RISM in Slovenia

Abstract

The text, resulting from an invitation by the organizer of the International Symposium on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of RISM, Frankfurt 2002, wishes to present the collaboration with RISM that has taken place in Slovenia up till now, while having been actively supported also by its author. At first the historiographical data concerning music from the Middle Ages to 1850 are introduced, as well as those sources, relevant to the just mentioned period, that are still extant in Slovenia, and give proof of its nation and its Central European identity. Thanks to this European cohabitation an appropriate network for inventorying the world musical heritage within RISM could be set up quite rapidly. In this respect, an important role was played by the founder of Slovenian musicology, Dragotin Cvetko, especially through his international activities. He was a representative of RISM in Yugoslavia, and was directly responsible for Slovenia, organizing its headquarters in the Music Collection of the National and University Library in Ljubljana. Cooperation with the head of the Collection began already with RISM's first edition of printed collections (1960), and proceeded with other publications, especially the printed music series (A/I). It went on also with the cataloguing of music manuscripts (A/II), and was after the introduction of incipits and computerized records transferred to the Institute of Musicology at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, where material of this kind had been independently already inventoried. The author's acquaintance with such work has thus resulted from his collaboration with RISM at the Music Collection and from the publishing of a printed catalogue (Glasbeni tiski in rokopisi na Slovenskem do leta 1800 / Music manuscripts and printed music in Slovenia before 1800, Ljubljana 1967), as well as from his later efforts in the Institute of Musicology. Here, in 1993, a national Committee of RISM in Slovenia and a working group within the Institute were formed. Two years later, the first CD-ROM of the A/II series came out in which there are, among 22 countries, inventories covering also six locations in Slovenia. For work with RISM it is of utmost importance that international aims coincide with national ones. In this light, the Institute is planning a full presentation of relevant material comprising a computerized database, a parallel, printed card-index catalogue, and an independent publication in book form as well as on CD-ROM. The problems of the importance of musicological research in music sources in Slovenia and in those relevant for Slovenian music abroad, lead – as pars pro toto – to a general conclusion: the globalisation of RISM or rather with RISM does not negate the individual, the national; on the contrary, it strengthens and promotes the latter. Hence persuasive results and promising prospects for all partakers.