Meeta Vardja defends her doctoral thesis on 19 December at 14:30 room A-402 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Music):

„Tallinna Riikliku Konservatooriumi muusikateaduse kateeder aastatel 1944–1968“

Supervisor: Anu Kõlar, PhD

Opponents: prof Tõnu-Andrus Tannberg (Tartu University) and Maris Kirme, PhD

The doctoral thesis is available HERE and in print in the EAMT library.

Part of Summary:

Musicology was established as an independent academic discipline in Estonia after the Second World War under the Soviet regime. The Faculty of Musicology (muusikateaduse kateeder) was established in 1944 at the Tallinn State Conservatoire (Tallinna Riiklik Konservatoorium), following the common practice in the Soviet Union of teaching this discipline at conservatoires, in contrast to the Western tradition, where musicology has typically been associated with universities. The new academic discipline had to develop within the confines of an imposed foreign ideology, where the research directions, methodological approaches, and professional tasks for musicologists were suddenly defined by the model established in Soviet musicology in the 1930s. The strong influence of the Soviet regime on musicology in Estonia and other countries with a similar fate can be seen even in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. To a certain extent, traces of the Soviet legacy can still be observed in the musicology of the former Soviet republics today. The aim of this dissertation is to examine the birth and development of Estonian academic musicology from 1944 to 1968, taking into account the social and political context that surrounded the emerging discipline. The focus of the study is the Faculty of Musicology at the Tallinn State Conservatoire as the central institution for musicology in Estonia during this period. The dissertation has two objectives: 1) to provide a detailed and comprehensive overview of the history and activities of the Faculty of Musicology, as academic reflection on the discipline’s development has so far been lacking; and 2) to analyse the influence of Soviet musicology and ideology, and how it manifested in Estonian academic musicology. The study employs the approaches of structural history of music and disciplinary history, primarily using source criticism, comparative methodology, and biographical approach as the key research methods