4th International Scientific Conference “Traditional and Contemporary in Art and Education”

Presentation “From School Songbooks to Digital Collections” at the International Conference “Traditional and Contemporary in Art and Education”

At the 4th International Scientific Conference “Traditional and Contemporary in Art and Education,” held in a hybrid format from 15 to 17 May 2026, a presentation entitled “From School Songbooks to Digital Collections: Music-Educational Heritage from the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries” was delivered as part of the online programme. The paper was prepared by Vesna Svalina, Vjekoslav Galzina, and Damir Tomić within the institutional project “From Reinterpretation to Retrodigitalization of School Manuals in the Croatian Language from the Mid-19th Century to the Early Decades of the 20th Century” (ReDiP, 581-UNIOS-51). The presentation was delivered at the conference on behalf of the authors by Vesna Svalina.

The presentation analysed digitised school songbooks and manuals for singing instruction in the Croatian language, created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Particular attention was devoted to the works of Franjo Š. Kuhač, Vjenceslav Novak, Vilko Novak, and Ivan pl. Zajc, as well as to the Songbook for Public Schools in Croatia and Slavonia from 1909. The analysed sources revealed different aspects of the development of singing instruction: Kuhač’s Pjevanka emphasises the importance of children’s and folk songs as part of the school repertoire; Vjenceslav Novak’s Pjevačka obuka u pučkoj školi establishes a methodological system for singing instruction; Vilko Novak’s Pjevanka provides practical educational material for children in public schools; the Songbook for Public Schools in Croatia and Slavonia standardises repertoire according to grade level; while Zajc’s Milozvuk demonstrates the introduction of artistically composed monophonic and polyphonic songs into the school context.

The conclusion emphasised that school songbooks and manuals are not merely testimonies of what was sung in schools at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, but also important sources for understanding singing instruction, the role of teachers, the development of children’s voices, school repertoire, educational values, and the shaping of cultural identity. Special emphasis was placed on the issues of digitisation and retrodigitalisation. Digitisation enables the preservation of and access to materials, but accessibility alone is not sufficient. In order for such sources to become useful for research into the development of singing instruction, school repertoire, children’s culture, and cultural identity—as well as for contemporary teaching of music, history, and language—they must be further described, interconnected, searchable, and pedagogically contextualised.

In contemporary teaching practice, such materials may be used to encourage listening and singing activities, comparisons between historical and contemporary school songs, research into language and customs, discussions on cultural identity, and interdisciplinary connections between music, history, literature, and digital literacy. School songbooks may therefore be viewed as a meeting point between the past and the present: they preserve traces of former teaching practices and musical education, while at the same time serving as an incentive for new research and innovative teaching approaches.