Nauka kao umetnost – interdisciplinarnost u naučnim radovima Dragutina Gostuškog

Abstract

This study, Science as Art – Interdisciplinarity in Scientific Works of Dragutin Gostuški, is based on my master thesis, written under the mentorship of Dr. Vesna Mikić and defended at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Music in Belgrade. Acknowledging the impact Dragutin Gostuški has had in Serbian musicology and music critique, especially given the fact that his scientific and theoretical works were particularly topical in European musicological thought of that time, this study represents my contribution to studying one pertinent historical period in history of Serbian musicology by examining Gostuški’s activity through the prism of musicological interdisciplinarity. The subject in question is scientific work of Dragutin Gostuški written during the 1960s and 1970s. What these papers and studies, as well as Gostuški’s scientific and essayistic language in general, have in common is a very specific interdisciplinary approach, which is examined here through Mirjana VeselinovićHofman’s theoretical model of musicological interdisciplinarity. Studies taken in consideration include his doctoral dissertation Time of Art. Contribution to the Establishment of a General Science of Forms (defended in 1965, published in 1968), his text The Third Dimension of Poetic Language published in The Musical Quarterly in 1969, and study Reality, Music, Language. Contribution to Studying the Problem of Meaning [Réalite, Musique, Langage. Contribution a l’Étude du Probleme de la Signification] presented at the First International Conference of Semiotics of Music in Belgrade in 1973. His text Music Sciences as a Model of Interdisciplinary Research Method served as a window to the interdisciplinary worldview of Gostuški and is therefore introduced in the theoretical basis of my text. Encompassing Introduction, the following two chapters of this study, Interdisciplinarity – The Space ’in between’ and The Setting and the Development of Musicology in Serbia, can be viewed as the theoretical basis for my research. The second chapter is dedicated to the notion of interdisciplinarity in general as well as 708 attempted definition of musicological interdisciplinarity, while the third one traces the historical path of musicology in Serbia during the 20th century. In the fourth chapter, I deal with Gostuški’s works and ’polyphonic’ cooperation of musicology, aesthetics, art history, mathematics, physics, psychology, semiotics, and other disciplines in his texts. The concluding chapter, titled The Time of Art and Science, gives an outline of the previous text and points out to new directions for future studies on this subject. The poly-scientific organization of Gostuški’s scholarly works, as I have identified it, implies that the thesis, argumentation, and conclusions are ’counterpointally’ guided from all the disciplines utilized. Two or more disciplines are steered in the direction of landing-place in musicological result and contribution. Gostuški’s interdisciplinarity derives from Western, mostly French, musicological thought, and, as such, stands as unique in Serbian musicology at the time. From the musicological perspective, specificity of his works lays in the fact that, in his examinations, Gostuški always held the most prominent role for music. Furthermore, relations between music and other arts, covered by the wide range of comparative aesthetics’ methodology, were always interpreted through intriguing and topical European theories of art.