Changes in the music scene in Slovenia after 1918

Abstract

Following the First World War, radical cultural changes took place in central and eastern Europe. After more than 600 years, the Slovenes bid farewell to the Habsburg monarchy, and, together with the Croats and Serbs formed the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on 29 October 1918. The end of ties with the Habsburg Monarchy and the new geographical, political, economic, cultural and linguistic environment also had a significant effect on the organisation and operation of Slovene cultural and academic institutions. Two important processes took place in the musical sphere: the nationalisation of key Slovene musical institutions (in the sense of a transformation from provincial institutions to national ones) and the Slovenisation of formerly German cultural institutions. In the years immediately after the Great War, Ljubljana gained several long-awaited professional cultural and academic institutions of key national importance, including a university, a national theatre and a conservatory. Naturally, the importance of these institutions was not only in the cultural or academic aspects of their work. Equally important, or for some contemporaries, even more important, was the fact that the process of formation of these institutions represented a decisive step towards the national emancipation of Slovenes into the circle of culturally developed nations.