Slovene Musicians in Franjo Kuhač's Biographical and Musicographical Lexicon

Abstract

The task of the article is not to verify but to record and to give a general outline of the material about Slovene musicians which F. Kuhač collected for his Biographical and Musicographical Lexicon. This includes, besides the composers, who are the most numerous, also authors of song-books, reproductive artists, constructors of organs, and organizers of musical life. Further, it includes some information about the development of musical culture in Slovenia and about Slovene folk music. The material is in no single instance musicologically treated; it contains 197 appendiaes for 115 units. The authoress pays special attention to sources used by Kuhač for his material. These sources are divided into two groups: literature (reference works, history of music, periodicals, newspaper reviews) and sources in the narrower sense of the word (original documents found in archives or in private collections). On the basis of her presentation of the sources she manages also to reconstruct Kuhač's method of collecting the material. It certainly must be mentioned that Kuhač's extensive correspondence is not at all included in the material. When seeking objectively to evaluate the material collected from the viewpoint of its significance for contemporary musicology, the authoress first stresses its cultural-historical significance: today this material has become also the material for studying the development of musical lexicography and its achievements in Croatia. Its value for the history of Slovene music is in view of the existing technical literature of secondary importance. But even if this material remains a secondary source, its value grows as we are moving away from the time with which it deals. Besides, it is of genuine interest for the history of Slovene music also how this music made itself felt in the development of the Croatian musical historiography and lexicography.