SUMMARY
The main aim of this article is to examine Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac’s role in the processes of inventing the artistic tradition of Serbian music of modern times. By following the route of the chosen analytical sample, the folk song “Cvekje cafnalo” from Mokranjac’s Twelfth Garland, through Petar Konjovic’s works (Symphony C-minor, 1907 and The Second String Quartet, 1937), finally to the piano Sonatina (1926) by Predrag Miloševic, I plan to show on which way Mokranjac’s oeuvre served as a starting model for the initiation of early modernism in Serbian (and Yugoslav) music in the first half of the 20th century.