Osterc's Letters to Juan C. Paz

Abstract

Dragotin Cvetko, when writing the introduction to his book 'Fragment glasbene moderne' (1988) (A Fragment of Musical Modernism), subtitled 'Iz pisem Slavku Ostercu' (From Letters to Slavko Osterc), wrote down that research was in progress to retrieve letters by Slavko Osterc that were almost all missing. Since this book contains 15 letters written by the Argentinean musician Juan C. Paz I asked myself whether it would be possible to get hold of the letters that Osterc had sent to his Argentinean colleague. In August 1996 I found seven letters by Osterc in the library of the Institute of Musicological Studies at the Faculty of Art and Musical Sciences of the Argentinean Catholic University. The letters come from the period extending from May 31, 1937 to March 29, 1940. Additionally I found also two letters by D. Žebre and one by L.M. Škerjanc. The first part of the present article briefly presents the Argentinean musician Juan C. Paz and his group for the renovation of music, called 'Grupo Renovación', while the second part brings Osterc's letters in letter-to-letter transcription with explications from Paz's letters.