Re/Defining the Imaginary Museum of National Music
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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 com- posers 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 multina- tional 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 certain- ly 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 defini- tion 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.