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A Scientific Project on Croatian Music Historiography in the Nineteenth Century

In 1996 a scientific project Croatian Music Historiography till 1945 was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Croatia. Till the present moment the research of the 19th century Croatian music historiography has been bringing up to an end. Fundamental bibliography of manuscripts and published sources of more than 350 relevant items including the creation of data base (being now at the initial stage), then the analysis of texts and their evaluation based on the comparison with relevant sources of the time and on the contemporary historiographic achievements are included into the research. The results of this research have displayed three most important figures: F. Ks. Kuhač, Vjenceslav Novak and Vjekoslav Klaić. Kuhač's efforts actually marked the beginning of systematic scientific research in Croatia in the field of the history of music. However, it must be said that Kuhač's conviction that music historiography, just like music itself, ought to endorse and promote national identity sometimes interfered with his scholarly objectivity in the interpretation of certain historical facts, and even led him to arbitrary and scholarly unsupported conclusions. A historian Klaić focused his scholarly interest mainly on the period of the Croatian National Movement of the 1830s and 1840s. Some of his biographic studies still function as relevant and respectable sources. A recognized writer Novak was not a researcher himself but primarily a pedagogue. Among his works the most important is his general survey of music history, the first one written in Croatian but unpublished until 1994. Thus, the first published periodization of music history in Croatian culturologic space was displayed in Franjo Marković's aesthetic system. Finally, it have been observed that in many cases music journalism functions - in spite of its journalistic, but not scientific qualities - as musical historiographic source.

music historiography; Croatia; 19th century

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