Condition of Croatian Music Heritage. Croatian Art Music Sound Recordings

Just over 130 years ago Thomas Edison invented the first practical machine for recording a sound. That event has changed the whole historical and sociological picture of sound-expressing arts – first of all music. The media for sound recording and reproduction have been developing rapidly – the older ones are going to ruin physically, and/or vanish in the flow of novelties on the market. Serious information institutions all over the planet make great efforts to preserve the recorded echoes of the history and keep them in a safe and wide accessible form. Croatia came up early with the beginnings of sound industry. The changes in the cultural politics in the decades of state administration led it to a retardation in care for both material and intellectual value of recorded sound heritage – especially that of art music of Croatian composers and interpreters. The recordings have been recently kept on a few locations: Croatian Film Archive, sound archives of Croatian Radio in Zagreb and seven local stations; rich but closed for the general public are the archives of publishing companies. Some sound recordings, mostly gramophone records and CD-s are kept in the music departments of The National and University Library, public libraries and Academy of Music Library in Zagreb. Until now, nobody has taken care of Croatian sound heritage systematically. Initiative is reduced to persistent private efforts of a group of enthusiasts, without official support of information experts and funds. The purpose of this article is to initiate activities in collecting information, listing, determining priorities in digitisation for preservation, organising funds, resolving the copyright-problems and establishing a digital repository opened for scientific and educational purpose