France Marolt: Digitization of his Legacy and Understanding of his Scholarly and Art Work

The period of the first half of the 20th century–with single occurrences in different periods–was marked by the constitution of national (Slovenian) culture in Slovenia, in which music played one of the key elements, as it is generally typical of cultural and political turning points. One of the key personalities of this period was France Marolt (1891–1951), who founded and created the direction of Slovenian ethnomusicology, but also had a significant influence in the wider music space. France Marolt, in his various activities, was strongly related to Slovenian music and to other cultural forms and their study. He worked as an ethnomusicologist, a composer, a conductor and a ethnochoreologist. He became well known as the founder and conductor of the Student Choir of the University of Ljubljana (1926), with which he performed to domestic and foreign audiences–also with interpretations of his own folk song arrangements. As the founder of a folklore group (1948) and the initiator of the stage representations of folklore, Marolt crucially marked his attitude towards the music heritage. Given his founding of the Folklore Institute at the Musical Society (Glasbena matica) in 1934 (today ZRC SAZU, Institute of Ethnomusicology) and the elaboration of its work plan and guidelines, we consider Marolt as the initiator of the institutional study of traditional music.

The focus of the project's research work will be Marolt's attitude to music (as musical sources, compositions, music reviews, foundation of musical ensembles, field work, pedagogical work); it has to be emphasized that Marolt was extraordinary multidisciplinary scholar interested in different, intertwined fields of culture; not just to find arguments in comparative material and sciences but also for the ideological construction of his own theses; he confirmed these theses in scientific discourse and reciprocally bring them in his artistic representations. Therefore, in discovering the Marolt’s premises it is impossible to avoid insights e.g. in dance, mythology, clothing culture, ethnography, linguistics and various other contents of tangible and non-tangible heritage.

France Marolt's work–both scientific and artistic–has been treated only partially until now: the reason can be found in the lack of knowledge of his legacy, which is why his works are insufficiently or inappropriately taken into account in musicological, folkloristic, historical and other research. Also the cult of personality is one of the reasons why Marolt’s scientific paradigms were prevented a critical view until today. His postulates are still strongly present in folklore activity, ethnomusicology and folkloristics and with the recent project we intend to explore them and establish a new and critical attitude towards them. The main goal of the present project is therefore to organize Marolt's legacy, to digitize it and arrange it according to librarian standards, make it easier to access it and, using research methods, to expand scientific knowledge about France Marolt's views in the context of the cultural and political tendencies of the time.