A Question of the Stylistic Definition of Compositions – an Attempt at this Consideration through an Example of the Church Music of Jakob F. Zupan (I)

Abstract

The article includes the first part of the author's reflections on questions which are concerned with the stylistic classification of compositions, and as a starting point in dealing with this question, it summarizes some of the more significant doubts as to the adequacy of defining two church works of Jakob Frančišek Zupan (1734–1810), Litaniae Lauretanae in G and Te Deum Laudamus, with the stylistic concepts of the baroque and the classical. The dilemmas which emerge in this regard involve not only the questioning of the acceptability of previous characterizations of the composer's Te Deum as baroque and his Litany as classical in relation to some asserted stylistic classifications of the baroque and classical (for example, Blume in Epochen der Musikgeschichte, 1974), but also address fundamental reflections about the conceptual origins of an approach to music history from the viewpoint of stylistic epochs and particularly the consequences of an uncritical application of this type of historiographical perspective in the writing of the music history of the »border regions« (Bergamo) of Europe, which until recently also included Slovenia.