Ecclesiastical music funds of the Slovenian coastal towns

The value and importance of the preserved early musical heritage (especially sacred music) now kept in various cultural and ecclesiastical institutions of the Slovenian coastal towns of Koper/Capodistria, Izola/Isola, and Piran/Pirano has been already positively ascertained especially through the results of an earlier research project, Music Sources from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries with Special Attention to the archives in the Littoral region of Slovenia (L6-3122), expired in June 2004. The rich material that was recorded and generally assessed, and which consists mostly of sacred music (for historical reasons), next needed to be minutely inventoried within the general register of all early Slovenian musical heritage. The comprehensive electronic register includes detailed information on all the musical and extra-musical elements of each processed composition, in manuscript or printed form (only early prints). The new methodology, supported by the latest information technologies, enables comparison of various musical elements and structures among all the entered compositions. By comparing music incipits (coded leading melodies) entered in the world census, it also allows identification of previously anonymous composers. The register is being expanded with previously unrecorded music manuscripts and early prints that have been accounted for only recently. The Slovenian register is automatically included in the worldwide electronic catalogue of earlier music sources: Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM Series A/I, A/II and B/IV), which guarantees the proposed project an international dimension. Simultaneously with this main task, specific research activities are being carried out by the foremost specialist members of the research group: study of earliest parchment music codices from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, analysis of the repertoire and authors of the collections of seventeenth-century prints in Koper and Piran, and research into the compositions and activities of the foremost composers whose works are represented in the coastal archives. These include Giovanni Antonio Rigatti (c. 1613–1648) and the Capodistrian composer Antonio Tarsia (1643–1722), as well as authors connected with Tarsia’s compositional style: Giovanni Legrenzi, Giovanni Battisti Bassani, and so on.

A detailed electronic register and scholarly analysis of the registered repertoire of the ecclesiastical music holdings of the Slovenian coastal town of Koper, completed by the end of 2009 within this project, is a key contribution to the preservation of national cultural and musical heritage and at the same time makes information available to Slovenian and international musicologists and other users on this important part of musical heritage in Slovenia. The publicly available results, published in the form of catalogues and scholarly articles, are directly useful to potential performers of the registered music, to other researchers, and to any interested members of the public. The research was supported by the top-quality, professionally-designed international information system of the RISM A/II database, which enables fast connections and offers essential data about musical works as well as suggestions for various further comparative and interdisciplinary studies. The informatization of data on musical heritage is, naturally, of basic importance for the preservation of Slovenian cultural heritage in general.