From Habsburg Classrooms to Socialist Yugoslavia: a Trajectory of Slovenian Children’s and Youth Songbooks

Katarina Bogunović Hočevar

doi:10.5937/10.5937/newso2566015B

Katarina Bogunović Hočevar University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Musicology

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5937/10.5937/newso2566015B

Keywords: songbooks, music education in Slovenia, children’s and youth musical culture, school curricula and reforms, Prek sveta odmeva pesem

Abstract

This article examines the development of Slovenian children’s and youth songbooks from the nineteenth century to the early 1970s, culminating in the influential school songbook Prek sveta odmeva pesem (1972). By analysing curricula, pedagogical reforms, and editorial practices across the Habsburg, interwar Yugoslav, and socialist periods, the study demonstrates how songbooks functioned as cultural artefacts shaping musical, educational, and national identities. Despite political shifts, strong continuities persisted, particularly the central role of folk song. Prek sveta odmeva pesem is shown to synthesise these traditions within the modernised framework of the unified eight-year school system.

Author Biography

Katarina Bogunović Hočevar, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Musicology

Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Musicology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. Her research focuses on the history of music in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, the history of Slovenian music, the development of Slovenian music institutions, interwar war music life, cultural and aesthetic paradigms in music, as well as music analysis and aesthetics. From 2017 to 2021 she served as President of the Slovene Musicological Society. She is currently Chair of the Department of Musicology.