Authors

Ivana Tomić Ferić¹;  ¹ Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Split, Croatia

Discussion

The defeats suffered by the Austrian army in the northern Italian front in the conflict with the French forced the Austrians to retreat from Lombardy in exchange for Istria, Dalmatia, the Kvarner islands, and the Bay of Kotor. When the Venetian Republic collapsed, under a secret treaty from Leoben, a new territorial division was brought to life by the peace treaty of Campo Formio on 17 October 1797. According to the provisions of the treaty, the entire former Venetian Dalmatia was given to Austria, and the disappearance of the Venetian Republic caused disruptions in Dalmatian cultural and musical life. Like the other cities of the Croatian coastal area, Split witnessed turbulent times given the socio-political circumstances in Dalmatia in the early years of the nineteenth century, including the establishment of short-lived French and very long-lasting Austrian administrations. When observing music phenomena from a sociopolitical perspective, it can be concluded that musical life in Split during the pre-Revival period had a richly distinctive structure which may be viewed from various aspects ‒ from the perspective of the quality and quantity of music production, through the representation of certain types of repertory, all the way to issues of performance and reception.
Compared to the quality of music during Venetian rule, this period showed signs of slow development and a not particularly keen interest in musical art. The musical sheets and sources in Split’s archives and museums are quite faithful indicators of the musical conditions in the city. Based on what has been preserved to this day, it can be concluded that the decrease in quantity is closely related to the crisis that was inevitable in troubled times. Eventually, as Austrian rule consolidated and circumstances stabilised, the interest in music, especially secular, was revived. Meanwhile, unfortunately, a talented generation of Split composers – Julije Bajamonti (1744–1800), Ante Alberti (1757–1804) and Ivan Jeličić (1772–1811) – was not active any longer, and local musical creativity was in constant decline. Government used art as a means of communicating its own messages and as an instrument of promotion and self-exaltation. The preserved sources in the State Archives in Split and in the Split City Museum with detailed descriptions of cultural and musical-historical events in Split relate especially to the period of the second reign of the Austrian Emperor Francis I. All of them mostly provide evidence of the servile spirit of their authors, glorifying the ruler and passionately celebrating the Austrian government. One such source is the significant handwritten book Historia Gymnasii Spalatensis ab anno 1817/18 ad annum 18(66/7) [History of the Split Gymnasium from Anno Domini 1817/8 to the year 18(66/7)], which consists of 274 (later paginated) large-format pages with notes and a comprehensive description of the high school