Janez Kuhar – the choirmaster

The thesis presents the place and role of choral singing and choirs in Slovene primary schools. The community's attitude towards choral singing depends largely on choirmasters, whose expertise, vision and personality enable them to plan and carry out the work that will be interesting for pupils and will help pupils develop their musical capabilities, knowledge and skills. A choirmaster is thus the key person in improving the quality of singing in a choir. Records about composer and choirmaster Janez Kuhar show that he was well aware of these facts. His positive attitude and professional excellence attracted young singers and it is no wonder that the first generations of the RTV Slovenija youth choir were very large and very successful. The research tries to establish whether a choirmaster like Janez Kuhar would also attract such large numbers of young singers today and whether the choirmasters in the present have made further developments based on his foundations. The results of a survey conducted among choirmasters of children’s choirs around Slovenia show that the respondent choirmasters are trained appropriately to enable children good vocal development and select repertoires of high quality. However, the results cannot be generalised due to a relatively small sample. Nevertheless, deriving from the number of attendants of children’s choir festivals, we can observe that there are a number of charismatic people still today who can get children to sing like Kuhar did