Ideology and/in Music: Music in Zagreb Salons and Gatherings in the First Half of the 19th Century
Ideology and/in Music: Music in Zagreb Salons and Gatherings in the First Half of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the 19th century the palace of the enlightened bishop Vrhovac (1745-1827) was one of the important centres where music was regularly performed. By the 1830s, with the growth of the Croatian National Movement, it was the thin layer of influential citizens that supported the new ideas and housed regular gatherings, not only with political, but with cultural contents in its core. That was the case with salons of the young lawyer and writer Dragutin Rakovac (1813-1854), and even more of Josipa Vancaš (1824-1910), the wife of the town physician Aleksa. Inspiring poems in the national language, rousing songs and even opera arias from the first Croatian national opera Love and Malice by Vatroslav Lisinski (1819-1854) were performed there. However, at the same time, some representatives of the aristocracy – like the Count Janko Drašković and the Countess Sidonija Erdödy – joined and supported the movement, participating in national balls and supporting young artists, while their opponents, the members of the pro-Hungarian party, tried to show higher artistic standards, even by bringing Franz Liszt to perform in Zagreb. The paper presents the collected (although scarce) source material and places it into the context of the cultural and political life of the capital of the Ban’s Croatia during the first half of the 19th century.

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