Slovene national awareness began to awaken in the second part of the 18th century, the first noticeable awareness was shown during the revolutionary year 1848, when a few conscious Slovene intellectuals and students in Vienna, Graz and Ljubljana, founded a Slovene association and established a programme the United Slovenia (Zedinjena Slovenija) and made a public commitment. The programme became the base of a wider national activity especially of young Slovenes in the second part of the 19th century.
In spite of numerous political oppositions, Slovene language and culture, the main national attributes of forming national identity, developed further and were more and more present also in the public life. National reading societies, which were being established from 1861 on around cities and squares or even the countryside, had an enormous significance for their development and establishment. Citizens, intellectuals and important people from the countryside gathered in the reading societies to cherish Slovene and Slavic culture, strengthen their national awareness and preserve it for the next generations. The Slovene choral music was rapidly developing during that time and became an ideal instrument for expressing patriotism and spreading national ideas also among simple people and performing it spread widely with the help of numerous newly established librarian choirs. Simple choral compositions of Slovene composers were placed on the programmes of librarian words and the most popular among them were Gregor Rihar, Blaž Potočnik, Jurij Fleišman, Gašpar and Kamilo Mašek, Miroslav Vilhar, Davorin Jenko, Gustav and Benjamin Ipavec etc. Due to their creativity, special place belonged to Czech composers Anton Nedvěd and Anton Foerster who were active in Slovenia. The reading societies encouraged also further development of music culture.
For the active young Slovene politics needed a wide support from Slovene nation, who still was not aware enough in the 1960s, Styrian patriots decided to organize national open-air mass meetings, the so called »tabori« which would include all Slovene regions and all inhabitant levels to awaken the national awareness in them. The mass meeting movement came alive in 1868 with the organization of the mass meetings in Ljutomer, Žalec and Šempas and spread in three years to all Slovene regions within the Austrian part of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. By the year 1871, young Slovenes had organized 18 mass meetings in Carniola region and 150.000 Slovenes took part. Numerous spokespersons expressed their wishes and demands for uniting Slovenia, enforcing the Slovene language in schools and offices etc. The gatherings were big political manifestations with a cultural programme. There were brass bands playing, participants were singing Slovene national songs, choirs performed individually as well as united in mass choirs. By singing folk and simple patriotic choral songs they contributed a lot to awakening the national awareness and forming of national identity. The songs that were sung emphasize Slovene and Slavic patriotic love, faith in freedom of life and appeals to fight for national rights. Their music language is simple, the melodies are mellifluous with simple but strong rhythm and simple harmony. Due to their simplicity, compositions were appropriate for less skillful choirs and listeners who were simple people that strongly needed additional national encouragement. The compositions achieved their purpose of awakening national feelings in a great number of Slovenes and at the same time the singing of the choirs positively, emotionally, linking and educationally affected the participants. Music in the mass meeting movement proved to be an important social stimulus which led to strengthening the feeling of unified national community affiliation and at the same time it also had an important social role.
The Coastal region mass meetings represent the peak of musical movement since the largest number of Slovene choirs performed there which fascinated the participants and news reporters by their singing.
Political and cultural happenings in the mass meeting movement awakened and strengthened the national awareness in people and helped to form Slovene national identity and at the same time also further strengthened cultural activity of Slovenes. The mass meetings directly influenced the founding of new reading societies and numerous other Slovene associations together with a lot of choirs. The mass meetings represent an important part of Slovene history, they represent a short period of intense political maturing and outside union as well as strengthen the national awareness and strong cultural maturing of Slovene nation. During the next decades Slovene music developed and spread with a lot of strength and gradually reached the international recognizability and consideration and musical participation of Slovenes in the mass meetings can be described as the first phase in this amazing development.
|
