"Utilitarian music" as socio-historical phaenomenon in the Slovenian territory in the second half of the nineteenth century

Abstract

The well-established, institutionally supported and widely disseminated Slovenian music of the second half of the nineteenth century, so-called ‘utilitarian music’, had a hybrid character. As a result of extra-musical factors and gaps in musical education, simple music in a folkloristic vein became the established cliché in form as well as in content. The reception of this music became the decisive factor in establishing the criteria for its usefulness. With regard to understanding the normative sense of this usefulness, the crucial factors emerge as ethnic, historical and social; among these, the most conspicuous in the mid-nineteenth century were the conservative, socially patriarchal cultural attitudes and the high degree of social homogeneity.