"The Song of Hail – 1873"

Abstract

One hundred years ago the vineyards on Trška gora near Novo mesto were devastated by hail which destroyed the whole crop. A local musician, Ivan Rupnik, composed a song in remembrance of this event and this song has been preserved by folk tradition down to the present day, while the author's original manuscript of text and melody has also been found. The author of this article compares this text with versions from the archives of the ethno-musicological section of the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, and then tries to discover why the original melody is not the same as later versions, although these extend back to the period when the song was written. The result of the research into the text and melody of the song is the hypothesis that the composer rejected the original melody (whose structure does not well suit the text of the song) and created a new one in dance rhythm 3+2/4. This was taken over and perserved by the people, while the text itself was gradually shortened so that only the kernel remained – a bare report of the catastrophe.