Art Music on the Island of Hvar from the 17th Century until the Beginning of the 20th Century

Abstract

The rich artistic heritage of the Island of Hvar is widely known and represented in various types of publications, mostly as a refl ection of the vivid literary, dramatic and visual arts which have been produced there continuously since the Middle Ages. However, the outlines of its cultural history, and consequently the cultural memory of its inhabitants, commonly disregards the aspect of art music – with authorship, fi xed in musical notation, that generally implies the principles of Western-European music theory, aesthetics and performing practice – that used to be cultivated, primarily in urban island communities of Hvar and Stari Grad. One of the reasons for this disregard can be defi nitely found in the lack of fundamental research on musical sources kept in church, private and public archives of Hvar and Stari Grad, which served as a stimulus to further discoveries of archival musical materials that could refl ect their former musical life. Therefore, in order to throw light on particular segments of local music history and discover music that was cultivated among church circles, noblemen and citizens, I had to start practically from the beginning: discover, systematize and list preserved musical materi-