Music Studies and Music Art

The main aim of the education in ‘Music Studies and Music Art’ (code 05.08.02) is to prepare competent researchers in the field of contemporary music, the modern process taking place in the filed as well as in the art of composing music – Bulgarian and foreign in view of the tendencies in contemporary theoretical and research ideas. The aim of the department is to ensure an understanding between the different generations in music studies. The specifics of the academic and research work is connected with the cultural understanding of the historical process in musical studies and the process in its diversified manifestations observed not only in the academic-research subject but in connection with the development of the discipline itself in view of a more mobile reflection on new problems and aspects that emerge in the musical sphere.

The Institute of Art Studies has great experience in the preparation of doctorantes in the field of ‘Music Studies and Music Art’. Besides the great number of scientists that have received their degrees and have later established themselves as renown creators, only in the period 1995-2005 in the department ‘Music Studies and Music Art’ 28 doctorantes have received their degrees, while in the last five years (2001-2005) they are 25. From 2001 till 2005 16 doctorantes have been accepted while 7 have received their degree in the period 2001-2005. Beginning in 2004 the department ‘Music Studies and Music Art’ has started educating also people from abroad. Worth noting is the professional realization of those that have received their degrees here – they have become noteworthy scientists and researchers.

In it’s over 50-year history the Department of ‘Music” at the Institute of Art Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has realized the education of doctorantes in all spheres of musical studies.

Hoping to widen, modernize and specify the problematic scope of the scientific research, the department has started also specific doctorates programs connected with musical media, research of popular music, study of the musical theater – the opera, ballet, musical, ethno-musicology, jazz, pop and rock music, stage and film music which supplements the traditionally oriented educational directions. Noteworthy in this aspect is the growing attention paid for example to the specifics of mass-media culture as well as to the special role played by modern globalization processes in the present day existence of the local musical cultures.