Musical sources of the 16th to the 18th centuries with special attention to the archives in the Slovenian region of Primorska

Comparative musical analysis of the sources preserved in all locations is a fundamental condition for a clear and comprehensive idea of musical and cultural life in Slovenian territory. In addition to secondary sources (inventories and other archival records) and the documented compositional output of Slovenian composers, the preserved repertoire from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries is the sine qua non basis for research into the history of past centuries’ musical culture in Slovenia. Music prints and manuscripts that were kept in the towns of the Slovenian coastal region, especially Koper, Piran, and Izola, have so far only been partially and synoptically recorded. Even the repertoire (both sacred, within church institutions, and secular) that could possibly be deduced from the facts already known had never been studied systematically and comparatively. To fully comprehend the circulation of music from Italy towards the east and the north during the period in question it was first necessary to clarify the role of the coastal towns and their musical institutions, which were supplied with music literature directly from Italy. Central European sources were also of foremost importance for a global view of Slovenian musical heritage. These include compositions by Slovenian composers or those connected with Slovenian territory (i.e., Daniel Lagkhner, Giacomo Gorzanis, Gabriel Plautzius, Isaac Posch, Johannes Baptista Dolar etc.). The dissemination of music by these composers in archives throughout Central Europe has been studied with varying thoroughness so far. The findings of this systematic study have clarified the role of these composers within the European framework. The purpose of the project, apart from inventorying and analyzing the historical repertoire of the coastal archives, was also to apply the study findings by creating an electronic music database for general use and preparing a selection of representative pieces of the best quality in a form accessible to today’s musicians (in modern notation with critical comments and performance suggestions). These materials were then used for public performances of music “from Slovenia’s forgotten archives,” arranged by the Musicology Institute of ZRC SAZU. This work with the musical sources in the archives of the Littoral region could serve as a model for future musicological research into the repertoire of other Slovenian archival collections.