The Short Time Scientific Mission “From Scribe to Stage” took place between the Slovenian capital Ljubljana and the town of Radovljica, where the 42nd Radovljica Festival 2024 was held. The mission’s primary goal was to better connect musicological research on Slovenian heritage with performance practice, while also disseminating its methods to the general public. To this end, a workshop was organized as part of the Radovljica Festival, allowing the public to participate in practical and theoretical activities.
The STSM began on Tuesday, August 20th, with a welcome meeting at the ZRC SAZU Institute of Musicology in Ljubljana. Dr. Metoda Kokole and Dr. Katarina Šter introduced the programme for the week, followed by a delightful breakfast. We also had the opportunity to meet Dr. Klemen Grabnar – the general editor of De musica disserenda – and Professor Frans Brouwer from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam.
Fig. 1 Luís Neiva, Patricia Rivero and Kristin Hoefener during the Short Time Scientific Mission
Wednesday, the 21st, marked the official start of the workshop in Radovljica with a lecture entitled “The Journey from an Early Music Source to Modern Score & Music”, presented by Dr. Kokole. This lecture set out the work – carried out over several decades – on the early music sources of Koper/Capodistria, the process of digitalization of the sources of the Capodistrian heritage, as well as a brief journey through the most prominent composers of this area (Gabriello Puliti, Antonio da Padova, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, and Antonio Tarsia). Dr. Šter then delivered a talk on “Capodistrian Franciscan Plainchant Sources in the Long Seventeenth Century”, in which she explained the tradition of the cantus fractus and its sources from the Convent of St. Anne in Koper. The day ended with a final lecture by Professor Marinčič on Tarsia’s sources and their particularities. Some of the pieces were performed by the participants, putting into practice the decisions made during the conference, after which the musicians of Musica Cubicularis held an open rehearsal in which the audience suggested ideas.
Fig. 2 During the workshop in Radovljica
On Thursday, the 22nd, Dr. Šter led a hands-on session on the Capodistrian plainchant tradition, inviting the participants to sing some of the melodies. This made it easy to see how performing from the sources enhances and informs the musical experience. The session was followed by a discussion on how to present this repertoire in an engaging way to the general public. Some questions were:
- How can a hierarchy between historical criteria and an appealing concert be established?
- How does the source create a pre-sound in our minds?
- Is it enriching/possible to show the audience the sources?
- How best to bring early music into a modern context?
In the afternoon, Tian Qin and Iago Campello presented their paper “Disseminating Early Music: Reaching Beyond Traditional Fans”, analyzing and discussing some innovative practices in early music.
As STSM members, we played the role of participatory observers by analyzing these activities and offering suggestions for new ways of approaching their dissemination. To expand our own observations, we conducted two surveys which collected information about the workshop attendees and the concert audience, such as their age, musical education, and main reasons for attending the festival in Radovljica. Dr. Kristin Hoefener and Patricia Rivero will analyze the findings from these in an article for the Slovenian musicological journal De musica disserenda. In addition, Luís Neiva will publish an article exploring sociological and philosophical aspects of the dissemination as democratization of early music for a new audience.
On Friday, the 23rd, the grantees and the hosts met to summarize and discuss the workshop’s activities. Several important questions were raised, such as how to get more people involved in these activities, how to compensate musicians for this extra work, what the Slovenian early music landscape looks like now, and what type of audience we would like to target for future workshops.
Fig. 3 At the Municipal Library in Koper/Capodistria with Dr. Katarina Šter
On Sunday, we visited Velesovo and enjoyed the plainchant tradition in a concert created by Dr. Šter. The musicians alternated a combination of accompanied moments with a capella singing and organ solos.
Finally, we ended the week, on Monday, the 26th, with a trip to Koper to visit the Franciscan church St. Anne, the Diocesan Archive and the Municipal Library, and see some of the sources we had engaged with during the workshop.
Kristin Hoefener, Luís Neiva and Patricia Rivero