them with all that we have already
contemplated at the twilight of this century.
<<
back |
