Re/Defining the Imaginary Museum of National Music

The Case of Croatia

Zdravko Blažekovic´

The historian is a product of history himself, and of his situation. However hard we may try, he cannot escape the molding of his mind by his experience and his surroundings.1

Music historiography in Croatia was throughout the twentieth century marked by the path established in the late nineteenth century by Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (1834-1911), who defined the criteria for inclusion of musicians into the national canon on the basis of their Croatian ethnic origin rather than presenting cultural circles in which they were active. In the twentieth century, the central influence on the definition of the canon of Croatian music history came from Josip Andreis (1909-1982) in his historical survey published in three Croatian editions (Razvoj muzičke umjetnosti u Hrvatskoj [The development of musical arts in Croatia], 1962; Povijest hrvatske glazbe [History of Croatian music], 1974, 1989) and two English editions (Music in Croatia 1974, 1982). Synthesizing the existing views about Croatian music, he constructed in his narrative a museum of Croatian and foreign composers active in Croatia, as well as composers born in Croatia but living abroad. Besides nationalistic traits inherited from Kuhač, a reason for emphasizing activities of composers working abroad were the political and cultural circumstances surrounding Andreis during the time of communist Yugoslavia, when Croatian connections with the Central European musical space were particularly appreciated, especially when the quality of composers living abroad surpassed the musical production within the country. Being a part of multinational Yugoslavia situated between the Eastern and Western cultural and religious spheres, Croatians at the time wanted to distance themselves from the cultures in Eastern Europe and felt the need to be reassured about their belonging to Slavia Latina. Composers of Croatian birth living in European centers provided such a link.

When in 1974 the first edition of Josip Andreis’sMusic in Croatia was published, Croatian musicologists praised the book for its significance and groundbreaking depth. However, the respected British historian of music in the Slavic countries, Gerald Abraham (1904-

1 Georg Knepler, “Music Historiography in Eastern Europe”, in: Barry S. Brook et al (eds.), Perspectives in Musicology: The Inaugural Lectures of the PhD. Program in Music at the City University of New York, New York 1972, p. 233.

Musicologica Austriaca 28 (2009) 16 Zdravko Blažekovic´

1988), disagreed with such a qualification and published a review of the volume inMusic & Letters, which was deeply resented among Croatian musicologists who considered it to be unobjective and blamed its author for insensitivity and lack of understanding of the specific political and historical situation which influenced historical forces relevant for the formation of the Croatian soundscape. Abraham said:

The Catholic Croats early shared the common culture of Western Europe and all their coastal towns were Venetian until the end of the eighteenth century; Ragusa, the modern Dubrovnik, remained an independent republic during the beginning of the nineteenth – but it was culturally an Italian city. We must therefore be cautious in defining “Croatian music”. Andreis is honest in calling his book “Music in Croatia”, which is not at all the same thing, but patriotism has betrayed him into some dubious special pleading. He may well claim as a Croat Petrucci’s arranger who called himself Francis the Bosnian, Franciscus Bossinensis. But Andrea de Antiquis and Jacques Moderne are another matter; Antiquis was born near Trieste, Moderne between Trieste and the town long familiar as Fiume, though it is now Rijeka. This hardly proves that they were Croats.2

Lovro Županović replied to Abraham in the Croatian musicological journal Arti musices, but did not explain what he was considering relevant for the formation of the canon of national history. He argued that

the book has provoked […] by its misleading title Music in Croatia, an effect certainly unexpected even by the publisher. Through taking the title literally and identifying it exclusively with the present frontiers of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, the English musicologist Gerard Abraham […] gave the book an unfavourable review. Without criti- cizing any of its technical aspects, in his review Abraham objected almost exclusively to the “illegitimate” inclusion, mostly by Andreis, of some early composers of our country in the history of Croatian music. […] still, considering that this “misunderstanding” between Mr. Abraham and Croatian music resulted mainly from the misleading, and in the Croatian original unadapted title of the book (Music in Croatia is not a History of Croatian Music!), it remains only to hope that some of our outstanding musicologists will find time to explain to Mr. Abraham what the whole thing is about. Not because of Josip Andreis nor because this is a unique opportunity for Europe to have at last the true picture of Croatian music explained and described in a worthy and authentic way, but simply for the sake of truth and the fact of the matter.3

Another reply to Abraham written by Bojan Bujić in Music & Letters clarified only some specific claims by Andreis, i.e. did not address the issue of his historical canon or of influences critical for this canon’s formation. Considering that Andreis dedicated his entire life to writing overviews of music history of Croatia and of Western music, it is

2 Gerald Abraham, “‘Music in Croatia’. By Josip Andreis. Translated by Vladimir Ivir. Pp. xv+416 (Institute of Musicology, Zagreb, 1974)”, review in: Music & Letters 56/2 (April 1975), p. 208. 3 Lovro Županović, “A Necessary Post-Scriptum about Music in Croatia”, in: Arti musices 7 (1976), pp. 200-201. The Case of Croatia 17

ironic that he has never written a theoretical text explaining his views about the definition of historical canon. However, we also do not find such a text among the writings of his younger colleague, the historian Lovro Županović (1925-2004).4 It appears that both writers considered it unnecessary to provide a definition how they understand Croatian music history. They probably thought that everything relevant in the national history has been included in their narratives, not realizing how selective their text is and that many issues and composers they are concerned with could be controversial whether or not they belong to the national canon. Judging from the variations in titles which Andreis gave to the various editions of his text, it is obvious that he did not make a distinction between history of Croatian music and history of music in Croatia. His book Music in Croatia, which Gerald Abraham was reviewing in 1975, was not a new one; it was a translation of the text which appeared in its Croatian variant entitled Povijest hrvatske glazbe (History of Croatian music). In turn, this edition was a revision of the text from 1962, entitled Razvoj muzičke umjetnosti u Hrvatskoj (Development of musical art in Croatia).5 With a delay of more than thirty years since Abraham’s review of Music in Croatia and almost fifty years since the appearance of the first Croatian version of Andreis’s narrative in 1962, it is still timely to deconstruct Andreis’s starting points which guided his overview of Croatian music history and to recognize the influences which directed the formation of his canon. Andreis’s text was exceptionally influential for forming the impression about Croatian music history, not only in Croatia, where the book was used as a textbook on different levels of music education, but also throughout the Anglo-Saxon world, since its English translation made it an easily accessible reference work about Croatian music.6

4 Lovro Županović published his own overview of Croatian music history in Stoljeća hrvatske glazbe (Zagreb 1980), and its two-volume English translation, Centuries of Croatian Music, transl. by Vladimir Ivir (Zagreb 1984-89). Considering that Županović and Andreis were generationally close and both shared identical historiographic tradition, it is appropriate to draw occasional parallels between their methods and texts. 5 Following the first edition of the general history of Western music (Povijesti glazbe [History of music], Zagreb 1942) which included a chapter on Croatian music (pp. 618-645), Andreis published his first version of the history of Croatian music (Razvoj muzičke umjetnosti u Hrvatskoj [Development of musical art in Croatia]) in the volume Historijski razvoj muzičke kulture u Jugoslaviji [Historical development of music culture in Yugoslavia], Zagreb 1962. This volume also included the history of music in Slovenia, written by Dragotin Cvetko (1911-1993), and in Serbia written by Stana Đurić-Klajn (1908-1986), bringing for the first time side-by-side music histories of these three constituent nations of the Yugoslav federation. A revised edition of his text Andreis later published simultaneously in Croatian and English editions as Povijest hrvatske glazbe [History of Croatian music], Zagreb 1974 (repr. ed. Zagreb 1989), and Music in Croatia, transl. by Vladimir Ivir, Zagreb 1974 (rev. ed. 1982). Although the text of the 1962 edition has been used as starting point in this study, the analysis of Andreis’s ideas has been made on the basis of all these editions in order to provide a fair evaluation of his thought process spanning twenty years between the first Croatian and the last English edition.6 Editions of Andreis’s text appeared in very high print runs: The 1962 edition was issued in 7000 copies, and the 1974 Croatian edition in 5000 copies. The WorldCat database, with a union catalogue of libraries in the OCLC system (Online Computer Library Center, Inc.), indicated in October 2009 that the edition from 1962 is kept in 37 libraries outside Croatia, the Croatian edition from 1974 in 18 libraries, the first English edition in 143, and the second English in 73 libraries. The Google Book Search database includes digitized versions of the 1962 edition, the Croatian version from 1989, and the first English edition from 1974. 18 Zdravko Blažekovic´

Andreis was music historian par excellence, writing historical synthesis throughout his life.7 His methodology was, however, less based on the direct investigation of sources, and more on the existing literature.8 If we leave aside Andreis’s writings on Croatian music, after his first book, Povijest glazbe (History of music, 1942), Andreis published Uvod u glasbenu estetiku (Introduction to music aesthetics, 1944), Vječni Orfej: Uvod u muzičku umjetnost (Eternal Orpheus: Introduction to musical art, 1967), and another, significantly enlarged version of history of Western music, Historija muzike (History of music, 1951-54; revised editions 1966; 1974; reprint 1989). With their general scope and without any geographical or cultural qualifications, these titles suggest writings on musical art in its widest global universality. However, between the covers of these volumes are works limited to Western art music.

Models and Influences In writing the history of Croatian music, Andreis did not have too many models to follow since only Božidar Širola and Hubert Pettan had produced historical overviews of Cro- atian music before his 1962 text.9 Still, Andreis did inherit almost a century-old Croatian historiographic tradition which provided him with the models which he had followed without taking an opportunity to rethink them in a new way. Stylistic characteristics of individual periods, development of music forms, social context of music in particular periods or significance of instruments he sketched only occasionally and modestly. The main guideposts in his narrative are composers represented by biography and an overview of their compositions and stylistic characteristics. This way Andreis’s text follows the tradition of narrative histories which have individuals and their achievements in the center of discourse. With the focus on composers, Andreis created in his volume a museum of heroes organized chronologically through centuries and by their ethnic origin; the museum in which more important was what had happened than why. His historical narrative and selection of personalities was also not immune to influences of the socialist

7 Josip Andreis (1909-1982) studied Roman languages at the Zagreb and Rome universities, music pedagogy at the Zagreb Music Academy, and composition with Ivo Parać in Split. In 1945 he joined the faculty of the Academy of Music in Zagreb, and became full professor for music history (later musicology) in 1960. In 1948 he established the department for music history and theory (later department for music history), which was in 1968 transformed into the department for musicology, with the first students enrolled in 1971/72. In 1967 Andreis established at the Music Academy also the Institute for Musicology. He presided over the department and the institute until his retirement in 1972. 8 In 1980 Andreis donated his extensive library to the Muzikološki zavod Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti (today Odsjek za povijest hrvatske glazbe at the Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti) in Zagreb. 9 Božidar Širola, Pregled povijesti hrvatske muzike [Historical overview of Croatian music], Zagreb 1922, and its significantly revised edition,Hrvatska umjetnička glazba: Odabrana poglavlja iz povijesti hrvatske glazbe [Croatian art music: Selected chapters from the history of Croatian music] (Mala knjižnica Matice hrvatske, vol. VI/37-39), Zagreb 1942; Hubert Pettan, Pregled povijesti hrvatske glasbe [An overview of history of Croatian music], Zagreb 1944. The Case of Croatia 19

surroundings, the multinational character of Yugoslavia, and political forces created by countries surrounding Yugoslavia. Looking in a retrospect, Andreis was more conservative in selection of the material for his history than Božidar Širola, who presented in his Pregled povijesti hrvatske muzike (Historical overview of Croatian music) from 1922, besides composers of art music, also many music institutions from nineteenth-century Croatia and outlined on the basis of existing literature characteristics of Croatian folk music and traditional musical instruments. When Širola later returned to his synthesis and published it in a new and thoroughly revised edition divided in two volumes – Hrvatska narodna glazba (Croatian traditional music, 1940) and Hrvatska umjetnička glazba (Croatian art music, 1942) – he retained in the volume about art music the chapter about Croatian folk singing and playing. Andreis implicitly rejected Širola’s broad view on music history in a comment saying that

historical work of such synthetic character should include also evaluations about activities of significant composers and about the value of their works. Such evaluations Širola rarely includes both for living (what could be understood to a point) and for passed Croatian musicians; he retained the position of a prolific chronicler whose main purpose was to present the material, to register events and facts, and to collect the most extensive inventory possible.10

The comment about insufficient evaluation of the style of included composers is correct, but it is more important for us to recognize that Andreis addressed only Širola’s character- ization of composers. Occupied exclusively with composers and art music, he simply glanced over Širola’s views on traditional music and presentation of social history, not recognizing his much broader historiographic concept. Influences shaping Andreis’s narrative can be followed back to the historical canon established by the earliest Croatian music historian, Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (1832-1911), in the 1870s and 1880s, and for understanding of Andreis’s approaches to music history it is crucial to closely examine them. Kuhač has based his views about national music history on the messianic mission designed to promote Croatian (and Slavic) culture. In 1871 he wrote the following:

Considering that in my work I do not wish to do anything but to promote our national music, and with it to advance the education of the people, the homeland will be certainly grateful if I unveil something or bring somewhat to the light of day that which many per-

10 “[H]istorijski rad ovakvog sintetičkog karaktera morao bi donositi i sudove o djelatnosti značajnih kompozitora i o vrijednosti njihovih djela. Takve sudove Širola rijetko donosi, kako za žive (što bi se donekle moglo razumjeti), tako i za umrle hrvatske muzičare, te ostaje na pozicijama marljivog kroničara kojemu je glavna svrha prikupiti građu, registrirati zbivanja i činjenice, sakupiti što bogatiji inventar.” Josip And- reis, “Rezultati i zadaci muzičke nauke u Hrvatskoj” [The results of music scholarship in Croatia], in: Rad Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti 337 (1965), p. 14. 20 Zdravko Blažekovic´

sons perhaps would prefer if I had not noticed, that which is, however, necessary to speak of at least once if we wish our advancement, if we want to fulfill our desire.11

His understanding of the concept of “national music” was the determining factor in his selection of musicians who deserved to be included in his Biografski i muzikografski slovnik (Biographical and music bibliographical dictionary) which remained unpublished. The “national music” he defined as “music characteristic of a particular nation, in which are reflected its particular qualities, customs, and traditions”.12 He considered that only “national music” is relevant in music history of a particular nation, and therefore he eliminated from his historical canon all composers active in Croatia who were ethnically not Croatian (as he argued, “composers writing foreign music”), and introduced musicians active outside Croatia whom he considered to be of Croatian ethnic origin. In his “Historijski uvod” (Historical introduction) to the collection of biographies of Croatian musicians from the middle of the nineteenth century, Ilirski glazbenici (Illyrian musicians), he explained his understanding as who belongs to the national history of music:

I think that it is irrelevant in which country is born, for example, an Italian; whether in Italy itself, in America, or in some other icy part of the world. If he is born to Italian parents, his nature will remain Italian, and he will have all the abilities or inabilities which yield an Italian temperament. […] The nature of a Croat will remain what it is, regardless of where he was born, even if he has neglected his mother tongue, changed and distorted his national surname, adopted a different faith. Guided by such ethnic principles, each nation has every right to adopt all those men whose blood belongs to that particular nation, because without their blood they would not have the abilities through which they achieved their recognition.13

11 “Buduć da mi kod ovoga posla nije do inoga, nego da se naša narodna glasba, a s njom zajedno i naša narodna prosvjeta podigne i promakne, domovina za cielo će mi biti zahvalna, ako gdje kojoj stvari u trag udjem, gdjekoju na vidjelo iznesem, za koju bi možda mnogi htio, da sam ju mukom mimoišao, ali ju je trebalo jedared reći, želimo li svoj probitak, želimo li znati što hoćemo”. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, “Gdje smo i kuda ćemo u glasbi?” [Where we are and where are we going in music?], in: Vienac 3/31 (5 August 1871), p. 499. 12 “Nationalmusik ist diejenige Musik, die einer Nation insbesonders eigenthümlich ist, und in deren Beschaffenheit sich alle Karaktere und Sitten eben dieser Nation, als eigenthümliche, von jeder andern Musik unterscheidbare Züge aussprechen.” Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, “Über nationale Musik und ihre Bedeutung in der Weltmusik: Aesthetische Studie”, offprint from Esseker allgemeine illustrierte Zeitung, Osijek 1869. For an analysis of Kuhač’s aesthetic thinking, see Sanja Majer-Bobetko, “Franjo Kuhač: Nacionalno u glazbi” [F. K.: The national in music], in: S. M.-B., Estetika glazbe u Hrvatskoj u 19. stoljeću, Zagreb 1979, pp. 17-29. 13 “Po mom mnienju svejedno je, u kojoj se je zemlji rodio recimo Talijan, da li u samoj Italiji, u Americi ili u ledenom kojem kraju svieta, jer ako se je rodio od talijanskih roditelja, ostati će ćud potomka talijanska, imati će sve one sposobnosti ili nesposobnosti, koja su plod talijanskog temperamenta. […] Hrvat ostati će ono, što je po porijetlu, rodio se u ma kojoj zemlji, zenemario on i materinski svoj jezik, promienio ili izopačio i narodno svoje prezime, pristupio k drugoj vjeroispovjesti. Na temelju tog etnološkog zaključka može si svaki narod punim pravom prisvajati sve one muževe, u kojima je žilama tekla krv dotičnoga naroda, jer bez ove krvi, ne bi oni imali onih sposobnosti, kojima su se isticali.” Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, “Historijski uvod za Ilirske glazbenike” [Historical introduction to Illyrian musicians], in: Lovro Županović (ed.), Ilirski glazbenici: Prilozi za poviest hrvatskoga preporoda [Illyrian musicians: Contributions to history of Croatian revival], Zagreb 1994, p. X. The Case of Croatia 21

Furthermore,

the characteristic achievements of a nation are not the result of education, but rather of its nature, blood, and ethnicity. Studies can only improve inherited talents, but cannot bestow certain ability upon an individual or even less an entire nation. As for the Jews, we know that they are particularly talented in trade, the Gypsies that they like to steal, etc. […] For Slavs we know that they have a particular talent for music, although nobody has established yet that Croats and Slovenes occupy among all Slavs the first place as regards their talent for music.14

So defined, Kuhač’s historical canon omitted foreign-born musicians active in Croatia during the first half of the nineteenth century, to name just a few, Đuro (György) Arnold (1781-1848) from Subotica, equally active among the Croatians and Hungarians living in southern Hungary; Jakob Haibel (1762-1826), chapel master at the cathedral of Đakovo, whose Masses Kuhač owned in manuscript; Antun Kirschhofer (1807-1849), composer and founder of the nineteenth-century Zagreb violin school; or the composer and pianist Aleksandar Kovačić (Kovácsics; ca. 1800-after 1860). Georg Karl Wisner von Morgen- stern (1783-1855), the central music personality in Zagreb during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, is not mentioned in Kuhač’s “Historijski uvod” and in his Glasbeno nastojanje Gajevih Ilira is only marginally present.15 Had Kuhač ever finished his large- scale surveys of Croatian or South Slav music culture, they would have lacked much essential information, since his vision of national music history was guided by the ethnic origin of composers.16

Selection Criteria for Included Composers In the historical canon constructed during the twentieth century, Kuhač’s principle was modified, but its influence remained dominant. Musicians active abroad for whom it was impossible to establish their Croatian ethnic origin were eliminated from the canon, musicians born in Croatia but emigrated to work abroad have remained, and musicians of foreign origin active in Croatia have been adopted. This was the reason why Andreis’s

14 “Specijalnost kojega naroda nije plod nauke, već plod ćudi, krvi, pasmine. Nauka može prirodjeni dar usavršiti, dotjerati, ali ne može uliti dar niti pojedincu kamo li cielomu kojemu narodu. Za Židove znademo, da imadu osobiti dar za trgovinu, za Cigane da rado kradu, itd. […] Za Slavene znademo, da svi skupa imadu osobiti dar za glazbu, ali nitko se još nije dosada usudio ustvrditi, da Hrvati i Slovenci stoje u pogle- du glazbenoga dara medju svim Slavenima na prvom mjestu.” Kuhač, “Historijski uvod” (see note 13), pp. VIII-IX. 15 Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Glasbeno nastojanje Gajevih Ilira [Musical aims of Gaj’s Illyrians], Zagreb 1885. 16 Kuhač’s contemporary, the historian Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski (1816-1889) also included in his Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih [Dictionary of South Slavic artists], Zagreb 1858-60, entries such as Orpheus, St. Jerome, or the Byzantine emperor Justinian, in other words personalities who presumably lived in this geographic region before the arrival of the Slavic population. His effort how-ever was not inspired by a nationalist agenda, rather it was an attempt to provide the most extensive selection of personalitites who lived in this geographic area and trace culture of the region as far back into history as possible 22 Zdravko Blažekovic´

museum included some musicians connected with Croatia only by their place of birth, but educated and active abroad throughout their lives. Therefore, Gerald Abraham in his review in Music & Letters correctly questioned the inclusion in history of music in Croatia persons like Andrea Antico, who lived in Rome and Venice, or Jacques Moderne, active in Lyon. Andreis was inconsistent in the way how he presented in his narrative the Croatian emigrants. About Franz von Suppè (1819-1895) and Jakob Haibel (1762-1826) he included only information concerning their activities in Croatia. For Leopold Alexander Zellner (1823-1894) he outlined the main points of his biography, regardless that Zellner relocated from Zagreb to Vienna in 1849 and only once later toured Croatia, organizing two historical concerts in Zagreb and one in Karlovac. The life and works of Giovanni Giornovichi (known in Croatia by his Croatinized name Ivan Jarnović, 1747-1804) – who was the least qualified to be part of music history in Croatia since he was baptized in Ragusa on Sicily (of which Andreis still thought to be Dubrovnik referred to by its Italian name) and spent his entire life in Paris, London, Dublin, and St. Petersburg – Andreis presented in utmost detail on six pages. The organ builder Pietro Nacchini (Petar Nakić, 1694-after 1769), born near Benkovac in Dalmatia, but spent his career in Venice and built only about two dozen instruments along the Croatian Adriatic coast (out of estimated several hundred), received in the 1962 edition about half-page long biography, but in the later editions it was extended to more than two pages. In the second English edition of Music in Croatia, Andreis added the composer and theorist Giuseppe Michele Stratico (1728-after 1782), born in Zadar to Greek parents but at an early age moved to Padua and there is no proof that he has ever been musically active in Croatia. The practice inherited from Kuhač has not been the only reason for the inclusion of the Croatian emigrants active abroad into the canon. During the communist Yugo- slavia – which was on the geopolitical map of Europe balancing between the East and the West, with its eastern borders being also the line dividing Slavia Latina from Slavia Orthodoxa – Croatian connections with West European cultural space were always spe- cially emphasized, particularly when the emigrant composers represented the quality which surpassed music production within the country. This way, the composers with even the most tenuous Croatian connections received more attention and importance in the narrative than what would have been the case in a different geopolitical situation. Achievements of these composers were used to establish connections between Croatian and the West-European soundspace, what eventually became a very important element in the construction of the self-representation. To adequately present these composers, Andreis could have borrowed the model from art historians who have a long time ago established the methodological framework for the place of “pictores vagantes” in the national canon. “Pictores vagantes” were artists roaming in Europe since the Middle Ages and working in centers distanced from their The Case of Croatia 23

native lands. Croatian Adriatic coast was constantly in the cultural orbit of the Italian centers, especially of La Serenissima, and since at least the fourteenth century many painters, sculptors, musicians, and other artists native to Croatia worked there. These “schiavoni” were either emigrants in the first generation or preserved connection with the land of their ancestors in a geographic attribute added to their names. Croatian art historians always included them in their narrative within separate chapters dealing with personalities working outside the homeland.17 The composers active in Croatia Andreis classified, similarly as Kuhač earlier, according to their national origin, what can be demonstrated by a few quotes from just two pages of the text in the chapter “Ilirski kompozitori” (Illyrian composers): “among other significantforeign composers active in Zagreb”, “outside of Zagreb were also active a few foreign musicians”, “in Split were active a few Italians”, “in Dubrovnik lived several Italian musicians”.18 Such an insistence on the national origin had a consequence that these musicians were perceived as groups of foreigners isolated and immune to influences of their Croatian colleagues. Besides being concerned with establishing the network between the Croatian and the Central European music culture, another element important to Andreis was the construction of the uninterrupted continuity of music culture which he established by linking composers known by name, biography, and list of their works. His narrative appears like a lexicon of composers in which the alphabetical principle was replaced by chronological construction. Music which evaded attribution was for him irrelevant, what he explicitly outlined at the beginning of the 1962 text, where he says that “music culture in Croatia, in its narrow sense, begins only in the sixteenth century, because that was the time of the earliest preserved compositions by known Croatian composers.”19 Not knowing any composers active in Croatia before the sixteenth century, in the 1962 edition, he calls the entire chapter about early music history in Croatia the “Introduction”, and only after that continues with the text entitled “Muzička kultura u primorskom području Hrvatske u

17 In the most recent history of the Renaissance art in Croatia, published in the series Povijest umjetnosti u Hrvatskoj [History of the arts in Croatia], Zagreb 2006, Milan Pelc included following to the sections on architecture, sculpture, painting, book illumination and goldsmiths in Croatia a chapter about the schiavoni (Niccolò dell’Arca, Lucijan Vranjanin, Franjo Vranjanin, Bernardino da Parenzo, Andrea Schiavone/ Meldolla-Medulić, Giulio Clovio, Martino Rota/Kolunić, Natale Bonifacio). Earlier histories of Croatian art approached these artists in the same way. This method of presenting musicians working abroad adopted also Lovro Županović and Ennio Stipčević, who included the Croatian music emigrants at the end of the chapters on each style period, the first under the title “composers working abroad”, and the latter “izvan do- movine” (outside the homeland). Cf. Županović, Centuries of Croatian Music (see note 4); Ennio Stipčević, Hrvatska glazba: Povijest hrvatske glazbe do 20. stoljeća [Croatian music: History of Croatian music until the 20th century], Zagreb 1997. 18 “[M]eđu ostalim značajnim stranim glazbenicima djelovali su u Zagrebu”, “izvan Zagreba djelovalo je također nekoliko stranih glazbenika”, “u Splitu je djelovalo nekoliko Talijana”, “u Dubrovniku je živjelo više talijanskih glazbenika” [Italics Z. B.]. Andreis, “Razvoj muzičke” (see note 5), pp. 147-149; idem, Povijest hrvatske glazbe (see note 5), pp. 220-221. 19 “[M]uzička kultura u Hrvatskoj u užem smislu počinje istom u XVI. stoljeću, jer se tada susreću prva sačuvana djela poznatih hrvatskih kompozitora.” [Italics Z.B.]. Andreis, “Razvoj muzičke” (see note 5), p. 11. 24 Zdravko Blažekovic´

XVI., XVII. i XVIII. stoljeću” (Music culture in the coastal region of Croatia in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries). Andreis modified this approach in his 1974 edition, where he changed the title of the chapter to “Srednji vijek” (Middle Ages), and started it in the following way: “The first preserved compositions by Croatian composers originated from the sixteenth century. It would be, however, incorrect to conclude on their basis, that music culture in Croatia commenced in that century. It started much earlier and information about it is not insignificant. It is wailed with anonymity from which one can recognize only some rare names.”20 Although he expanded the scope in the later definition, he was still looking for identified composers, who remained the backbone of his historical construction.

Representation of the Nineteenth-Century Music from the Croatian Coast In the Renaissance and Baroque, music which resonated with the Italian cultural circle and stylistic idiom was present along the Dalmatian coast, the Primorje, and in Istria. Musical Baroque in the northern Croatia was less attractive for the historians because the social instability there caused the production of mainly simple and functional church compositions. The majority of these compositions remained anonymous, what created for Andreis (and for most other historians) a certain insecurity in their interpretation and difficulties to relate them with music cultures of the neighboring centers. Following attributed music and neglecting the corpus of anonymous works, Andreis created an uninterrupted continuity of artistic peaks in Croatian music history, connecting with a single and one-directional line the Renaissance and Baroque composers in the urban centers of the coastal regions with the Romantic composers active in the northern Croatia. As late as in his second edition of Music in Croatia from 1982, he argued that “the nineteenth century saw a resolute shift of all forms of culture and art from the Adriatic coast to the northern continental parts of Croatia, which actually means to Zagreb”.21 Regardless that in the editions from 1973 and 1982 Andreis included in the text the results of newer research about composers from the coastal regions, he always remained consistent in his belief that nothing musically important took place there after the end of the eighteenth century.22 The picture of music history in Dalmatia was gradually forming throughout the twentieth century, first in the 1930s when Dragan Plamenac discovered music by Tomaso Cecchini, Ivan Lukačić, and then after the 1950s with the studies of Albe Vidaković, Miloš

20 “Prva sačuvana djela hrvatskih skladatelja potječu iz XVI. stoljeća. Bilo bi sasvim pogrešno na osnovi toga zaključiti da to stoljeće označuje početak glazbene kulture u Hrvatskoj. Ona počinje znatno prije i vijesti o njoj nisu malobrojne. Ali je obavija veo anonimnosti kroz koji se može nazrijeti samo po koje rijetko ime.” Andreis, Povijest hrvatske glazbe (see note 5), p. 7. 21 Andreis, Music in Croatia 21982 (see note 5), p. 117. 22 The identical periodization adopted also Lovro Županović in his Stoljeća hrvatske glazbe 1980 and its English translation, Centuries of Croatian Music 1984-89 (see note 4). His chapter about the history of nineteenth-century music in Croatia also starts directly with the section entitled Razdoblje Vatroslava Lisinskog [The period of Vatroslav Lisinski], regardless that in its beginning it describes events which oc- curred before Lisinski started his music activities and could not have had any influence on musical life. The Case of Croatia 25

Velimirović, and Lovro Županović in which they emancipated Vinko Jelić, Giovanni da Sebenico, Franciscus Bossinensis, Andrea Patricio and Giulio Schiavetto. These composers were immediately adopted into the canon, since they all lived before the end of the eighteenth century and therefore were irrelevant for the determination of the cultural profile of twentieth-century Dalmatia. The nineteenth-century music and musical life of coastal urban centers, such as Zadar, Split, and Istria, were a different matter. Popula- tion in urban centers was at that time mixed Italian and Croatian and it was natural that cultural life had both Croatian and Italian characteristics. This was however not adequately represented in any historical survey of the Dalmatian culture. In his Razvoj muzičke umjetnosti u Hrvatskoj from 1962, in the ninety-five pages long chapter on music in the nineteenth century, Andreis described composers active in the Adriatic region in only a few paragraphs, and in the later edition this has not changed. 23 Although Nikola Strmić (1839-1896), Jerolim Alesani (1778-1823) and Giovanni Cigala (1805-1857) from Zadar; Domenico Barocci (1805-?) from Split; Giuseppe Raffaelli (1767-1843) from Hvar; and Giuseppe Zabolio (1796-1851) and Tommaso Resti (ca. 1770-1830) from Dubrovnik were as good or better composers than the followers of the national revival in the north, they received hardly more than a few sentences. Different historiographic approaches to composers of the coastal areas working in the nineteenth century and those from earlier periods were an outcome of the influences coming again from Kuhač in combination with the political circumstances in which An- dreis was writing his narrative. It is true that Kuhač was unfamiliar with the majority of older composers from the coastal region, but he has not shown much interest for his nineteenth-century contemporaries either (with an exception of Nikola Strmić). Since they did not follow the aesthetic concept of the Croatian “national music”, which for him meant exclusively the north-Croatian music idiom, he excluded them from his considerations. Although Andreis did not explicitly mention the idea of “national music”, from his text on Croatian music in general and from the way how he presented the nineteenth-century music in Dalmatia, it is clear that Kuhač’s concept was not foreign to him and that his starting point in presenting music history always remained the contribution of composers to the “Croatian” music. His admiration for the national tendency in Croatian music reflects the following sentence from his Music in Croatia:

23 In his neglect of Dalmatia Lovro Županović goes even further, dividing the chapter on “The Century of Musical Romanticism (Nineteenth)”, in his book Centuries of Croatian Music (see note 4) into two por- tions: “A. The Period of Vatroslav Lisinski” (in which composers from “Southern Croatia” are described on about a third of one page, p. 113), and “B. The Period of Ivan Zajc and Franjo Ks. Kuhač” (where a couple of composers from the coast are included only in the list of names in addition to a paragraph about the composers Nikola Strmić, Pavao Matijević, and folklorists Matko Brajša-Rašan and Vladoje Bersa). Not only that he neglected music culture of Dalmatia with such a presentation, but also implicitly placed the entire country under the influence of Lisinski, Zajc and Kuhač, although they did not have a significant reception among their contemporaries in the coastal areas. 26 Zdravko Blažekovic´

Young composers in Croatia felt quite justly that the adoption of features of folk music would enable them to evolve a genuine Croatian style in music. At times, admittedly, they took the line of least resistance and included in their compositions folk tunes as they found them, but soon they realized that another, better way was open to them – that of impregnation their own music with the spirit of folk music (as had already been asked by Lj. Gaj) and that this way would lead to true art and beauty in the works close to those produced by gifted folk artists.24

The other influence shaping the reception of nineteenth-century composers from the coast provided the ideology promoting the unification of all territories inhabited by the Italian population (Italia irredenta).25 Ambiguous borders between Italy and Yugoslavia following World War II made Croatian cultural historians uneasy to talk about nineteenth- century Dalmatia, because they would have to admit the presence of Italian features in the culture of its urban centers. Andreis correctly mentioned at one place that “the work of the Dalmatian musicians in the first half of the nineteenth century is far less known as it has not been studied as thoroughly as the work of the composers in northern Croatia”.26 Because of the ambiguous political relationship with Italy, Croatian historians have not made any significant efforts to study nineteenth-century musical life of the Dalmatian towns until very late in the twentieth century and Andreis was not an exception. Josip Andreis was originally from Split and had an academic degree in the Roman languages, studying in Zagreb and Rome. In other words, he was fluent in Italian language, and in 1942 he even translated from the Italian the novel Sorelle Materassi by Aldo Palazzeschi. Still, in his history of Croatian music, which has plentiful bibliographic references, he did not mention even the most elementary studies on Dalmatian composers and musical life published in the Italian language. Needless to say that these Italian-language publications were mainly written by the irredentist authors whose scholarship was colored with a characteristic nationalist twist. But Andreis (as well as other

24 Andreis, Music in Croatia (see note 4), p. 198. The same paragraph in the Croatian editions is as following: “Mladi skladatelji u Hrvatskoj sasvim ispravno drže da će preuzimanje folklornih glazbenih obilježja omogućiti izgrađivanje autohtone hrvatske umjetničke glazbene kulture. Oni ponekad idu jednostavnijom linijom, linijom citiranja narodnih napjeva u svojim skladbama. Ali brzo uviđaju da postoji i drugi put, da je bolje napojiti vlastito stvaranje narodnim – kako je to već Lj. Gaj zahtijevao – i nastojati stvoriti djela bliska narodnoj umjetnosti, iz kojih će zračiti duh njene ljepote.” [Italics in both quotes Z.B.] Andreis, Povijest hrvatske glazbe (see note 5), p. 277. 25 The first signs of irredenta in Croatia go back to 1848 when the Italian population of Istria demanded emancipation of the Italian language. During the 1860s the Italian concept of “terre irredente” included Istria, Trieste, Gorizia, Trentino, parts of the Kvarner Bay, Dalmatia, parts of Savoy, Malta and Corsica. When Italian politicians allied the country along the Austrian politics and tried to ensure Italian colonial possessions in Africa during the 1880s, the irredenta weakened both in Italy and among the Italian population in Croatia. The new wave of Italian nationalism came after World War I as a repercussion of the Rapallo agreement from 1920, and expansion of the Italian administration over Istria and Zadar. These territories were returned to Yugoslavia with the Paris peace treaty of 10 February 1947 and confirmed with Osimo agreements signed between the Italian and Yugoslav federal government on 10 November 1975. 26 “[R]ad dalmatinskih glazbenika u prvoj polovini XIX. stoljeća nije ni izdaleka tako proučen kao rad onih iz sjeverne Hrvatske”. Andreis, Povijest hrvatske glazbe (see note 5), p. 218. The Case of Croatia 27

Croatian scholars at the time) did not want to use these publications even for historical facts. Giuseppe Sabalich’s monograph Cronistoria aneddotica del Nobile Teatro di Zara, published in installments between 1904 and 1922, is the most ambitious monograph about municipal theatre in any Croatian city, with a myriad of information about musicians, works, performances, composers, and a variety of visual material ranging from portraits of people involved with the Zadar theatre to facsimiles of posters and libretti. We could only guess why Andreis excluded items like this, because it is hard to imagine that he would not have known about them. Sabalich’s biography of Franz von Suppè Andreis cited in a footnote, but incorrect information which he provided in his text brings doubts that he has actually read the book.27 And further references concerning neglected Dalmatian composers could be shown. The Istrian circle of composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth century for the most part also disappeared from Andreis’s narrative. Just as in Dalmatia, Croatian historians have never hesitated to include older composers from Istria into the Croatian canon solely on the basis of the place of their birth. Andrea Antico – who belongs with his work among Italian Renaissance musicians – was included in the history of Croatian music only because the attribute “da Montona” was attached to his name, confirming his origin to the town of Motovun in central Istria. With more recent composers the situation was different and because of their national and aesthetic ambiguities they were usually excluded from the Croatian history. For Antonio Smareglia (1854-1929) Andreis found place only in his general Historija muzike (History of music), not recognizing that he was an archetypal Istrian artist active on the crossroads between Italian, Slavic and Austro- German cultures.28 Born in Pula of an Italian father from Vodnjan in southern Istria, and a Cro- atian mother from Ičići near Lovran, Smareglia was by his origin and artistic sensibilities more central-european than any other composer born in Croatia. As Paolo Petronio has clarified,

27 Giuseppe Sabalich, Francesco Suppé e l’operetta, Zadar 1888. 28 Still today, Istria with its traditional music has not been accepted as a multiethnic and multicultural region and the proposal to include Istrian musical microcosmos formed as a result of the mutual influences of the Croatian, Italian, Slovene, and Istrian Vlach populations on UNESCO’s list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Human- ity, made by Dario Marušić, was rejected in 2003. In his proposal “Istrian Ethnomusicological Microcosm”, Marušić defined the culture of Istria in the following way: “Almost all the approaches to Istrian traditional music have until recently avoided focusing their interest on its diversity or, on the other hand, the cultural exchanges were as a rule accepted as an anomaly. In the understanding of the diversity of the Istrian music heritage different standards were used up until now. Prevailing division in the Italian cultural circle is tied to strictly Italian and strictly Slavic music, in a type of contradicting in-group that is ‘us’ and ‘other’ in this case the Slavs in general. Similarly, among the Croatian cultural circle the prevailing division is Istrian music (which implies Croatian music) contra the music of the Italian ethnic community. This division is also quite generalized because it can lead us to believe that the music of the Italian ethnic community is not Istrian.” Cf. Lidija Nikočević, “The Intangibility of Multiculturalism”, paper presented for the Interna- tional Committee for Museums and Collections of the ICOM general conference Museums and Intangible Heritage, Seoul, 2-8 October 2004, www.istrianet.org/istria/museums/04_nikocevic.htm. 28 Zdravko Blažekovic´

the main characteristics of the [Trieste] school are the same as of Smareglia: What to the Central European or Slavic ear sounds Mediterranean, in other words southern, that appears to the Italian listener too developed and complex, sounding northern. None of the three cultures – German, Slavic and Italian – would consider it its own, although they would feel in it something familiar, precisely because this is music of the border area. The problem of the Trieste school, created in the early twentieth century and disappeared with World War II, is that it did not have behind itself a nation or a homeland, just the same as its founder [Antonio Smareglia].29

Lacking a great deal of information, Andreis’s overview of nineteenth-century music in the Croatian coastal areas is inadequate: he has never mentioned music institutions, ensembles and their repertoire, and a few mentioned composers have been presented with their shortest possible descriptions. If he had written about these regions in more detail, he would have had to recognize the Italian features of musical and cultural life in the coastal towns. The compatibilities between the two Adriatic coasts, which have been greatly appreciated in earlier periods, were pushed aside in the nineteenth century and mentioned as briefly as possible, or left outside the canon. It is likely that Andreis has tak- en such an approach unconsciously, following the established historiographic traditions combined with the fear created by the concern about the undefined borders between Italy and Yugoslavia. The marginalization of these composers has the repercussion that we imagine the nineteenth-century coastal centers still today as a bleak environment without true music identity, rather than a region with its specific culture and music, merging Italian and Croatian stylistic features. Although historically inaccurate, such picture desires for the firmly established notion that the Italian composers living in Dalmatia did not produce any music interesting for the Croatian audiences. In his 1980/89 book, Lovro Županović argued in favor of performing works by Nikola Strmić saying that “later he joined the ranks of the Italianate Autonomy Party, which should not, however, deter us from bringing his musical opus back”, as if political inclination of this composer from Zadar has an importance for the aesthetic quality of his music.30 At the time of Andreis’s and Županović’s youth, the Italian administration following the Rapallo agreements took over Zadar and Istria, and such a political reality played the key role in the formation of their perception about the cultural history of Dalmatia, since the first was born in Split and the latter in Šibenik. This was the reason why they perceived the specific musical life of urban centers in nineteenth-century Dalmatia strictly divided between Croatian and Italian features, or between “Us” and “Them”. In a similar way, many literary historians and historians of culture considered any form of cultural or artistic life in the Italian language as national alienation from Dalmatia. Only recently this trend

29 Paolo Petronio, “Slučaj Smareglia” [The Smareglia case], in: Elizabeta Kumer (ed.), Antonio Smareglia: Oceana, Zagreb 2003/04, p. 8. About the place of Smareglia in music history of Istria and Croatia, cf. Ivano Cavallini, “La frontiera interiore di Antonio Smareglia”, in: Atti: Centro di ricerche storiche Rovigno 25 (1995), pp. 241-264. 30 Lovro Županović, Centuries of Croatian Music (see note 4), p. 172; the same statement is also included in the Croatian edition of the book, Stoljeća hrvatske glazbe (see note 4), p. 232. The Case of Croatia 29

started to change, and Nikica Kolumbić, for example, in his study on positive influences of the Italian theatre in Dalmatia is correctly underlining “the cultural complexes which developed on the territory of Croatian coastal towns under the influence of the Italian theatre”, emphasizing as a particular advantage the “building of modern theatres designed according to European standards, establishment and organization of theatre institu- tion, education of theatre audiences and theatre taste, the beginnings and development of theatre criticism, encouragement of native playwrights to produce dramas and works for music theatre, etc.”31 This evaluation about theatre could be certainly applied to musical life as well. When the Società filarmonica with its orchestra and music school was founded in Zadar in 1858, there were simply not enough musicians living in the town to create a prosperous ensemble without involving all available musicians regardless of their national origin or political convictions.32 It is known that the Zadar composer Nikola Strmić, for example, shifted his political loyalties between the Italian and Croatian direction, or that the Italian musician Salvatore Strino in Split collaborated with musicians of the Croatian political direction. Therefore, seeing cultural life of the Croatian coast in the nineteenth century divided between “Us” and “Them” creates a distorted picture of two closed and isolated cultural systems. The multilingual cultural environment in fact created here a collective where mutual influences made artistic trends more complex and interesting.33

Representation of Serbian Composers in Croatia As Andreis’s views were formed during his youth in the shadow of Rapallo, his narrative about music history was created in the shadow of socialist realities of the multiethnic Yugoslavia, what possibly influenced his decision to eliminate from his museum Serbian

31 “[K]ulturološke komplekse koji su se na tlu hrvatskih primorskih gradova razvili upravo djelovanjem talijanskog teatra” […] “podizanje suvremenih kazališnih zgrada prema europskim mjerilima, podizanje i organiziranje kazališnih ustanova, odgajanje kazališne publike i kazališnog ukusa, početak i razvoj kazališne kritike, poticanje domaćih autora u sastavljanju dramskih i glazbeno-scenskih djela, itd.” Nikica Kolumbić, “Talijanski teatar na hrvatskoj jadranskoj obali u XIX. stoljeću” [Italian theatre along the Croa- tian coast during the 19th century], in: Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Splitu 30 (1990/91), p. 165. Relevant for this thematic context is also the study by Divna Mrdeža Antonina about the reception of the collective identity of the Dalmatian writers in the scholarship of the Italian and Serbian historians. Cf. Divna Mrdeža Antonina, “Interpretacije identiteta starih hrvatskih pisaca” [The interpretation of the identity of older Croatian writers], in: Nikola Batušić et al. (eds.), Dani hvarskoga kazališta. XXXIV: Počeci u hrvatskoj književnosti i kazalištu, Zagreb 2008, pp. 19-43. 32 This conclusion is also supported by the report about founding of the Società filarmonica, Relazione della direzione della Società Filarmonica di Zara sull’adamento e sulla gestione economica della società stessa durante l’anno 1859 letta nella con- ferenza generale dei signori socii fondatori del 17 Febbrajo 1860, Zara 1860. 33 About this issue cf. Ivano Cavallini, “La musica di tre culture, tre culture per la musica: Appunti in luogo di premessa”, in: Ivano Cavallini, Paolo Da Col (eds.), Cosmopolitismo e nazionalismo nella musica a Trieste tra Ottocento e Novecento: Studi offerti a Vito Levi, Trieste 1999, pp. 5-15; idem, “I ‘Sigfridi dilettanti’: Durchführungsvariation su un tema di Slataper attraverso le citazioni di Stuparich / ‘Amaterski Sigfridi’: Durchführungsvariation na Slataperjevo temo v Stuparichevih citatih”, in: Tatjana Rojc, Jenko Simoniti (eds.), Trieste: Arte e musica di frontiera negli anni venti e trenta del XX secolo / Trst: Umetnost in glasba ob meji v dvajsetih in tridesetih letih XX. stoletja, Ljubljana 2005, pp. 193-203 and pp. 204-212. 30 Zdravko Blažekovic´

musicians active in Croatia and in that way created a distance from the cultural context of the eastern part of Yugoslavia. Marko Tajčević (1900-1984) was a Serbian composer born in the north-Croatian town Osijek, with ancestors living in Croatia for several generations. Until his relocation to Belgrade at the age of forty, he lived in Zagreb, conducting choral ensembles, composing and teaching at the Lisinski music school (1927-1940) which he founded together with the Croatian composer Zlatkom Grgošević. Still, in Andreis’s narrative he is mentioned in a single footnote among the composition students of Blagoje Bersa at the Zagreb Music Academy. The Serbian composer Petar Konjović (1883-1970) lived in Zagreb during the first two years at the end of World War I, later as the artistic director of the Zagreb Opera (1921-1926), the director of the opera ensemble jointly supported by towns of Osijek, Split and Novi Sad (1926-1933), and finally as the theatre manager of the Hrvatsko Narodno Kazalište in Zagreb (1933-1935). The period of his artistic leadership of the Zagreb Opera was especially significant, because he expanded the repertoire with works by Slavic composers, as well as operas by Wagner, Debussy, Puccini, and Strauss.34 Andreis has not mentioned him even in a footnote. Also neglected was Jovan Paču (1847-1902), a Serbian pianist and at his time popular composer, who lived in Zagreb from 1893 to his death, playing solo recitals and in concerts of Serbian choral societies. He was a close friend of Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, who included in his Biografski i muzikografski slovnik many notes about Paču’s life and compositions, and that material was easily available to Andreis. As Andreis accepted to his canon Tomaso Cecchini, the immigrant from Verona who lived in Split and Hvar, or Benedetto Pellizzari, who relocated to Split from Vicenza, by the same criteria he should have also included the Serbian musicians who advanced with their activities musical life in Croatia. On the other hand, composers of Croatian nationality who lived significant periods in Serbia (Krešimir Baranović, Nikola Hercigonja, Josip Štolcer Slavenski) or in other European centers (Josip Mandić in Prague) are included in Razvoj muzičke umjetnosti u Hrvatskoj from 1962, as well as in the later editions.

Representation of Church Music Composers At the end it is important to look also the way how Andreis treated composers of religious music. Andreis himself was a practicing Roman Catholic and composers of church music in Croatia must have been familiar to him. Still, he eliminated from his post-World War II museum most church music composers. Some of them were victims of the communist regime and it is understandable that they were not included in the 1962 edition. How- ever, he was unwilling to include them also in the later editions from the 1980s, when the situation in Yugoslavia became more liberal.

34 Slavko Batušić, “Petar Konjović i zagrebačko kazalište” [Petar Konjović and the Zagreb theatre], in: Zvuk 58 (1963), pp. 330-338. In Zagreb was also premiered his opera Vilin veo on 25 April 1917 (restaged on 4 April 1922 as Ženidba Miloševa), and staged his opera Koštana on 16 April 1931. The Case of Croatia 31

Andreis’s construction of the grand narrative about music history in Croatia is an amal- gamation of historical research accomplished before his time, and when we talk about his methodology and the content of his volumes, we are in an indirect way summarizing the entire music historiography in Croatia that was preceding him. Andreis was a master of transforming the existing literature into his narrative, at the same time he has never been able to distance himself from those sources and to interpret chronologies in a new way, or put forward a new interpretation of cultural circles and their mutual influences. One of the reasons for such an outcome might have been that he has done very little historical research of his own, but rather all his historical writings had been based on earlier literature. The shape of his narrative was therefore entirely under the influence of the national ideology formed since the late nineteenth century. The lack of clearly artic- ulated principles about those composers who belong to the history of music in Croatia and those who have no place in it, caused fuzziness in the definition of his canon, what was the source of the misunderstanding with Gerald Abraham. Andreis did not construct his narrative around cultural circles in the southern and northern regions of the country, although such a presentation would be more indicative about historical trends than dis- playing historical flow strictly by centuries and personalities. The analysis of the grand narrative created by Andreis with different versions of his history perfectly underlines Knepler’s view quoted at the beginning of this study. Political circumstances of Andreis’s time obviously directed his selection of presented musicians in which he (consciously or subconsciously) neglected the nineteenth-century Italian musicians in the coastal areas, eliminated the twentieth-century Serbian musicians active in the northern parts of Croatia, and rarely named contemporary composers of Roman Catholic music. Andreis obviously never doubted his articulation of the material, and although he made revisions, corrections, and additions in every new edition of the text, he always remained faithful to its original organization from 1962. On the other hand, Andreis belonged to the generation of scholars who considered that facts are the only and absolute truth and show – “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” (Leopold von Ranke) – and it is questionable whether he ever even thought that the history of national music could be constructed in different ways, and that each new edition could present a different angle of his narrative. Reading his text today, it is important to understand that (un) represented events and personalities in his narrative reflect his time in general and his views about historical events in particular.