From Štrekelj's Correspondence

Abstract

Karel Štrekelj, the editor of "Slovenske narodne pesmi" (Slovene Folk Songs), (Ljubljana 1895-1923) has done great service also to the Slovene ethnomusicology – for a series of years he was the chairman of the Slovene Committee for Collecting Slovene Folk Songs and Tunes, he worked out exemplary instructions for those engaged in recording the material, and he guided the entire works which started in 1906 and lasted until the beginning of the World War I. This activity was an integral part of the collecting of folk songs organized at that time throughout Austria, Štrekelj was also a member of the chief committee in Vienna, which was made up of chairmen of provincial committees and included among others also Josef Pommer, the philologist Primus Lessiak (of Slovene origin!) and Milan Rešetar, the Czech ethnologist Zdeněk Nejedlý and the Moravian composer Leoš Janáček. The songs when collected were to be published under the overall title "Das Volkslied in Österreich" separately by individual provinces. When the chief committee without the participation of all of its members in 1910 had decided for the publications from non-German-speaking countries to be accompanied by a German translation and when Štrekelj had learnt about this, he wrote to the representatives of the Slavic nations enclosing a copy of his protest sent to Vienna and asking them for support. In his literary request kept in the archives of the Ethnomusicological Section at the Slovene Academy of Science and Arts in Ljubljana there have been preserved a draft of that letter, written in his own hand, as well original copies of the replies from some of the addressees, among them from Leoš Janáček. They are an interesting cultural document of its period and as such they are hereby published. As such may they also be a contribution to the Festschrift for Professor Dragotin Cvetko.