Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia Zdravko Blažeković The Graduate Center, City University of New York Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale In 1886, Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (1834 1911) noticed in a Zagreb bookstore the first issue of the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft, the seminal publication which Friedrich Chrysander, Philipp Spitta, and Guido Adler had initiated in Leipzig in 1885. As soon as he read Adler s introductory essay, Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft, Kuhač sent a letter to the editor of the Zagreb weekly magazine Vienac, describing how astounded he was to read Adler s definition and classification of the science of music: I was astonished indeed, and extremely happy to read on page 14 the following lines: Ein neues und sehr dankenswerthes Nebengebiet dieses systematischen Theiles (der Musikwissenschaft) ist die Musikologie, d.i. die vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, die sich zur Aufgabe macht, die Tonproducte, insbesondere die Volksgesänge verschiedener Völker, Länder und Territorien behufs ethnographischer Zwecke zu vergleichen und nach der Verschiedenheit ihrer Beschaffenheit zu gruppiren und sondern. One can understand from this that musicology which I founded is a recognized science, and that the Germans even adopted for this discipline the term musicology, which I had assigned to it. 1 And indeed, Kuhač in his essay Die Eigenthümlichkeiten der magyarischen Volksmusik, completed on 7 July 1884, had used and explained the term Musikologie. 2 Since the Vierteljahrsschrift with its definition of Musikwissenschaft appeared a year later, Kuhač assumed and he died with this conviction that he had been the first to coin the 203 1 Čudom sam se čudio, ali i ne malo veselio, kad sam čitao na str. 14 ove redke: Ein neues und sehr dankenswertes Nebengebiet dieses systematischen Theiles (der Musikwissenschaft) ist die Musikologie, d.i. die vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, die sich zur Aufgabe macht, die Tonproducte, insbesodere die Volksgesänge verschiedener Völker, Länder und Territorien behufs ethnographischer Zwecke zu vergleichen und nach der Verschiedenheit ihrer Beschaffenheit zu gruppiren und sondern. Iz ovoga može se razabrati, da je muzikologija, koju sam ja utemeljio, priznata za novu znanost, te da su Niemci i samo ime muzikologija poprimili, koje sam ja ovoj znanosti nadjenuo. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Muzikologija [Musicology], Vienac 18/35 (28 August 1886) 555. 2 Unpublished manuscripts at the Hrvatski Državni Arhiv in Zagreb (further HDA), collection Kuhač, 805 V 19.
204 term and provide its definition. 3 It is to Kuhač s credit that he defined comparative musicology as a discipline which has the task of investigating the dominant stylistic characteristics of the music of any given nation. He arrived at this definition independently, at a time when Spitta, Chrysander, and Adler were also considering the scope of the discipline. Kuhač was born in 1834 in the northern Croatian town of Osijek as Franz Xaver Koch. For having taken part in the political demonstrations of 1848, he was forced to interrupt his studies at the Franciscan Gymnasium in Osijek. Subsequent years were spent in Donji Miholjac (1848 51), Pécs (1851 52), Fig. 1. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, before 1870. and Buda (1852 54), where he served as an assistant teacher in elementary schools. From 1852 to 1854 he studied at the Pesti Királyi Képezde (Pest Royal Teachers College), concurrently studying music with Károly Thern at the Pestbudai Hangászegyleti Zenede (Pest-Buda Conservatory of Music). He then taught in Székesféhervár, and from January 1855, in Osijek. After his appointment was terminated in May of the following year, he continued to give private music lessons and conducted choral ensembles in Osijek. In 1857 or 1858 he traveled to Vienna and then to Weimar, where he briefly took piano lessons with Liszt. In 1863 Kuhač received from his uncle Filip Koch (1797 1863), a canon at the cathedral of Pécs, a gift in the amount of 10,000 forints, which enabled him during the 1860s to make extensive trips to collect folk songs throughout the southern Slav regions, from Slovenia to southern Serbia and Macedonia. In 1871 Kuhač relocated to Zagreb and changed his name from the German Koch to its Croatian equivalent, Kuhač. The following year he was appointed deputy director of the music school of the prestigious Narodni Zemaljski Glasbeni Zavod (People s National Music Institute, today Hrvatski Glazbeni Zavod), where he also taught piano and music theory. However, he resigned the position in 1876 after 3 The idea and training for such music historical research based on the analysis of musical characteristics, was formulated in Croatia. I think that we can be truly proud of this achievement. I myself am proud of it. However, I am not only glad to transfer this renown to the Croatian people; it is my explicit wish that it be transferred to Croatia and exclusively to Croatia. Although I deserve some merit for this achievement, since it was the fruit of my efforts, the merit of the Croatian people in this effort is much greater than mine. Namisao i uputa za takvo glazbeno historijsko istraživanje s pomoćju analize narodnih glazbenih osebina, nikla je u Hrvatskoj. Mislim, da se možemo tom stečevinom punim pravom ponositi. Ja se sa svoje strane dičim time. No ja tu slavu ne samo rado otstupam hrvatskomu narodu, već je moja izrična želja, da se ravno prenese na Hrvatsku i samo na Hrvatsku. Jer ako i imadem za tu stečevinu zaslugâ, pošto je plod moga rada, to su zasluge hrvatskoga naroda u tom poslu mnogo veće od mojih. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Vriednost pučkih popievaka [Value of traditional songs], offprint from Vienac 24/12 19 (1892) 49 (italics by Kuhač).
his proposal for the reform of the school had been given a negative reception. Until the end of his life in 1911 Kuhač would live as a freelance scholar and music critic, suffering frequent criticism for his radical national ideology. The task Kuhač envisioned for musicology was to establish the characteristics of folk music in any given region, to serve as the foundation for a national style of art music. Although Kuhač treated various aspects of music in his large output, he regarded the comparative analysis of music as the most fundamental part of his work. Reviewing his own accomplishments in his 1904 autobiographical essay Moj rad (My work), he wrote: During the past 50 years I have analyzed thirty thousand melodies of different peoples, in order to learn what is theirs and what is ours. I have analyzed Greek melodies, Arab melodies, and the church liturgical melodies of the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists, Muslims, and Jews. Of folk melodies I have analyzed those from the Germanic (German, English, Dutch) and Romanic (Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian) peoples, melodies of Hungarians, traditional tunes of all Slavic peoples, and made thousands and thousands of notes about them. Eventually, I realized that the lifetime of one person is not long enough, and that I would have to introduce some order among these notes. Therefore I limited myself to the study of four (actually five) peoples, taking the Croatian (Serbian, Slovene, Bulgarian) people as the focus and their neighbors who have influenced Croatian music or been influenced by Croatian music Italians, Germans, Hungarians (and Turks) as the auxiliary research area. This (new!) music science I named comparative Musicology. With such an analysis not only will the Croats receive their musicology, but so will the Italians, Germans, and Hungarians; in other words, all will learn the rules of their traditional music. 4 Blažeković Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia Kuhač defined comparative musicology in its broadest sense. This discipline was supposed to include the collecting of traditional music and dances; analysis of traditional melodies, rhythms, and forms; philological analysis of music; and finally, comparison of music in one region with that of neighboring areas. Auxiliary disciplines of comparative musicology he considered to include organology, paleography, archival studies, the history of literature and liturgy, acoustics, historiography (including biographies of composers, musicians, and scholars as well as the history of music societies and performing organizations), and oral literature related to music. Kuhač placed musicology within the widest possible framework, foreseeing its role within the family of other scholarly disciplines: Just as with linguistics, music scholarship can also be of help to other disciplines. I am convinced that music science can explain many things that are still not clear in 205 4 Analizirao sam u toku od 50 godina trideset hiljada melodija raznih naroda, da znam što je njihovo i što naše. Analizirao sam grčke, arapske i crkvene liturgijske melodije rimokatolika, pravoslavnih, luterana, kalvina, muhamedanaca i židova. Od pučkih melodija analizirao sam one germanih naroda (Niemaca, Engleza, Holandeza), romanskih naroda (Talijana, Franceza, Španjolaca, Rumunja), melodije Magjara i pučke melodije svih slavenskih naroda te si načinio hiljade i hiljade bilježaka. Napokon sam morao uvidjeti, da život jednoga čovjeka ne dostaje, ogromne te bilješke svesti u neki sistem. S toga sam se kasnije ograničio samo na četiri, dotično, na pet naroda, uzevši hrvatski (srpski, slovenski, bugarski) narod za centrum, a ostale naroda za nuznarode, koji su uticali na hrvatsku glazbu ili hrvatska glazba na njih, dakle: Hrvati, Talijani, Njemci, Magjari (i Turci). Tu sam (novu!) glazbenu znanost nazvao komparativnom Muzikologijom. Uslied te moje analize dobit će sada ne samo Hrvati nego i Talijani, Niemci i Magjari svoju muzikologiju, to jest oni će saznati, koja su njihova glazbena tradicionalna pravila. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Moj rad: Popis literarnih i glazbenih radnja od god. 1852. 1904. [My work: A list of literary and music works between 1852 and 1904] (1st ed., Zagreb, 1904) 7 8.
other disciplines; moreover, without the analysis of music many things cannot even be understood. 5 206 The political and social situation in Croatia during the 1860s and 1870s was unequal to the task of providing institutional support for work in the discipline which Kuhač proposed, but he was persistent and made repeated efforts to promote his ideas, convinced that musicology would one day become a recognized discipline. Despite the fact that Kuhač today is often better known for his nationalistic views and frequently arbitrary arguments, there can be no doubt that he occupies a pioneering place in the history of music scholarship. Kuhač described himself with the following words: I am not a historian [of political history], but rather, I am involved with the history of arts, particularly music. 6 He was interested in the entire history of music from antiquity to his time, in folklore, secular and church music; his published and unpublished works deal with organology, paleography, acoustics and music temperament, ethnochoreology, theory of music, and pedagogy. He wrote about Austrian, German, Italian, and Hungarian music culture, studied the social history of music, and made proposals for the advancement of music terminology. He collected the material for a bio-bibliographical lexicon of Croatian and other South Slav musicians; made over 2000 transcriptions of traditional songs, tunes, descriptions of dances, and examples of oral literature; and assembled a collection of instruments and musical sources. Despite the fact that he left behind an enormous collection of sources and numerous essays which document his thinking about the contemporaneous and historical music of Croatia and other South Slav nations, Kuhač never produced a grand synthesis of Croatian music history which subsequent historians of Croatian music would have had to cite in the first footnotes of their essays. His biographical music lexicon remained unfinished. His study about the history of music notation contains fascinating reflections on issues in Croatian music history but also remained unpublished. (Written to point out the relationship between the music of Slavic peoples and that of ancient Greek civilization, some of its arguments are especially unconvincing.) His translation into Croatian of Johann Christian Lobe s Katechismus der Musik was published in two editions, but did not become accepted as a textbook in the schools as Kuhač intended, and the music terminology which he recommended for school use was only partially adopted in standard Croatian. Thus Kuhač must be seen as a personality who founded music scholarship in Croatia and left deep traces on Croatian intellectual history but who at the same time authored few historical syntheses of lasting relevance to musicology. Kuhač s research in the history of secular music. As was the case with many of his contemporaries who undertook historical research in music, Kuhač the historian was an amateur who never formally studied the methodology of historical research. 7 Educated in a limiting bourgeois milieu and without professional training in 5 Kako dakle može jezikoslovlje biti u pomoć drugim znanostima, tako može to i glazbena znanost. Ja sam tvrdo uvjeren, da će ova još koješta razjasniti, što u inim znanostima još nije posve jasno, dapače, da se bez analize glazbe mnogo toga ni pravo razumjeti ne može. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Porietlo i umieće hrvatskih pučkih pjevača i glazbara [The origin and artistry of Croatian folk singers and musicians] (Zagreb, 1896) 3 4; offprint from the calendar Dragoljub for the year 1897. 6 Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Valpovo i njegovi gospodari [Valpovo and its masters], offprint from Vienac (Zagreb, 1876) 1; a German version of the essay appeared as Valpovo und seine Burgheren, Die Drau (11 September 1884). 7 Kuhač studied (1852 54) pedagogical subjects, church music, and church singing at the Pesti Királyi Képezde,
history, Kuhač was inspired primarily by a messianic agenda, namely, the promotion of Croatian (or Slavic) national culture: 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 persons 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. 8 Unfortuntely the role which Kuhač took upon himself proved fatal for the scholarly impartiality of his historical studies; frequently he decided upon his conclusions before even formulating his premises. According to his own testimony, Kuhač began collecting the material for his Biografski i muzikografski slovnik (Biographical and music-bibliographical dictionary) in 1857, when he was still living in Osijek. 9 Obviously by 1869 he had gathered some material, because his first work on music history, Über die nationale Musik und ihre Bedeutung in der Weltmusik, contains a list of the Slavic musicians of whom he was aware at that time. 10 Here he organized them in chronological groups and for each musician provided brief biographical details along with a (frequently unreliable) date of birth. In his manuscript Versuch einer Musikgeschichte der Südslaven (1875) Kuhač expressed his intention to write a general history of music [fig. 2]. 11 Conceived as a foreword to his study of musical instruments written in Croatian, the original Versuch was never published. This essay is equally interesting as an outline of Kuhač s scholarly intentions and as a document of his thinking about the scope of the discipline of music history. If it had been published, in its German version, European scholarship would possibly have included Kuhač among those historians who laid the foundation of musicology in the 19th century. In defining what was at the time a new discipline, Kuhač, aided by Blažeković Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia and composition and counterpoint at the Pestbudai Hangászegyleti Zenede. At neither of these two institutions did the curriculum include studies in history. See Dubravka Franković, Školovanje Franje Ksavera Kuhača (Pešta, 1852 1854) [The schooling of Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (Pest, 1852 1854)], Arti musices 25/1 2 (1994) 249 59. 8 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], Vienac 3/31 (5 August 1871) 499. 9 Kuhač, Moj rad, 38. Modern chronological bibliography of Kuhač s works has been included in Vjera Katalinić, Kuhačevi objavljeni radovi (pretežno u periodici) od 1865. do 1945. prema popisu Jugoslavenskog Leksikografskog Zavoda [Kuhač s published works (mostly in periodicals) between 1865 and 1945 according to the catalogue of the Jugoslavenski Leksikografski Zavod], Zbornik radova sa znanstvenog skupa održanog u povodu 150. obljetnice rođenja Franje Ksavera Kuhača (1834 1911), ed. by Jerko Bezić (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 1984) 473 96. 10 The essay originally appeared in the Esseker allgemeinen illustrierten Zeitung (Osijek, 1869) and was reissued as an offprint. The Croatian translation appeared as O narodnoj glasbi i njezinu značenju u svjetskoj muzici [On national music and its significance in the world music], Narodne novine 35/148 50 (1869). 11 The document was intended als Vorwort zum ganzen Werk zu den Musik Instrumenten, published in Croatian as Opis i poviest narodnih glasbala Jugoslovjena, sa slikama i primjeri u kajdah [Description and history of folk instruments of the South Slavs, with pictures and notated examples], Rad Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjetnosti (1877 1882). The manuscript Versuch is preserved in HDA, collection Kuhač, 805 XXIV/54 I, prilog 19. The Versuch was a subject of two studies by Mirjana Škunca: Franjo Kuhač kao muzički historičar [Franjo Kuhač as music historian], Rad Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjetnosti 351 (1969) 281 324; and Kuhačevo proučavanje hrvatske glazbene prošlosti [Kuhač s research of the Croatian musical past], Zbornik radova sa znanstvenog skupa održanog u povodu 150. obljetnice rođenja Franje Ksavera Kuhača (1834 1911), ed. by Jerko Bezić (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 1984) 405 40; as well as one by Marija Janaček-Buljan Kuhačev plan za stvaranje povijesti glazbe Južnih Slavena [Kuhač s plan for the creation of a music history of the South Slavs], Arti musices 15/1 (1984) 21 36. 207
208 Fig. 2. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Versuch einer Musikgeschichte der Südslaven (1875), page of the autograph showing the outline for the planned history of music of South Slavs. Zagreb, Hrvatski Državni Arhiv, collection Kuhač, 805 XXIV/54 I, prilog 19. youthful enthusiasm and blind to limitations imposed by his circumstances, equated his plan of research with the entire discipline while providing a quasi-anthropological overview of Croatian music culture. Kuhač did publish a Croatian version of his synopsis in the weekly magazinevienac a few months after completing the German version. It proclaimed that the discipline should consist of the following elements:
A. Older history I. Description and history of all instruments that the South Slavs have now as well as those which they once used. II. On folk singing. Analysis of tunes, with reference to their content, form, and rhythm. A comparison of North and South Slav songs with other non- Slav folk songs and explanations of why a tune is to be considered Slavic, Germanic, or Romanic. On the harmony of South Slav music, i.e., concerning accompaniment and the modulation of tunes. III. Description and history of South Slav folk dances (with their transcriptions and tunes) and other forms of secular music among the Slavs. IV. On church Slavonic music script and its history. The church Slavonic music of Eastern and Western churches. The extent to which church music has been influenced by folk music, and folk music by church music. V. These four volumes will comprise the older history of music among the Slavs. B. Newer history I. Biographies of all those South Slavs who have achieved general recognition for themselves in the development of music as writers, singers, artists, composers, instrument makers; the kind and number of their works, accompanied by a brief evaluation of examples from their works, with inclusion occasionally of the whole contents particularly in dealing with theory, as for example Glasba Grka [Music of the Greeks] by Patricio. II. Biographies of those men who have made efforts to advance our national music. III. Notes about the musical life of the South Slavs (folk celebrations, concerts) from about the year 1800, and on the most recent directions in this discipline; all this should be compiled from various books and periodicals, from my diary and contributions. Contemporary music institutions of the South Slavs, schools, choral societies, concert organizations, theaters, music choruses; how all of them were founded, organized, and what they do. IV. Proverbs, songs, and aphorisms from works of Slavic writers, poets, and artists, if they concern music and aesthetics. An exhaustive dictionary of all terms concerning music and aesthetics. V. These four volumes will comprise the newer history of music. 12 Blažeković Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia 12 A. Starija povijest: I. Opis i poviest svih glasbala, što ih imadu Jugoslaveni sada, i što ih nekad imahu. II. O pjevanju narodnjem. Analiza napjeva glede sastava, oblika i ritmike. Usporedjivanje sjevero- i jugoslavenskih sa drugim neslavenskim narodnim pjesmami i tumačenje, po čem da se koji napjev može nazvati slavenskim, germanskim ili romanskim. O harmoniji jugoslavenske glazbe, odnosno o pratnji i modulaciji napjeva. III. Opis i povijest jugoslavenskih narodnih plesova (sa nacrti i kajdami) i drugi oblici svjetovne glazbe kod Slavena. IV. O staroslavenskom kajdopisu i njegovoj poviesti. Slavenska crkvena glazba iztočne i zapadne crkve. U koliko se crkvena glazba povela za narodnom a narodna za crkvenom. V. Stara poviest glazbe Slavena izražava se u prvih četirijuh knjiga. B. Novija povijest: I. Životopisi svih onih Jugoslavena, koji si stekoše u obće zaslugu za razvoj glasbe kao pisci, pjevači, vještaci, skladatelji, glasbalari; vrst i broj njihovih radnja uz kratku ocjenu nekoliko primjera iz njihovih djela ili po okolnosti osobito kod teorije kao n.pr. Glasba Grka od Patricija cijeli sadržaj. II. Životopisi muževa, koji su radili o tom, da naša narodna glasba izidje na vidjelo. III. Bilješke o glasbenom životu Jugoslavena (narodne svetkovine, koncerti) od g. 1800. po prilici, i najnoviji pravac u toj struci; sve to sastavljeno od raznih knjiga i časopisa, iz moga dnevnika i drugih prinesaka. Sadanji glasbeni zavodi Jugoslavena, škole, pjevačka družtva, zadruge koncertne, kazališta, glasbeni sborovi; kako je sve to osnovano, uredjeno i kako se to odražava. IV. Poslovice, pjesme i aforizmi iz djela slavenskih pisaca, pjesnika i umjetnika, u koliko se tiču glasbe i estetike. Podpuni rječnik svih rieči, tičući se glasbe i estetike. V. Novija poviest sliedi iz prijašnjih četirijuh knjiga. August Šenoa, Dva hrvatska glazbenika: Zajc i Koch [Two Croatian musicians: Zajc and Koch] Vienac 7/32 (7 August 1875) 521. A facsimile of the page with the synopsis is reproduced in Sanja Majer-Bobetko, Idejni nacrt hrvatske glazbene historiografije u 19. stoljeću [A sketch for Croatian music historiography in the 19th century], Glazba, riječi i slike: Svečani zbornik za Koraljku Kos, ed. by Vjera Katalinić and Zdravko Blažeković (Zagreb: Hrvatsko Muzikološko Društvo, 1999) 287. 209
This plan indicates that Kuhač did not understand his division into older and newer history in strictly chronological terms, but rather as a division between anonymous and onymous culture; in other words, between folklore and art music, which in its main directions roughly corresponds with the traditional scope of ethnomusicology and musicology respectively. In the disciplines relevant for the study of older music history, Kuhač included the organology of traditional instruments, traditional singing, ethnochoreology, and music notation in other words, disciplines mainly irrelevant for the study of music attributed to individual composers, but important for the research of anonymous traditional music culture. Kuhač obviously considered traditional music to be generally older than art music, since for him biographies of South Slavs who have obtained for themselves recognition in the development of music become relevant only in the newer history. From our current standpoint it might look odd that Kuhač took the year 1800 as the borderline between the older and newer history. However, this concept came out of his studies centered on the music of South Slavic peoples (rather than the general history of music), which he was pursuing at a time when very little was known about art music created there before the early 19th century. Although it might be a thankless task to speculate about conclusions he might have come to in different circumstances, he would have probably move this date further back if he had been more interested in the general history of music or if developments in Croatian music history from the 17th and 18th centuries were better known. Three decades later, Kuhač would have been entitled to conclude that he had nearly fulfilled his plan for the older music history, for he had completed not only the extensive study on instruments of the South Slavs (1877 82) but also an analysis of the characteristics of folk music, with special attention to Croatia (1905 09) and the study Kajdopis u Slavena (Music notation among the Slavs, 1890; revised 1895 97) concerning the history of Eastern and Western music notation (which remained unpublished). Also in this group his large collection Južno-slovjenske narodne popievke (South Slav national songs; published 1878 81) should be included. Traditional dances are described in his collection of folk songs and in the study Ples i plesovna glasba (Dance and dance music, 1893), but despite his considerable attention to folk dance he did not produce a detailed study outlining the characteristics of Croatian traditional dance. Regarding the newer history of music Kuhač collected extensive material in his unfinished Biografski i muzikografski slovnik, most of which remained unpublished. 13 It is apparent that Kuhač was more interested in musical life then in the analysis of 210 13 This material is kept today in boxes at the archives of the Hrvatska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti in Zagreb: Croatian musicians: XVII/3 1 (A E), XVII/3 2 (F J), XVII/3 3 (K L), XVII/3 4 (Kuhač), XVII/3 5 (M P), XVII/3 6 (R Š/Sch), XVII/3 7 (T W), XVII/3 8 (Z Ž). In box XVII/2 is material on non-croatian musicians who were in some way related to musical life in Croatia, which is organized under the following headings: Srpski glazbenici za biograf. leksikon [Serbian musicians for biographical lexicon]; Slovenski glazbenici [Slovenian musicians]; Tudjinci koji su nam pomagali u našem glazbenom radu [Foreigners who were helping us in our musical work]; Tudjinci koji su se u svojim kompozicijama sjetili Hrvata ili Srba [Foreigners who remembered Croatians or Serbians in their works]; Strani glazbenici hrvatskog porietla, rodjeni u tudjini [Foreign musicians of Croatian origin, born abroad]. This box also includes fascicles with the headings Dilentanti naši sa glazb. naobrazbom [Our amateurs with music education]; Štampari kajda i nakladnici glazbotvorina [Music printers and publishers of music editions]; Stručni graditelji glazbala, gudaljka, svirala, truba, tamboura, glasovira, glazbujućih ura (Spieluhr, svirajući dobnjak) i zvonolijevci [Professional makers of string, wind instruments, trumpets, tamburas, pianos, music clocks, and bell founders]; and Ishitrioci gradskog stališa ali bez glazbene naobrazbe [Urban tunesmiths without music education]. The box XVII/1 includes documentary material related to Kuhač s biography. About the lexicon see Vera Bonifačić, Biografski i muzikografski slovnik Franje Kuhača [Biographical and musicographical dictionary Franje Kuhača], Vjesnik bibliotekara Hrvatske 18/1 2 (1972) 35 48.
art music, 14 and in his biographies of composers he writes about the musical fabric or characteristics of style only when he wants to prove the composer s connection with Croatian music culture (as in the cases of Haydn and Beethoven). His few syntheses of historical periods are cursory (Die Musik in Dalmatien und Istrien, 1890; Odlomci iz stare zagrebačke glazbene povijesti, 1899; Glazba u djakovačkoj biskupiji, 1900), 15 and instead of turning them into discussions of the musical style relevant at the time, he prefers to provide biographical notes of important composers. Therefore his synthetic studies of phenomena such as instruments or the characteristics of Croatian traditional music on which he worked meticulously over longer periods of time are superior to his synthetic studies of historical periods. The history of music institutions did not receive much attention. 16 A collector of proverbs all his life, Kuhač issued a selection of this material in 1894. In the sphere of music terminology, besides the translation of Lobe s Katechismus der Musik (Zagreb 1875; 2 1889), 17 there is his Erklärendes Verzeichnis der hauptsächlichen Musik-Kunstwörter which remained in manuscript. In historiographical terms Kuhač s plan for research on the characteristics of the entire music culture of the South Slavs most closely approximates François-Joseph Fétis s understanding of music as one aspect of the history of civilization. Fétis applied this understanding in his Histoire générale de la musique depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu a nos jours (published in Paris, 1869 76), where he wrote about the music cultures of Egypt, Central Asia, Palestine, the Far East, and India, discussing music theory, the characteristics of traditional music, notation, and instruments in each culture. 18 No less than Fétis, Kuhač established music scholarship in his milieu, worked on biographical dictionaries, wrote essays on music history, and collected musical sources and instruments. Fétis, however, had been able to publish a large portion of his studies, which then became the foundation of European musicology, whereas many of Kuhač s essays remained unpublished and fragmentary, and his notes for the planned biographical dictionary remained in archival boxes. Although similarly comprehensive, Kuhač s conception arose from quite a different inspiration. As we have seen, his philosophy of historical research was determined by his nationalist ideology. This was, after all, the moment when national history was needed to assert a Croatian and Slavic music identity and to show that Croats and Slavs had valuable music traditions equal to those of the other European nations. The creation of a national history would serve in turn as a contribution to the political struggle for Croatian autonomy within the Austro- Blažeković Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia 14 See the bibliography of Kuhač s writings on the history of Croatian music in Škunca, Kuhačevo proučavanje, 426 28. 15 The study of music in Dalmatia and Istria was commissioned for the series Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild/Az osztrák-magyar monarchia írásban és képben (Wien/Budapest, 1890); Odlomci iz stare zagrebačke glazbene povijesti [Fragments from the old music history of Zagreb], Narodne novine 65/294 (23 December 1899), Christmas supplement; Glazba u djakovačkoj biskupiji [Music in the bishopric of Djakovo], Spomen-cvieće iz hrvatskih i slovenskih dubrava: Strossmayerov album (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1900) 298 309. 16 Both his detailed proposal for the curriculum to be introduced in the school of the Narodni Zemaljski Glasbeni Zavod and his outline of suggested activities for the Zagreb Opera look more to an institutional future than to their past. 17 The first edition of Katekizam glazbe [The cathecism of music] (Zagreb, 1875) was an exact translation of Katechismus der Musik by Johann Christian Lobe from 1851; the second edition from 1889 was significantly expanded, consisting of 41 chapters with 634 questions and answers, and a Croatian-German dictionary appended to each chapter, in addition to a German-Croatian dictionary with 1944 music terms included at the end of the volume. See Branko Rakijaš, Značenje Kuhačeva Katekizma glazbe u našoj muzičkoj teoriji i praksi [The significance of Kuhač s Katekizam glazbe in our music theory and practice], Arti musices 2 (1971) 141 52. 18 For a biography of Fétis and an annotated list of his works, see Robert Wangermée, et al., François-Joseph Fétis et la vie musicale de son temps, 1784 1871 (Bruxelles: Bibliothèque Royale Albert I er, 1972). 211
212 Hungarian Monarchy. 19 Whereas Fétis had analyzed music history entirely in order to understand its development, Kuhač placed in the center of his investigation exclusively those aspects of music history that supported his political views. Among areas of his research, biographies of musicians occupy a significant place, and his published articles include several dozen biographies of Croatian and Serbian musicians. Apart from the 18th-century Croatian Franciscan poet Andrija Kačić Miošić and Joseph Haydn, all these musicians had lived in the 19th century or were still living, and Kuhač was able to rely on his own recollections of their activities and on information received from contemporaries. Rarely did he undertake archival work or seek to verify information received from his informants or gathered from newspapers, with the result that many of his biographies must be regarded as anecdotal. Still, Ilirski glazbenici (Illyrian musicians, 1893), a collection of biographies of musicians who had been involved with the Croatian national movement of the 1830s and 1840s, remains today a significant source for 19th-century music history in northern Croatia. In it, the biography of each composer is followed by a detailed and reliable list of his compositions, annotated with copious information about the performance history of each work and its publication. Worklists were to be a significant element in Kuhač s never realized Biografski i muzikografski slovnik, whose very title refers equally to the biographical and the bibliographical element (notes about composers works have been preserved along with the other material collected for this project). 20 Jolanta Pekacz has pointed out how at that time nationalism was a powerful cultural force whose impact was felt across Europe in the ways composers were appropriated as national artists. The more strategically important a figure was for the preservation of the nation s cultural memory, the more energetically was his life appropriated for this purpose. 21 Considering that the main criterion for establishing the canon of Croatian music history was, for Kuhač, the national origin of the composer or musician, regardless of where he lived, biography was for him a convenient medium for shaping that canon. Kuhač was probably convinced that he was reconstructing his subject s life, but without sufficient examination of the evidence his biographies are frequently more constructions than reconstructions. At the time when Kuhač was establishing the scope of musical scholarship in Croatia, the historian Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski (1816 89) was laying the foundations for research into the history of the art and literature of Croatia. His study Jure Glović prozvan Julijo Klovio, hrvatski sitnoslikar ( Jure Glović known as Julio Clovio, Croatian miniaturist, 1852, revised in 1858 and 1878) was the first monograph study of a Croatian painter, and his Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih (Dictionary of South Slav artists, 1858 80) marked the beginning of the Croatian lexicography of art history. In some ways their research methodology was similar. Both men, in preparing entries for their biographical dictionaries, depended on information gathered from literature, encyclopedias, and contemporaneous periodicals, supplemented by the testimony of 19 See Majer-Bobetko, Idejni nacrt hrvatske glazbene historiografije u 19. stoljeću, 288. 20 This combined biographical and bibliographical approach to the lives of composers paralleled the first systematic lists of works for individual composers; Köchel s thematic catalogue of Mozart s works was published in 1862, Nottebohm s catalogues for Beethoven and Schubert in 1868 and 1874 respectively. 21 Jolanta T. Pekacz, Memory, history and meaning: Musical biography and its discontents, Journal of musicological research 23/1 (2004) 53.
contemporaries. 22 However, as previously mentioned, Kuhač s biographies frequently include anecdotes as well, and therefore it is not rare for unsubstantiated information to creep in. Thus in his most widely read monograph, Vatroslav Lisinski i njegovo doba (Vatroslav Lisinski and his time, 1887; 2nd ed., 1904), in dealing with Lisinski s life between his return from Prague to Zagreb (1850) and his death (1854), years when Lisinski was active at the Glasbeni Zavod, Kuhač s arguments frequently conflict with information to be found in documents kept in the Zavod s archive, and it is clear that he had not consulted these. Even when Matica Hrvatska published the second edition of this book, Kuhač left the text unchanged probably because he would have had to make alterations to a large portion of the text and feared that such changes might ruin his scholarly reputation. Knowing as we do that during the writing of Lisinski s biography Kuhač ignored relatively accessible, well-organized, and easily legible archival sources, it is easy to imagine that he did not consider it important to undertake a painstaking study of older documents in church institutions, or of birth and death ledgers in order to find or verify a biographic datum for the musician he was writing about. The 19th-century ideal requiring that everything presented in a biography is verifiable, that a composer s life is reconstructed rather than constructed, was not always of sufficient concern for Kuhač. An exception is provided by his essay Valpovo i njegovi gospodari (Valpovo and its masters, 1876), where Kuhač proudly states at the beginning that he used not only easily available documents but also went to Valpovo and supplemented his information by investigating the archives of the Valpovo estates, seeking out informants, and even observing the landscape. 23 It is likely that archival material there was provided to him by Gustav Hilleprand-Prandau, a Valpovo estate owner, who was eager for the history of his family to be documented as correctly as possible. Even when Kuhač was writing analytical studies on Croatian and Slavic music, his conclusions could be arbitrary sometimes. A passage from his early essay Narodna glasba Jugoslavena (1869) illustrates this point. Writing about folklore he argues that Blažeković Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia if the lyrics of our folk songs were recognized as magnificent and excellent by the greatest European men such as Goethe and Herder among others, we can argue that the tunes of these songs must be just as beautiful and lovely, because in a time of extensive creativity people would never have created a text without a tune, but always both at the same time. Where we have an excellent text, the tune must be good also, because both together spring from the same poetic inspiration. 24 213 22 For the lexicographical methodology of Kukuljević Sakcinski, see Dubravka Franković, Neke metode leksikografskog rada Ivana Kukuljevića Sakcinskog na muzičkom dijelu Slovnika umjetnikah jugoslavenskih (1858 1860) [Some lexicographical methods of Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski in the music part of the Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih, 1858 1860], Arti musices 25/1 2 (1994) 149 71; and idem, O muzici u Slovniku umjetnikah jugoslavenskih Ivana Kukuljevića Sakcinskog [On music in Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih by Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski], Rad Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjetnosti 409 (1988) 255 83. 23 Pri toj radnji pomnjivo [sam pregledao] ne samo lasno pristupne pismene izvore već se sam osobno odputio na lice mjesta, te stranom vadeći iz Valpovačkog arkiva, stranom slušajući ustmeno pripoviedanje, a stranom motreći sam priedjel i starinske ostanke popunio. Kuhač, Valpovo i njegovi gospodari, 1 2. 24 Ako su naše narodne pjesme tekstom svojim kod najvećih muževa evropskih, Goethea, Herdera i drugih, kao divne i preizvrstne priznanja stekle, to se dade a priori tvrditi, da i napjevi tih pjesama moraju krasni, divni biti, jer u epohi živa proizvadjanja pučkih pjesama narod nikad nestvara teksta bez napjeva, već uvijek oboje zajedno, u isti čas. Gdje je dakle izvrstan tekst, mora da je i napjev valjan, jer je oboje proizvod jednoga duha, jedne pjesničke zanesenosti. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Narodna glasba Jugoslavena [National music of the South Slavs], Vienac 1/25 (10 July 1869) 445.
Here Kuhač merely invokes Goethe s and Herder s unquestionable authority: Because they praised the poetry, the music by analogy also has to be of high quality. In selecting those he wished to write about and who deserved to be included in his Biografski i muzikografski slovnik, Kuhač s understanding of national music was always the determining factor. This he defined as music characteristic of a particular nation, in which are reflected its particular qualities, customs, and traditions. 25 He considered that only national music is relevant in the musical history of a particular nation, and therefore he eliminated from his historical canon composers active in Croatia but ethnically not Croatian (i.e., composers, as he argued, who composed foreign music), and introduced to that canon musicians active outside Croatia whom he considered to be of Croatian ethnic origin. In his Historijski uvod (Historical introduction) to Ilirski glazbenici he explains his understanding as to which composers belong to the national history of music: I think that it is irrelevant in which country an Italian, for example, is born; 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. 26 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 a 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 the Slavs we know that they have a particular talent for music, although nobody yet had the courage to establish that Croats and Slovenes occupy among all Slavs the first place as regards their talent for music. 27 214 25 Narodna glazba je osobito svojstvena kojemu narodu, te u kojoj se osobitimi znaci, različitimi od svake druge glasbe, zrcali značaj i običaj istoga naroda. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, O narodnoj glasbi i njezinu značenju u svjetskoj muzici, Narodne novine 35/148 (1869). For an analysis of Kuhač s aesthetic thinking, see Sanja Majer-Bobetko, Franjo Kuhač: Nacionalno u glazbi [Franjo Kuhač: The national in music], Estetika glazbe u Hrvatskoj u 19. stoljeću (Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti, 1979) 17 29. 26 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. Kuhač, Historijski uvod [ Historical introduction ] to Ilirski glazbenici: Prilozi za poviest hrvatskoga preporoda. The Matica Hrvatska, publisher of the original 1893 edition of Ilirski glazbenici [Illyrian musicians], rejected the chapter Historijski uvod, qualifying it as chauvinistic. It was published for the first time with a reprint of the book, ed. by Lovro Županović (Zagreb: Hrvatska Sveučilišna Naklada, 1994) vii lxv, quote on p. x. 27 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 pogledu glazbenoga dara medju svim Slavenima na prvom mjestu. Kuhač, Ilirski glazbenici, 1994 edition, viii ix.
Kuhač reiterated his conviction concerning his people s extraordinary musical abilities in his essay Osnova za uredjaj naših glasbenih i dramatskih odnošaja (1887): Our [Croatian] nation has more talent for singing and playing than any other nation in Europe. This statement might seem to be exaggerated, but I have to point out that the poetry created by our people, which is not a product of declamation or writing, but rather of singing, is of a quality and quantity unusual for any nation. I have to point out also the large number of traditional instruments which have been used by our people from time immemorial. If other nations had as much talent for singing and instrumental music as the Croats do, they would also have a rich folk poetry and as many traditional instruments as we have. However, such a nation is nowhere to be found. 28 Statements such as this were no rarity in music scholarship of the 19th century. The Italian historian Abramo Basevi (1818 85), for example, wrote in his Compendio di storia della musica, e specialmente dell italiana (1867) that Italy nella scienca e nella arte sopravenza ogni altri nazioni. 29 On the other side of the continent, the leading English historian of the time, Sir Hubert Parry (1848 1918), considered that every musical style is extremely national, 30 and his commentary on English national individuality would have been entirely acceptable to Kuhač: [We] have an ever-increasing pool of musical talent in this country, but we have hitherto lacked that national individuality which Wagner declares essential to all real music and which the English choral works, if composers will follow true English traditions, will some day give us. 31 The idea of national stereotypes was also neither new nor specific to Kuhač. Such ideas had been a part of the European intellectual tradition since the Baroque era and the 18thcentury European wars, and large-format charts were circulated in German-speaking lands that compared stereotypical characteristics (behavior, intelligence, scholarship, codes of dress, weaknesses, amorous abilities, illnesses, courage in war, piety, wealth, leisure-time occupations) of the various European peoples (Spaniards, Frenchmen, Vallachians, Germans, Swedes, Hungarians, Russians, Turks, Greeks) [fig. 3]. 32 Anachronistically adopting such thinking in his youth, Kuhač propagated it throughout his life, giving it a final form in his study Narodne osebine u gestama i karakteristika pojedinih naroda published in 1906 and intended as part of his general folkloristics, produced between 1876 and 1884. 33 The concept of a history of music in which the protagonists are defined by their ethnic affiliation to the Croatian people led Kuhač to include in his canon individuals active outside Croatia whose Croatian ethnicity was to be deduced Blažeković Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia 28 Naš narod [je] za pjevanje i glasbu toliko vrstan, koliko nijedan drugi narod Europe. Ova tvrdnja činiti će se smjelom, no upozoriti mi je na poetičke proizvode našega puka, koji nisu postali deklamovanjem ili pisanjem, već pjevanjem, te kakovih neima ni po kolikoći ni po kakvoći u nijednoga drugoga naroda. Ali upozoriti mi je i na silesiju raznih pučkih naših glasbalah, koja se rabe u našemu puku od vajkada do dana današnjega. Da imade drugi koji narod isto toliko naravskoga dara za pjevanje i za instrumentalnu glasbu, koliko u Hrvata, bio bi tada u toga naroda i bogate pučke poezije i toliko pučkih glasbilah koliko u nas. No toga nigdje ne nalazimo. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Osnova za uredjaj naših glasbenih i dramatskih odnošajah [The foundation for the organization of our music and dramatic relations] (Zagreb, 1887) 3. 29 See Warren Dwight Allen, Philosophies of music history (New York: American Book Comp., 1939) 122. 30 C. Hubert Parry, Style in musical art, inaugural lecture at Oxford University (Oxford, 1900). Quoted from Benjamin Davies, The historiography of the Reformation, or the reformation of historiography, Early music 29/2 (May 2001) 264. 31 E.D.R., English music [review of Parry s book The art of music], Musical times 35/9 (September 1894) 596. 32 See Franz K. Stanzel, Europäer: Ein imagologischer Essay (2nd ed., Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1998). 33 Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Narodne osebine u gestama i karakteristika pojedinih naroda [National features seen in gestures and characteristics of individual peoples], Hrvatsko kolo: Naučno-književni zbornik 3 (1906) 208 47. 215
216 Fig. 3. Anonymous artist, Beschreibung der In Europa Befintlichen Völckern Und Ihren Aigenschafften. Oil on board, 104 126 cm. Styria, ca. 1720 30. Vienna, Österreichische Museum für Volkskunde.
from their names, their having played a supposedly Croatian instrument, or even their appearance and facial features. At one point in his essay Glasbeno nastojanje Gajevih Ilira (Musical goals by Gaj s Illyrians) 34 Kuhač poses a question: Have there been in the past persons who set Croatian songs and composed other Croatian musical pieces [who were not Croatian]? His answer follows immediately: Certainly, there were such people, although not as many as those Croats who composed foreign music. 35 Here are some musicians Kuhač included in his Historijski uvod to Ilirski glazbenici and his reasoning for doing so: Matthias Franciscus Cannabich = Canabić [Canabich] Matija Without doubt Kanabić was a born Croat who arrived in Saxony with other Croats to join the guard, and later moved to Bavaria. Domenico Colla = Kola (Cola) Domenico, born around 1730 in Brescia; he was a tamburica virtuoso. His playing of the tamburica indicates that he was a Croat, and not an Italian. Antoine Frédérick Gresnick = Grešnik (Gresnick) Antun Fried was born in 1753 in Liège. That Gresnick (or Kresnik) was supposedly a son of some Croatian sailor who later settled in Liège. In Antwerp, for example, there are navy captains who regularly sail for America and who therefore live with their families in Antwerp. 36 So defined, Kuhač s historical canon omitted the foreign-born musicians active in Croatia during the first half of the 19th century. Some of these were more prolific and better educated composers than the Illyrians whose biographies Kuhač included in Ilirski glazbenici: Đuro (György) Arnold (1781 1848) from Subotica, active in Croatian settlements in southern Hungary; Johann Petrus Jakob Haibel (1762 1826) from Đakovo, whose Masses Kuhač owned in manuscript; Franz Oberriter, between 1829 and 1845 the organist of the parish church of Sv. Mihovil in Osijek; and Antun Kirschhofer (1807 49), composer and the founder of the 19th-century Zagreb violin school. 37 Georg Karl Wisner von Morgenstern (1783 1855), the central music personality in Zagreb during the second quarter of the 19th century, is not mentioned in Kuhač s Historijski uvod and is only marginally present in his Glasbeno nastojanje Gajevih Ilira. 38 Had Kuhač ever finished his large-scale surveys of Croatian or South Slav music culture, they, too, would have lacked much essential information, in our eyes Blažeković Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia 34 The writer and politician Ljudevit Gaj (1809 72) was an ideologue of the Croatian national movement of the 1830s and 1840s. 35 Zar je i prije bilo ljudi, koji su hrvatske pjesme uglasbivali ili ine glasbene hrvatske komade sastavljali? Dašto, bilo ih je, premda ne iz daleka toliko, koliko onih Hrvata, koji su stvarali tudju glasbu. Kuhač, Glasbeno nastojanje, 8. 36 We should return here one more time to the methodology of Kukuljević Sakcinski, who in his Slovnik umjetnikah jugoslavenskih also included entries such as Orpheus, St. Jerome, or the Byzantine emperor Justinian, which we would see as inappropriate since their relationship with this geographic region goes back to the time before the arrival of the Slavic population. His effort however was not inspired by a nationalist agenda; rather it was an attempt to include in his lexicon the most extensive selection of people who lived in this geographic area and to trace the culture of the region as far back into history as he possibly could. 37 See Historijski uvod to Ilirski glazbenici (edition from 1994), and the list of entries which Kuhač prepared for his Biografski i muzikografski slovnik, in: Škunca, Kuhačevo proučavanje hrvatske glazbene prošlosti, 432 39. 38 Kuhač, Glasbeno nastojanje Gajevih Ilira, 31. This comment appears in the section devoted to Vatroslav Lisinski. The first biography of Wisner von Morgenstern, which includes a list of his compositions, was prepared by Kuhač s friend, the historian Vjekoslav Klaić, and published in Gusle: Časopis za svjetovnu i crkvenu glazbu 1 3 (1892). Kuhač would certainly have known this study. 217
at least, because of the ethnic principles guiding him in his selection of musicians for inclusion. Kuhač s ideas would gradually change and in his late writings he adopted musicians of foreign origin who were active in Croatia regardless of whether they followed the national music style or not. Instead of the simple dual classification proposed in his Versuch of 1875, which included biographies of those South Slavs who achieved general recognition for themselves in the development of music (B:I) and biographies of those men who worked to advanced our national music (B:II), Kuhač offers in 1904 the following proposal for organizing material in his Biografski i muzikografski slovnik : 39 I. Croatian musicians (composers, virtuosi), male and female singers, music theorists, folklorists and librettists; II. Croatian instrument makers and bell founders; III. Musical artists of Croatian extraction, but born abroad and working there for foreign people; IVa. Musicians of foreign origin, who lived among us and who worked for or against the advancement of a Croatian national music; IVb. Musicians of foreign origin who did not live among us but remembered Croats in their compositions; V. Famous Croatian folk singers, tune-smiths and instrument players (gusle players, tambura players, wind instrument players). Composers for whom Kuhač argued Croatian origin also include Haydn and Liszt, and one of the criterion he used to support his argument was their facial shape. In his essay on Haydn, Kuhač wrote: If we observe any picture of him, of course, neglecting the wig, we will have in front of us a true likeness of a Croat from the mountains. Features of his face, as well as his total appearance prompted Mr. Jaerschkerski, the writer of the entry Haydn (in Mendel s Musiklexikon, 1878), to suspect that Haydn might be from some Czech family from the Vltava region. This assumption is unfounded because it is certain that the name Haydn has not been as widely disseminated in Bohemia as it was in Croatia, and because the most characteristic part of Haydn s face, namely the nose, does not have Czech features. 40 In the footnote he further elaborated Haydn s physical description: 218 Haydn was of medium height, with broad back and bony. Features of his face were quite regular, full and distinguished, indicating a certain energy and grumpiness, although in his ironic talk and with his look they could appropriate good-nature and tender appearance. His forehead was broad and beautifully shaped, although it appeared very 39 Kuhač, Moj rad, 38. This organization is also preserved in the organization of archival material for the Biografski i muzikografski slovnik, as shown in note 13. 40 Motrimo li ma koju njegovu sliku, neosvrćuć se dakako na vlasulju, imat ćemo pred sobom živu sliku zagorskoga Hrvata. Lični potezi, kao što i cielo slovjensko biće Haydnovo potaknulo je g. Jaerschkerskoga, pisca članka Haydn (u Mendlovom Mus. Lexikonu, 1878) naslućivati, da se je Haydn po svoj prilici rodio od koje česke obitelji vltavske. Ovo naslućivane stoga je netemeljito, što sjegurno nije obiteljsko ime Haydn u Českoj tako razgranjeno kao što je u Hrvatskoj, i jer najkarakterističniji dio Haydnova lica, naime nos nije českoga oblika. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Josip Haydn i hrvatske narodne popievke [ Joseph Haydn and Croatian national songs], offprint from Vienae 12/18 29 (1880) 18. Here Kuhač is referencing Jaerschkerski s article on Haydn in Hermann Mendel s Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon, where he claimed that Haydn stammt aller Warscheinlichkeit nach von einer böhmischen Tonkünstlerfamilie Moldauteyn s her. (new ed., Leipzig: List & Francke, 1890 91 ) vol. 5, 118.
short because of the size and the way he wore his wig, which was put only two fingers above his eyebrow and covered the top part of his forehead. His big, somewhat crooked nose was, as was his whole face, marked by pox. And since Haydn suffered from polyps, the entire bottom part of his nose was somewhat twisted. His lower lip was very puffed up, and he also had a fat and broad double chin. 41 Using Haydn s appearance for proving his ethnic origin was not accidental, because a similar argument can be found in his study on Liszt, where he included the composer s portrait, claiming that his face and appearance reveal a type of bony Croat from Gorski Kotar [fig. 4]. 42 Such an argument appears naive today, but at the time it resonated with theories of pathognomy (the study of the representation of facial and bodily expression), phrenology (the study of the shape of the skull as an indicator of personality and mental ability), and particularly physiognomy (the study of temperament and character as reflected in a person s outward appearance) put forward by the Protestant Swiss minister Johann Caspar Lavater (1741 1801) in his canonic work Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe. Lavater argued that the size and shape of particular parts of the face have significance for the moral and spiritual characteristics of the person. 43 Throughout the 19th century these theories held substantial currency in middle-class salons of Europe and America, and as Alan Davison pointed out, these beliefs were taken seriously by many influential people of the day, whether scientists or not. Amongst adherents to either physiognomy or phrenology were the biologist Alfred Wallace, and the writers Honoré de Balzac and Charlotte Brontë, to name just a few. 44 Kuhač s arguments about the shape of Haydn s nose and Liszt s back as proof of their Croatian origin should be understood as an extension of theories popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries, according to which a sitter s facial expression was read as a reflection of his inward qualities. Portrait was understood not only as a representation of the visual appearance of the sitter, but also as a medium that informed about the person s spiritual, moral, intellectual, and even ethnic characteristics. Blažeković Franjo Ksaver Kuhač and the beginnings of music scholarship in Croatia 41 Haydn bio je srednje veličine, plečat i koščat. Lični potezi bijahu prilično pravilni, puni i markirani, te pokazivahu neku energičnost i mrkost, nu mogahu u govoru posmjehom i pogledom zadobiti dobroćudan i nježan izraz. Čelo bilo mu je široko i liepo svedeno, nu činilo se je vrlo nizkim, i to prema razmjeru i načinu, kako je Haydn vlasulju nosio, koja je bila nataknuta samo dva prsta nad obrvami, te tim zastirala gornji dio čela. Njegov veliki ponešto svinuti nos, bijaše kao što i cielo lice, kozičav. A budući da je Haydn bolovao na Polypu bio mu je donji dio nosa nepravilno izvrnut. Dolnja mu je ustna bila jako naprčena, a imao je takodjer debel i širok podbradak. Ibid., 18. This description Kuhač based on the monograph about Haydn by Carl Ferdinand Pohl (1819 87), who must have in turn based his description on another description of Haydn from the secondary literature or on some portrait of Haydn. 42 Lice Franja, uzrast njegov i plećasta njegova okostnica odaje tip listatoga (košćatoga) Hrvata gorskoga kotara. Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, Uspomene na dr. Franja Liszta [Memories of Dr. Franz Liszt], Hrvatsko kolo: Naučno-književni zbornik 4 (1908) 41 62: 53 54. The reproduced portrait was copied from Johann Wilhelm Christern, Franz Liszt, nach seinem Leben und Wirken aus authentischen Berichten (Hamburg: Schubert, 1841). 43 Lavater defined physiognomy as the science of knowledge of the correspondence between the external and internal man, the visible superficies and the invisible contents. Johann Caspar Lavater, Essays on physiognomy, trans. by Thomas Holcroft; also One hundred physiognomical rules, taken from a posthumous work by J.C. Lavater; and a memoir of the author (18th ed., London; Ward, Lock and Bowden, 1885) 11. Lavater s treatise was by 1810 translated into six languages and published in over 57 editions and its influence was enormous. For the reception of his theories see Lucy Hartley, Physiognomy and the meaning of expression in nineteenth-century culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 44 Alan Davison, The musician in iconography from the 1830s and 1840s: The formation of new visual types, Music in art 28/1 2 (2003) 147 62 219
Fig. 4. Portrait of Liszt reproduced in Kuhač s essay Uspomene na dr. Franja Liszta (Memoires of Dr. Franz Liszt; 1908) from Johann Wilhelm Christern s book Franz Liszt (Hamburg, 1841). 220 Kuhač s researches in church music history. Besides collecting folk tunes and dances, Kuhač also put together a sizable manuscript volume of his transcriptions of traditional church tunes,45 produced handwritten facsimiles of early liturgical books, and gathered scores of 18th- and 19th-century orchestral church music. Still, despite his large collection of church music and his strong knowledge of literature on church music, Kuhač rarely wrote about it, and even when he did mention it within the context of other topics, his references remained general, usually dealing only with historical circumstances and never addressing issues of music repertoire or the function of music within the liturgy. For example, writing about Fortunat Pintarić (1798 1867) and Marijan Jaić (1795 1858) in his Ilirski glazbenici, both of whom produced important hymnals, Kuhač focused exclusively on their biographies, without touching on the significance of their hymnals or analyzing their contents. Similarly, when he published a harmonization of the Mass copied from the missal of Petar Knežević, he attributed the Mass to Knežević without considering that he might only have been the copyist and not the author of the music included in the volume.46 Such a hasty attribution 45 46 His collection of transcriptions of church tunes is kept in HDA, Kuhač collection, 805 XXVI/55, prilog 1. See Miho Demović, Pitanje autorstva skladbi Kneževićevih kantuala [Questions about the attribution of compositions