9
DOI: 10.4312/mz.56.2.9-20
UDK 78(497.4):001.891"19/20":323.1
Researching Music in Slovenia:  
One Hundred Years Later
Aleš Nagode
University of Ljubljana
ABSTRACT
The article observes distortions of the historiographical narrative about the musical culture 
of Slovenia in the past, caused by specific circumstances of the formation of the Slove-
nian nation and the dominance of nationalism. It also outlines the strategies applied by 
Slovenian musicology since the second half of the twentieth century to escape the grip of 
nationalistic ideology.
Keywords: history, musicology, Slovenia, nationalism, methodology
IZVLEČEK
Članek opazuje sledove popačitve historiografskega pogleda na glasbeno kulturo dana-
šnje Slovenije, ki je bila posledica specifičnih okoliščin izoblikovanja slovenskega naro-
da in prevlade nacionalistične paradigme. Predstavi tudi strategije in poti, s katerimi je 
slovenska muzikologija od druge polovice 20. stoletja iskala odmik od nacionalističnega 
ideološkega okvirja.
Ključne besede: zgodovina, muzikologija, Slovenija, nacionalno gibanje, metodologija
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   9 23. 12. 2020   20:30:50
muzikološki zbornik • musicological annual lvi/2
10
When I was invited to prepare a paper on the challenges of Slovenian musicol-
ogy one hundred years after the founding of the University of Ljubljana, I was 
first concerned about the occasion on which we were dealing with this topic. 
On anniversaries, it is right to look back at the path we have walked and the 
achievements we have made. However, such commemorative events often turn 
into (self-)promotional bragging, the purpose of which is far from the search 
for truth. In it, the positive bias, which – as psychology teaches us – is neces-
sary for survival, usually escapes the reins at an unbridled gallop. Therefore, the 
first decision was that the paper should not become a kind of festive Facebook 
selfie. It must try to find a balance between consolidating awareness of the his-
torical significance of achievements and a critique of the errors and deviations 
on the journey that our profession has undertaken over the last century. 
The next dilemma was the one that – unfortunately – still largely deter-
mines life and work in Slovenia: the world or home. Should I focus my atten-
tion on global musicology, that is, on the challenges of Slovenian musicology 
in the modern, rapidly changing globalised world, of which we are increasingly 
a part and which, of course, concerns us, too? Or should I concentrate on the 
local setting and its specific professional problems, conditioned by the unusual 
geographical, social, economic and cultural conditions in which the Slovenian 
nation has developed and lives today? I decided on introspection, which will 
try to answer the question as to why, in modern Slovenia, we still have to ask 
ourselves about two musicologies: domestic musicology and global musicology.
The last dilemma that arose was whether I should deal with the past, pre-
sent or future. Should I list the basic knowledge of the ups and downs of Slo-
venian musicology in the past decades? Should I try to outline its condition 
and hardships in the present? Or should I perhaps draw a visionary plan for its 
development in the future? The solution was clear. As a confident historian, I 
will try to talk about the present and the future by dealing with the past. I will 
try to remember where we come from, what we can use as a valuable endow-
ment, as well as what we must discard as a dead weight that hinders us on the 
way to a fuller understanding of the Slovenian part of world music culture. I 
will try to assess what we can be proud of and what we should be ashamed of. 
I will try to think about how to proceed in order to give the taxpayers who pay 
us every month the best of what they do not even know they need.
* * *
In 1919, less than a year after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire and the annexation of the territory of Carniola, Southern Styria and 
Prekmurje to the new Yugoslav state, the first university with Slovenian as the 
language of instruction was founded in Ljubljana. This event does not seem 
to have any special significance for the development of Slovenian musicology. 
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   10 23. 12. 2020   20:30:50
A. Nagode: Researching Music in Slovenia
11
The new university had no faculty, department or chair dedicated to any of the 
branches of music research. One might therefore think that in observing the 
development of Slovenian musicology, it would be more appropriate to em-
phasise the year 1920, when the music school of the Music Society (Glasbena 
matica) was elevated to the Conservatory, thus becoming the starting point 
of tertiary music education in Slovenia.1 Or perhaps the year 1939, when the 
Conservatory was transformed into the first academy of music in today’s Slo-
venian territory.2 Music theory and music history were taught at both institu-
tions, so this was also the beginning of higher education lectures in musicolo-
gy.3 At the Faculty of Arts of the new university, art historians Josip Mantuani 
and Stanko Vurnik pointed out the need to establish a department dedicated 
to researching the history of music, music theory and music aesthetics. How-
ever, the efforts went no further than the additional C study direction, which 
came to life for a short time only in the war year of 1942.4
In its beginnings, Slovenian musicology was largely divided between two 
poles, to which the institutional position also corresponded. On the one hand, 
there was the science of composition, that is, the theory of music, which ob-
served music primarily from the point of view of the composer and was placed 
in the academic environment with several subjects at the Academy of Music. 
On the other hand, there was musical aesthetics, which was the science of re-
flection and evaluation from the point of view of the listener and had its focus 
at the Faculty of Arts. Music history was a kind of mediator between the two 
(since everything we can know is already a thing of the past). In observation of 
the music of the past, the results were rarely obtained in Slovenia by scientific 
methods and presented in relevant scientific publications. Efforts to treat the 
history of music scientifically were most often viewed as nit-picking of a few 
foreign-educated musicologists. In the scope outlined by Guido Adler in Um-
fang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft (1885), musicology did not exist 
in Slovenia until the end of World War II.
The relationship between the two lines of music research was often deter-
mined by the education of researchers. If we compare the education and work 
of the first Slovenian musicologists of the twentieth century, we get surpris-
ing results. Despite the severe shortage of educated musicologists, both of the 
figures who gained doctorates in musicology in Vienna, who were – or at least 
could have been – in a position to know and implement the science of music in 
its entirety, devoted themself primarily to practical musical activity. Josip Čerin 
1 Cvetko Budkovič, Razvoj glasbenega šolstva na Slovenskem II (Ljubljana: Znanstveni inštitut Filo-
zofske fakultete, 1995), 16–17.
2 Budkovič, Razvoj glasbenega šolstva, 103–106.
3 Matjaž Barbo, Slovenska muzikologija: Kratek prelet po zgodovini (Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba 
Filozofske fakultete, 2019), 76.
4 Barbo, Slovenska muzikologija, 81–82.
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   11 23. 12. 2020   20:30:50
muzikološki zbornik • musicological annual lvi/2
12
worked mainly as a conductor, while Anton Dolinar was a choirmaster and 
publicist.5 After studying composition with Alois Hába and musicology with 
Zdeněk Nejedlý in Prague, the almost perfectly educated Radoslav Hrovatin 
devoted himself mainly to the research of Slovenian folk music.6
Most of the original musicological research was thus contributed by experts 
who had an education in another humanities profession. Joseph Mantuani was 
a lawyer, art historian and archaeologist. He performed the most important 
part of his musicological work in his early Viennese period, mainly by pub-
lishing the collected works of Jacobus Gallus in the collection Denkmäler der 
Tonkunst in Österreich.7 Stanko Vurnik was also an art historian. In addition 
to his scientific and professional work in this field, he focused mainly on the 
aesthetics of music and music criticism. Although his writings attracted a great 
deal of attention from his contemporaries, he left few traces in Slovenian mu-
sicology.8 Davorin Beranič, who was a classical philologist, dealt mainly with 
musical ethnography, as did his professional colleague Marko Bajuk. The Ital-
ianist Stanko Škerlj and the Germanist Dušan Ludvik also touched on musical 
history topics with their research of Italian and German theatre in Ljubljana.9
More or less prominent composers and practical musicians also researched 
the musical past. Outstanding among them were lawyer and trained musician 
Vilko Ukmar, priest and cathedral regens chori Stanko Premrl, who collected 
a wealth of information about Slovenian church music and its creators,10 and 
composer Lucijan Marija Škerjanc, who wrote several important theoretical 
and biographical works. Composer Slavko Osterc briefly touched on music 
history with his scripts for lectures at the conservatory.11 France Marolt was 
a musical practitioner with an unsystematic musical education, who rose to 
become a leading Slovenian ethnomusicologist in the middle of the century.
Until the end of World War II, the scientific pursuit of music history 
consisted primarily of gathering information about the musical past. It took 
place rather unsystematically and often with more will than professional skills. 
The texts that emerged were rarely based on research and appropriate critical 
appraisal of primary sources. Possible syntheses and tertiary literature (e.g., 
5 Ibid., 37–69.
6 Ibid., 72.
7 Edo Škulj, ed., Mantuanijev zbornik (Ljubljana: Družina, 1994).
8 Bojana Rogelj Škafar, “Dr. Stanko Vurnik (1898–1932): Ob stoletnici rojstva,” Etnolog 8 (1998): 
441–461.
9 Stanko Škerlj, Italijansko gledališče v Ljubljani v preteklih stoletjih (Ljubljana, 1973); Dušan Lud-
vik, Nemško gledališče v Ljubljani do leta 1790 (Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta, 1957), http://www.
dlib.si/?URN=URN:NBN:SI:doc-6Q523U2O. 
10 Edo Škulj, “Premrlova glasbena bibliografija,” in Premrlov zbornik (Ljubljana: Družina, 1996), 
229–272.
11 Slavko Osterc, tipkopis, [S. l.]: [s. a.], [1933].
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   12 23. 12. 2020   20:30:50
A. Nagode: Researching Music in Slovenia
13
articles in the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon12) were mostly based on newspa-
per articles, obituaries, oral tradition, personal inquiries, etc. Among them are 
exceptions, which are still indispensable today for the observation of certain 
areas and personalities. These include Škerjanc’s monographs on Emil Adamič, 
Gojmir Krek and Jurij Mihevec,13 Škerlj’s works on Italian theatre, etc. These 
rare cases, however, did not have much impact on the general level of writing 
about music. The journalism and music publishing of the time reflect the weak 
musicological education of authors and editors, especially concerning older 
historical periods. A good example is an edition of the Music Society (Glas-
bena matica) publishing house from 1930 that presents two motets by Jacobus 
Gallus and is entitled: Two Madrigals.14 The profession had no institutional 
support, with the exception of the establishment of the Folklore Institute in 
1934, which emerged from the efforts of the Music Society.
After the Second World War, the development of Slovenian musicology 
was determined by Dragotin Cvetko.15 Although he, too, began his academic 
career in another field – he was an expert in music pedagogy – his life work 
reveals a strong focus on establishing musicology in Slovenia as an integral part 
of the humanities. He began with the establishment of a scientific department 
at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana (1945), and by the end of the 1950s he 
had written a monumental synthetic review of the musical history of the Slo-
venian territory, which was unprecedented in Slovenian cultural history. At an 
astonishing pace, he published a series of monographs on individual historical 
periods of Slovenian music history, important composers and institutions. Last 
but not least, he began to present Slovenian musicology on a global level at sci-
entific meetings and with articles in high-profile foreign journals, proceedings 
and other scientific publications.16
Cvetko also began to nurture a new generation of excellent young mu-
sicologists, who in the following decades carried out his ambitious plan for 
the institutional consolidation of the profession. One step in this process was 
the relocation of the Department of Musicology to the Faculty of Arts of the 
12 Slovenski biografski leksikon (Ljubljana, 1925–1991).
13 Lucijan M. Škerjanc, Življenje in delo slovenskega skladatelja (Ljubljana, 1937); Škerjanc, Gregor 
Gojmir Krek kot skladatelj (Ljubljana, 1943); Škerjanc, Jurij Mihevec: slovenski skladatelj in pianist 
(Ljubljana, 1957).
14 Dva madrigala (Ljubljana: Glasbena matica, 1930), http://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN: 
SI:DOC-VF2Z4PCJ. 
15 Matjaž Barbo, “Cvetko, Dragotin (1911–1993),” Slovenska biografija (Slovenska akademija zna-
nosti in umetnosti, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU, 2013), accessed 26 November 2020, 
http://www.slovenska-biografija.si/oseba/sbi1021310/#novi-slovenski-biografski-leksikon. 
Originally published in Novi Slovenski biografski leksikon: Spletna izd., ed. Barbara Šterbenc Sveti-
na et al. (Ljubljana, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU Slovenska akademija znanosti in umet-
nosti, 2013–). 
16 Jože Sivec, “Bibliografija znanstvenega in publicističnega opusa akademika Dragotina Cvetka,” 
Muzikološki zbornik 27 (1991), 5–34, https://doi.org/10.4312/mz.27.1.5-34. 
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   13 23. 12. 2020   20:30:50
muzikološki zbornik • musicological annual lvi/2
14
University of Ljubljana, thus finally realising the plan of Josip Mantuani from 
the first years of the existence of this institution. The move opened up oppor-
tunities for doctoral studies in musicology, which had not been possible at the 
Academy of Music, as well as facilitating interdisciplinary connections with 
other disciplines at the Faculty of Arts. The new Department of Musicology 
made an important contribution to strengthening the staffing of this science 
and its integration into the wider music culture. Its graduates and doctoral 
students continued their scientific and professional work as pedagogues in ter-
tiary (Academy of Music in Ljubljana, Faculty of Education in Ljubljana and 
Maribor) and secondary general and professional education, as administrators 
of special music libraries and collections of cultural heritage related to music, 
as editors of radio and television programmes of RTV Ljubljana, as heads 
and employees of programme departments of cultural institutions dealing with 
performing music, as consultants and clerks for music in state and local admin-
istrative and governmental bodies, as well as elsewhere. In 1980, the Institute 
of Musicology was established within the Scientific Research Centre of the 
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. It focuses exclusively on research 
into the history of music in Slovenia, thus opening up opportunities for more 
extensive and time-consuming research.
The new institutional and staffing basis yielded obvious results. One by one, 
scientific texts filled the large gaps in our knowledge of the development of 
music culture in Slovenia. This knowledge was also appropriately represented 
in major world and Yugoslav lexicographic and bibliographic projects, such as 
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the encyclopaedia Die Musik 
in Geschichte und Gegenwart, the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales 
(RISM), the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), etc. The 
first Slovenian music monument collection, Monumenta artis musicae Sloveniae, 
began to be published, and the compilation of a Slovenian music terminology 
dictionary was initiated. 
The work continued until the beginning of the 1990s, which brought an 
important landmark in the development of Slovenian musicology. On the one 
hand, the turning point was caused by the political, economic and cultural 
upheaval of the time, which completely changed the circumstances of life, re-
search and cultural activities in Slovenia. The explosive events coincided with a 
change of generations in Slovenian musicology, which took place in the mid-
1990s. However, the new situation highlighted the key weaknesses of Slove-
nian musicology.
At the end of the twentieth century, Slovenian musicology was confronted 
with the legacy of its formation and development in the past century and a 
half. As was the case elsewhere in Europe, it was an expression of scientific 
interest in musical works of art, fuelled by the fascination of the upper social 
classes with music, often referred to as Kunstreligion. For many decades, their 
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   14 23. 12. 2020   20:30:50
A. Nagode: Researching Music in Slovenia
15
interest was limited to the great monuments of music, which were elevated to 
the canon of the greatest achievements of human creativity.
On the other hand, the direction of musicology was influenced by the na-
tionalist ideology that had grown out of the revolutionary movements of the 
late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and had anchored itself in the con-
sciousness of Europeans of all classes to such an extent that its assumptions 
became a kind of self-evident fact. This ideology also determined observation 
of the art of music throughout Europe. However, although the nationalist bias 
was certainly present, scientific interest was still focused exclusively on im-
portant works of art; nationalism merely exaggerated the importance of those 
who belonged to the observer’s own national tradition. The dominant social 
groups of major European countries were able to hijack the identity and tra-
ditional symbolic toolbox of premodern political formations and apply them 
to the new nation states. The music of the French court thus smoothly became 
French national music, and the musical culture of the multiethnic aristocracy 
of the Habsburg monarchy became the basis for the tourist-promotional prod-
uct “Musikland Österreich”.
In Slovenia, this process unfolded differently. The attempts of Slovenian-
speaking Austrians in the middle of the nineteenth century to form a compa-
rable symbolic and cultural-cohesive toolbox of the new nation on the basis of 
actual historical symbols and cultural elements failed repeatedly. They wanted 
to unite the parts of the historical lands lying on the southern edge of Austria, 
but each of these regions had its own historical identity, and they were con-
nected only by the fact that part of their population used Slavic dialects for 
communication in everyday life. When Slovenian scholars – under political 
pressure and out of personal enthusiasm – frantically searched for traces of 
authentic Slovenian national culture, they came across traits that did not differ 
in any way from the culture of the German- or Italian-speaking inhabitants of 
the same lands.
On the other hand, the territory of the new nation, so optimistically delin-
eated by Peter Kosler on his map of 1852 (unpublished until 1861), was only 
the fringe of a larger historical political unit known as Austria (Erbländer) and 
having its centre in Vienna. In this way, the cultural hinterland was cut off not 
only from its metropolitan centre, but also from most of the provincial centres 
(Graz, Klagenfurt, Trieste) that had been a source of higher culture and educa-
tion for centuries. Any attempt to shape national culture under these assump-
tions was destined to end in a completely distorted cultural stratigraphy.
The main task of Slovenian music journalism and music historiography was 
to fill the gap between the historical reality and the nationalist reality. In their 
beginnings in the nineteenth century, they established the ideal of “Slovenian 
national music”, which promoted almost exclusively vocal music with lyrics in 
Slovenian, music that was popular in character and mostly totally lacking any 
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   15 23. 12. 2020   20:30:51
muzikološki zbornik • musicological annual lvi/2
16
aesthetic value. Stylistic analysis quickly shows that this music does not differ 
significantly from music of similar functional musical genres (church music, 
choral music, dance music) in other parts of Austria. The same applies to the 
art music of Slovenian composers of that period, who differ from similar crea-
tions in the wider Middle-European area only in the language of the text used 
(e.g., solo songs) or by relying on well-known melodies of local “Slovenian na-
tional music”. All attempts to give music of more demanding genres (e.g., in-
strumental or theatre music) a more pronounced “Slovenian” musical character 
typically ended with the introduction of harmonic progressions and rhythmic 
patterns taken from other “Slavic” musical cultures. Despite the fact that com-
positions containing these musical elements would have sounded very exotic 
to the average Slovenian listener, their authors were nonetheless celebrated as 
creators of authentic “Slovenian national music”. 
From the very beginning, the research of music in Slovenia took place in 
the grip of this hopeless cultural and political task, which few researchers man-
aged to escape. In the intensified political and ideological upheavals that en-
gulfed the territory of today’s Slovenia in the twentieth century, there was 
even less room for ideologically unencumbered music research. In the strained 
interethnic relations of the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to 
doubt nationalist ideology was no less than national treason. The Great War 
was followed by a deepening of the nationalist rampage, which was reflected 
differently in different parts of “Slovenia”, located between three states. In the 
Yugoslav and Italian parts, attempts were made to annihilate the cultural herit-
age of the Austrian past. This included cultural genocide: in the Yugoslav part 
on the German-speaking population, in the Italian part on the German- and 
Slovenian-speaking population. Something similar happened to the Sloveni-
an-speaking population in the Austrian part. Attempts at Yugoslav unitarism 
were hampered only by the firm nationalist stance of the Slovenian right-wing 
party, who dominated Slovenian politics.
During this time, a nationalistically biased “interpretation model” was 
formed in Slovenian musicology. Most twentieth-century Slovenian musi-
cological literature is based on this model, and due to a certain epistemo-
logical inertia, it still occasionally influences contemporary musicological lit-
erature on the history of Slovenian music. It is essentially based on the Blut 
und Boden ideology, which was widely established in Central Europe. The 
“Slovenianness” of Slovenian music is supposed to derive from the ancestral 
(Blut) and cultural (Boden) connection of its creators with the Slovenian na-
tion. This connection is so mystical, deep and innate that it does not allow 
or require more detailed rational justification. Due to its unfoundedness, it 
is impossible to refute. At the same time, it opens up a wide field for the 
completely arbitrary inclusion of historical figures, institutions, creations and 
events in the historical narrative.
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   16 23. 12. 2020   20:30:51
A. Nagode: Researching Music in Slovenia
17
The consequences for the history of music in Slovenia are profound. As a 
rule, outlines of “Slovenian” music history include periods in which the object 
that defines them – i.e., “Slovenianness” or the Slovenian nation – did not even 
exist. They tacitly ignore the fact that other population groups with their own 
identities existed in this territory during the periods under consideration, e.g., 
the Carantans, Carniolans, Styrians, etc., later forming the provincial identities 
of the historical lands.
Another important tool of nationalist historiography is the distinctly arbi-
trary selection of the individuals, ensembles and institutions of musical life in 
the observed territory that deserve inclusion in the historical narrative about 
“Slovenian music”. Thus, on the one hand, the central figures of Slovenian mu-
sic include many immigrant musicians who only superficially integrated into 
Slovenian culture (e.g., Gašper Mašek, Anton Foerster), while, on the other 
hand, those who did not join the Slovenian nationalist movement (e.g., Hans 
Gerstner) are selectively excluded. Among those born in Slovenia, some who 
never learned to write Slovenian properly due to their secondary education in 
German are acceptable (e.g., Risto Savin), while others are not for this very 
reason (e.g., Hugo Wolf ). Some are expelled from the national canon (e.g., 
Franc Pollini) due to their efforts to succeed in major music centres abroad, 
while others are not (e.g., Josip Ipavec). The situation is similar with institu-
tions. The Academia philharmonicorum is an important milestone in the history 
of Slovenian music, but the Philharmonische Gesellschaft is not, despite the fact 
that the members of both institutions used Slovenian to the same extent as 
the enthusiastic supporters of the Slovenian nationalistic movement who vis-
ited the events of the Narodna čitalnica (Slovenian National Reading Room) 
in Ljubljana. The latter was characterised in 1870 by the satirical newspaper 
Brencelj (Horsefly) as: “Reading Room. A meeting place of uncivility, boors, 
upstarts and Slovenian nationalistic zealots. On top of that, a place where Ger-
man is especially spoken.” 17
The self-evident nature of nationalist optics did not change even after 
World War II. In the humanities, the Soviet model of ethnographic orienta-
tion prevailed for some time, providing an excellent basis for the development 
of cultural-historical sciences, including musicology. The declared adherence 
to historical materialism did not obscure the prevalence of nationalism, which 
gained further institutional support in academies of science and arts and in the 
ranks of Slovenian intellectuals of all political orientations.
The first step away from nationalistic music historiography was made by 
Dragotin Cvetko. In his works, his narrative is still anachronistically limited by 
the borders of the modern Slovenian state, and the musicians and institutions 
mentioned are divided into the categories “Slovenian”, “German” and “Italian”, 
17 Jakob Alešovec, Brencelj v koledarjevi obleki (Ljubljana, 1870), 66.
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   17 23. 12. 2020   20:30:51
muzikološki zbornik • musicological annual lvi/2
18
which were non-existent in their time. The story of “Slovenian music” is still 
in the centre of his interest, but it is nevertheless supplemented with informa-
tion about many hitherto overlooked musicians and institutions. Musicologists 
from the ranks of Cvetko’s students, such as Jože Sivec, Andrej Rijavec, Janez 
Höfler and Jurij Snoj, applied the same methodology in their studies of special 
topics or narrower historical reviews.
The nationalist historiography of the twentieth century is the greatest bur-
den that Slovenian musicology has been trying to cast aside over the last two 
decades. Attention has increasingly shifted to exploring those musicians and 
institutions that remained on the fringes of interest in the twentieth centu-
ry. New insights have been contributed by many researchers, such as Metoda 
Kokole, Matjaž Barbo, Leon Stefanija, Gregor Pompe, Jernej Weiss, Maruša 
Zupančič, Katarina Šter and many others. In the coming years, musicology 
will have to continue this effort to observe the musical past of the territory of 
today’s Slovenia as objectively and comprehensively as possible. In so doing, it 
will have to build on the groundbreaking achievements of other humanities, 
especially historiography. It will have to start observing historical phenomena 
in their own historical context. This will necessarily require expanding the per-
spective to political-economic-information hubs beyond national borders and 
a different acceptance of the diglottic character of this territory over the past 
centuries. Musicology will have to write new music histories with colleagues 
from neighbouring countries, e.g., individual Austrian historical lands, Vene-
tian Istria, individual dioceses, religious provinces, Austrian military music, etc.
The history of music of the Slovenian national movement of the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries will be only one segment – and perhaps not the most 
important and influential segment – in this spectrum. In so doing, we will 
have to be aware of the specific position of the territory of today’s Slovenia 
in individual time periods, its connection with respective political-economic-
information centres, the coexistence of intertwined linguistic communities and 
identities, etc. Only in this way will we be able to put the shallow politically 
motivated utilitarian historiography of the past behind us, and slowly achieve a 
deeper understanding of the musical culture in this part of Europe. A territory 
located at one of the crossroads of Europe, devoid of big centres, but not very 
far from the sources of knowledge and markets for human skill and ingenuity. 
Only in this way will we be able to find out how it became, as Kurt Blaukopf 
said, “Provinz mit Niveau”.18
18 Kurt Blaukopf, Gustav Mahler oder Der Zeitgenosse der Zukunft (München, Deutscher Taschen-
buch Verlag, 1973), 54. 
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   18 23. 12. 2020   20:30:51
A. Nagode: Researching Music in Slovenia
19
Bibliography 
Alešovec, Jakob. Brencelj v koledarjevi obleki. Ljubljana, 1870.
Barbo, Matjaž. Slovenska muzikologija: Kratek prelet po zgodovini. Ljubljana: Znanstvena 
založba Filozofske fakultete, 2019.
Barbo, Matjaž. “Cvetko, Dragotin (1911–1993).” Slovenska biografija. Slovenska akademija 
znanosti in umetnosti, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU, 2013. Accessed 26 No-
vember 2020. http://www.slovenska-biografija.si/oseba/sbi1021310/#novi-slovenski-
biografski-leksikon. Originally published in Novi Slovenski biografski leksikon: Splet-
na izd., ed. Barbara Šterbenc Svetina et al. Ljubljana, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center 
SAZU Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, 2013–. 
Blaukopf, Kurt. Gustav Mahler oder Der Zeitgenosse der Zukunft. München: Deutscher 
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1973. 
Budkovič, Cvetko. Razvoj glasbenega šolstva na Slovenskem II. Ljubljana: Znanstveni inštitut 
Filozofske fakultete, 1995.
Dva madrigala. Ljubljana: Glasbena matica, 1930. http://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN: 
SI:DOC-VF2Z4PCJ. 
Ludvik, Dušan. Nemško gledališče v Ljubljani do leta 1790. Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta, 
1957. http://www.dlib.si/?URN=URN:NBN:SI:doc-6Q523U2O. 
Osterc, Slavko. Glasbena zgodovina. Tipkopis. [S. l.]: [s. a.], [1933].
Rogelj Škafar, Bojana. “Dr. Stanko Vurnik (1898-1932): Ob stoletnici rojstva.” Etnolog 8 
(1998): 441–461.
Sivec, Jože. “Bibliografija znanstvenega in publicističnega opusa akademika Dragotina 
Cvetka.” Muzikološki zbornik 27 (1991): 5–34. https://doi.org/10.4312/mz.27.1.5-34. 
Slovenski biografski leksikon. Edited by Izidor Cankar et al. Ljubljana: Zadružna gospodarska 
banka, Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, 1925–1991. 
Škerjanc, Lucijan Marija. Gregor Gojmir Krek kot skladatelj. Ljubljana, 1943.
Škerjanc, Lucijan Marija. Jurij Mihevec: slovenski skladatelj in pianist. Ljubljana, 1957.
Škerjanc, Lucijan Marija. Življenje in delo slovenskega skladatelja. Ljubljana, 1937.
Škerlj, Stanko. Italijansko gledališče v Ljubljani v preteklih stoletjih. Ljubljana, 1973.
Škulj, Edo, ed. Mantuanijev zbornik. Ljubljana: Družina, 1994.
Škulj, Edo. “Premrlova glasbena bibliografija.” In Premrlov zbornik, 229–272. Ljubljana: 
Družina, 1996. 
POVZETEK
Raziskovanje glasbe na Slovenskem – sto let pozneje
Pred sto leti je bila v Ljubljani ustanovljena univerza, s čimer je bil storjen ključen korak 
k dokončanju večdesetletnih prizadevanj za vzpostavitev stratigrafsko celovite nacionalne 
kulture na ozemlju slovensko govoreče Avstrije. Čeprav na novi ustanovi ni bilo katedre za 
raziskovanje glasbe in je ta veja znanosti še vedno ostajala brez institucionalne podlage za 
svoj razvoj, je prav ta, najzgodnejši čas oblikovanja slovenske humanistike postavil temelje, 
na katerih se je muzikologija začela razvijati desetletja zatem.
Vse do danes je bila zaznamovana s številnimi notranjimi in zunanjimi vzgibi, ki so 
onemogočali uravnotežen in avtonomen razvoj. V času med obema vojnama je bil ključen 
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   19 23. 12. 2020   20:30:51
muzikološki zbornik • musicological annual lvi/2
20
nacionalizem, ki je bil skupen tako klerikalnemu kot liberalnemu političnemu taboru in 
ki je prinesel predvsem protiavstrijsko in protinemško usmerjeno nacionalizacijo glasbene 
zgodovine. Njegovo delo je v času po drugi svetovni vojni nadaljeval nacionalno-socialistični 
diskurz, ki se je lepo prilegal nenavadni kulturni stratigrafiji slovenskega ozemlja v preteklih 
stoletjih in grozil, da bo izrinil v ozadje zanimanje za glasbeno kulturo preteklih družbenih elit.
Čeprav se je začela slovenska muzikologija že v sedemdesetih letih izvijati iz primeža 
nacionalistične ideologije, je še vedno zaznamovana z dediščino prejšnjega stoletja. Obračun 
z njo je naloga, s katero se ukvarja zadnji dve desetletji in jo bo morala dokončati v priho-
dnosti. Pri tem se bo morala opreti na ideje in metodološke rešitve, ki so jih razvile druge 
humanistične znanosti. Hkrati pa mora biti pozorna na znamenja časov. Ti včasih grozijo 
s ponavljanjem starih napak, včasih pa prinašajo nove ideološke aksiome, ki bodo zastirali 
objektivni pogled na glasbeno kulturo Slovenije v preteklosti.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALEŠ NAGODE (ales.nagode@ff.uni-lj.si) holds bachelor, master’s and doctoral degrees 
in musicology from the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. 
After a short career in the Slovenian Chamber Choir, he became a young researcher at the 
Musicological Institute of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sci-
ences and Arts in 1993. Since 1995, he has worked as an assistant and assistant professor 
at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. His research 
focuses mainly on the history of music in Slovenia in prehistory and antiquity, church music 
in Slovenia in the second half of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the question 
of the influence of the ethnogenesis of Slovenians in the musical life of the late eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries in Slovenia. 
O AVTORJU
ALEŠ NAGODE (ales.nagode@ff.uni-lj.si) je diplomiral, magistriral in doktoriral iz mu-
zikologije na oddelku za muzikologijo Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani. Po krat-
kem delovanju v Slovenskem komornem zboru je leta 1993 postal mladi raziskovalec na 
Muzikološkem inštitutu Znanstvenoraziskovalnega centra Slovenske akademije znanosti in 
umetnosti. Od 1995 deluje kot asistent in docent na Oddelku za muzikologijo Filozofske 
fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani. Pri raziskovalnem delu se posveča predvsem zgodovini glasbe 
na Slovenskem v predzgodovini in antiki, cerkveni glasbi na Slovenskem v drugi polovici 
18. in 19. st. ter vprašanjem odmeva etnogeneze Slovencev v glasbenem življenju poznega 
18. in 19. st. na Slovenskem.
MZ_2020_2_FINAL.indd   20 23. 12. 2020   20:30:51