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