description
The exhibition Art Deco in the Croatian Music Institute, which I prepared in 2011 and was staged in Zagreb, presented interesting material from the Institute's library and archives (sheet music, books, concert programmes, and so on). The artistic focus was on works by 15 artists born in the late 19th century, mainly from Croatia. One exhibit was an exception, however since it comes from my own collection, the edition of Kadar jaz, dekle, umrla bom (When I, a girl, will die), a collection of folk songs arranged for a mixed choir by the Slovenian composer Breda Šček (1893-1968), published in Trieste in 1933. The cover illustration was made by Anton (Tone) Kralj (1900-1975), the Slovenian painter, graphic artist and sculptor, who probably met the composer Šček at the beginning of the 1930s. In the period from 1932 to 1954, Kralj made illustrations for 27 scores by seven Slovenian composers: Lojze Bratuž, Ivan Laharnar, Silvester Orel, Stanko Premrl, Breda Šček, Matija Tomc and Vinko Vodopivec. These composers were linked not only by Kralj's contributions to their scores, but also by their engagement in church music, and most were from the same region of Slovenia, Primorska. The research presented in this paper showed that Breda Šček was probably the key person for Kralj's involvement in illustrating sheet music. In addition to the list of works published in the book Tone Kralj. Retrospective (ed. by I. Kranjc, Ljubljana 1998), this paper notes five newly discovered works, illustrations for musical scores written by Silvester Orel (4) and Breda Šček (1).