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Küppers-Sonnenberg's Croatian Recordings

The author took part in the Berlin Phonogrammarchive project dedicated to publishing of the sound material recorded by Gustav Küppers-Sonnenberg in the 1930s. The material includes the sound recordings of traditional singing made in 1935, when Küppers-Sonnenberg recorded singers from Bač and Sonta in the Bačka region (sub-ethnic group Šokci), Novi Vinodolski and Zagreb. The author took part in technical production, and he also wrote an article about this particularly valuable sound material. The described sound notations are on a compact disc, and the text is published in the booklet accompanying it. When Gustav Adolf Küppers-Sonnenberg travelled for the first time to South Slavic regions in 1935, he recorded four singing groups of Croatian ethnicity. His most complete collection belongs to Bački Šokci subethnic Croatian group. Küppers recorded two folk choirs of Šokci, a male and a female one, from two places, Bač and Sonta. Unfortunately, it could not be confirmed with certainty when exactly these recording sessions took place. The second set of recordings comes from the town of Novi Vinodolski, situated in the region of Kvarner Littoral (Kvarnersko primorje) in western Croatia. Küppers recorded these singers in the capital of Zagreb on October 8, 1935, when he also recorded a male group that came from Zagreb and sang three very popular songs. A great part of the repertory of both Bački Šokci singing groups stands in the bordering space between popular and traditional music. This fact points to specific processes of intensive merging of urban and village music styles and genres that were ongoing in Vojvodina and Eastern Croatia in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially between the two World Wars. Hence, it is not surprising that Šokci singers performed to Küppers the most popular local and regional music of the time. While male singers from Bač sang only popular songs of the time, a female group from Sonta combined typical traditional genres consisted of rhymed decasyllabic couplets with Vojvodinian popular music of the time. Novi Vinodolski stands for a unique location of Croatian traditional music. Küppers's recordings from this small town contain traditional singing, which is deeply immersed in local context and – quite opposite to the recordings of Bački Šokci – distant from the popular urban music of the 1930s. Novi Vinodolski is situated in the vicinity of various ethnographic and ethnomusicological zones. Due to this specific geographical position, its inhabitants were accepting diverse influences through history, while simultaneously retaining and enriching their own local music uniqueness. Previous ethnomusicological studies considered Novi Vinodolski as part of the area of Istra-Primorje music system of narrow intervals. However, Küppers's material and numerous archive sound recordings from 1950s to 1970s testify that such classification is only partly true. Music transformations of older microtonal singing style towards two-part diatonic singing in thirds with unison endings were taking place through influences from various geographic directions: (1) coastal towns from Istria to Dalmatia ; (2) towns of north-western Croatia ; (3) mountainous hinterland of Lika (microtonal "rough diaphony" style) ; (4) wider area of northern Croatia ("pjevanje na bas" style). Küppers's recordings from Novi Vinodolski are perhaps the first known sound recordings from that town. The performers were two men and one woman. Küppers recorded ten songs that have a range of note or sound variants in various sound archives in Croatia. His recordings from Novi Vinodolski provide a decent insight into local traditional music of his time.

Gustav Küppers-Sonnenberg ; traditional songs ; 1935 ; Bač ; Sonta ; Novi Vinodolski

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