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

The proposed applied project is focused on the personality and work of France Marolt (1891–1951), who, as an ethnomusicologist, conductor, composer and pedagogue, had a decisive influence on scholarly and music life during the 1st half of the 20th century. Due to the poor transparency of his legacy, his scientific and artistic work has so far been treated only partially and critical view of his scientific paradigms has been hindering by elements of the cult of personality and the inability to understand him objectively and critically. The main goals of the project are therefore to organize and digitize Marolt’s archival material and to expand scholarly knowledge of his paradigms within the cultural-political context of his period. Let me emphasize here that the proposed application is an applied project, which is to realise applied level (digitization of Marolt's legacy) and consequently to conduct scientific research on his artistic and scientific paradigms. The Marolt’s legacy is held by ZRC SAZU, Institute of Ethnomusicology (founded by Marolt in 1934) and is understood as a corpus of Marolt’s personal documents, as well as archive material from the early days of the Institute (paper, photographic, audio and factual material). The project is divided into two parts. The first, the applied part, involves the organization and digitization of the archival material. The second, the research part, involves analysis of the material and, in the final phase, the synthesis of research approaches for scholarly results. In the applied stage of the project we will: 1. edit, record, classify and digitize archival material, thus protecting the original material from wear and damage; 2. provide access to the digitized archival documents at the Institute and through freely accessible online platform for scholars and general public for research and artistic purposes; 3. analyse the content of the archival material (documents, studies, gramophone records, musical notation, compositions) in detail, and record metadata. Using musicological, ethnological and folkloristic research methods, we will start from different problem issues revealed in Marolt's opus: 1. the music situation in the 1st half of the 20th century, and Marolt’s views on the affirmation of Slovenian music; 2. critical evaluation of the musical sources Marolt chose for his music opus and for comparative material in his studies; 3. the idea of cultural purism and the efforts to purify Slovenian music from foreign influences regarded as harmful to the representations of national culture; 4. the idea of geographical determinism for the purpose of consolidating ‘pure’ national culture. The main goals of the research are: - To digitize archival material, and to arrange and freely publish selected parts of archival material; - To re-evaluate Marolt's scholarly and artistic works from historical, musicological and folkloristic perspectives; - To make archival material accessible. This will help to identify Marolt in public and professional discourse who requires complex contextualisation in the wider musical and cultural context; - To reveal reasons for the mystification of certain segments of the musical heritage, which is characteristic not only of Marolt but of his and later periods, too; - To motivate a multidisciplinary national and international debate on the influences of Marolt and his contemporaries, on past and present discourses on music and nationality, which are a key basis for today's understanding of national music and ""folklore""; - To establish a syncretic connection between applied and research work, which will result in various forms of dissemination of materials and knowledge. With the help of a variety of archival material, we will present Marolt's personality and work comprehensively, both nationally and internationally, as we want to expand our understanding of his work in the context of his period and his influences on later social and cultural behaviours.