Discourses on music at the margins of the Habsburg Monarchy

The content of the project is based on the analysis on writings of music, mainly about musical and cultural life, concert and theater guest performances, published in the newspapers in German (Esseker Lokalblatt und Landbote, Slawonische Presse in Slavonia; Groß-Becskereker Wochenblatt, Banater Post in the Banat), in Serbian (Glas, Pancevac), in Croatian (Viroviticanin, Sriemski Hrvat) and in Hungarian (Torontl), and also in periodicals, festschrifts of choral societies and theatres, the program notes from music performances, books and later established professional music journals, as well as writings on music by the first professional musicologists (Franjo Kuhac) in the cities of the southern border of the Empire. This especially protected border space, where the Slavonian (17451881) and the Banat (17511873) Military Frontiers were established in order to protect the Empire from the Ottoman military operations, provided multi-layered cultural transfer with the remote main center (Vienna), among the local centers of free royal cities in Pannonia and the main towns within the border space, as well as beyond the border with the Ottoman Empire. It is hypothesized that the writings on music in the complex multiethnic, multilingual and multireligious (Christian Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant; Jewish; Muslim heritage) southern border area along the lower Danube region contain a variety of cosmopolitan, imperial, Pan-Slavic and national narratives of different social groups, which reveal mechanisms of power through the network of cultural and administrative institutions. Primary sources the aforementioned contemporary publications and manuscripts, as well as historical documentation related to the musical life along the military border, are preserved in the archives of the Slavonian Museum, the City archives of Osijek and Pancevo, where the border Magistrate were located. They provide a full panorama of different kinds of nationalisms, emerging in the imperial context (Germans and Croats lived in the Habsburg Monarchy), including the diaspora (Serbs were divided between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires), also considering a phase of Pan-Slavism (Austroslavism) and general social and sociological aspects. These writings will be analyzed in a theoretical framework related to the structures of power, the construction of vernacular languages and challenging the concept of identity in order to provide more profound insight into cultural and social practices beyond the prevailing attitude of nationalism. The traditional national approach and narrow fragmentary perspectives through today national territories will be also challenged by innovative elucidation of the multifaceted variety of the imperial, national and their overlapping perspectives, which served as a basis for various self-representations even among the same national and religious communities and numerous minorities, taking into account cultural and music activities of settlers in the area between the two empires, including the Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Slovaks), Hungarians, Germans, Romanians and Jews.