RELIGION
Orthodox church of Bulgaria The struggle between Rome and Byzantium for the affiliation of the Bulgarian Church, which opened at the very moment of the conversion of the Bulgarians, led to the recognition of its autonomy by the pontiff before 924 and by the court of Constantinople in 945. When the Bulgaria lost its independence political autonomy, which was not regained even under Turkish rule, while in the periods of rebirth of the state with independent life, the approach to Rome (with Kalojan from 1204 to 1232, and then again in 1274) represented a means of escaping also politically from Byzantine rule. In the second half of the 19th century. the national rebirth movement manifested itself above all in the struggle against the ecumenical patriarchate for the replacement of a Bulgarian hierarchy and clergy for the Greek ones. On 11 March 1870 the Ottoman government created a Bulgarian exarchate, independent from the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, which only in 1945 recognized the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Church. From the end of 1951, to underline the detachment from the ecumenical patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Bulgaria was created, whose first patriarch was elected on 10 May 1953. For Bulgaria religion, please check thereligionfaqs.com.
LANGUAGE
The Bulgarian is a Slavic language of Bulgaria that around the 9th century. it overwhelmed the previous Turkish-type language used by the Bulgarians until then. The Paleoslavian was also of Bulgarian type which has its roots in southern Macedonia and on which Bulgarian literature of the Middle Ages depends. Very different from Paleoslav is the Bulgarian literary language of today, dating back to the beginning of the 19th century, which, based on the spoken language, follows the western Bulgarian dialects in pronunciation and oriental ones in the accentuation. The most characteristic aspects of modern Bulgarian are: the loss of the declension; the use of the postponed article; and the substitution of the infinitive with a subordinate clause; the conservation in some dialects of the ancient denasalised nasal vowels, with results that only partially agree with those of Serbian; finally the groups št, žd for the ancient tĭ, dĭ, kt′. Only this last trait is common to today’s Bulgarian and Paleoslavian, while the morphosyntax brings Bulgarian closer to the other Balkan languages.
MUSIC
POPULAR MUSIC
The rich and ancient heritage of popular music has been preserved intact, indeed it has grown, during the centuries of Turkish domination. Based on the ancient ways or lad, the Bulgarian songs (over 45,000 have been collected) are all monodic, except for some two-part voices belonging to some regions of western Bulgaria, and present a great variety of rhythms and meters. Songs founded on the fourth interval must be considered more ancient; more recent are those in which the third interval prevails and where therefore the influence of the Western European melody is revealed.
THE CULTURED MUSIC
In the nineteenth century, with the end of the Turkish domination, a cultured musical production began to develop also in Bulgaria, although initially limited almost exclusively to choral music, given the scarce instrumental practice existing in the country. In the vocal field, D. Hristov (1874-1941) and P. Pipkov (1871-1942) are particularly distinguished; but already he, director of the choir of the Sofia Opera, is also appreciated for some pleasant pieces for piano.
The affirmation of a Bulgarian instrumental school, however, occurs above all by G. Atanasov, known as the Maestro (1881-1931), considered the founder of national melodrama, who perfected himself in Pesaro with Mascagni and was influenced by the Italian realist school, then turning to national folklore; Gergana(1917) is his masterpiece.
After the First World War, Bulgarian music tends to free itself from national folklore to give rise to a production updated as much as possible to the contemporary experiences of European music. Above all composers of this generation stands out L. Pipkov (1904-1974), who studied in Paris with Dukas, Lefébure and D’Indy, and is the author of various symphonic choral and chamber music as well as the works The Nine Brothers by Jana(1937) and Momchil(1948). After the Second World War a flourishing school of composition was formed at the Sofia Conservatory, around the personality of P. Vladigherov (1899-1978), pianist and conductor as well as teacher and author of the opera Zar Kalojan (1936), of balletThe legend of the lake, and of different symphonic and chamber music.
UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE
Boyana Church (1979); knight of Madara (1979); rock churches of Ivanovo (1979); Thracian tomb of Kazanlăk (1979); ancient city of Nesebǎr (1983); Pirin National Park (1983); Rila monastery (1983); natural reserve of Srebarna (1983); Thracian tomb of Sveshtari (1985).
