Vinko Žganec (January 22, 1890 - December 12, 1976) was a Croatian

ethnomusicologist Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...

. Žganec was born in Vratišinec in Međimurje. He started to be interested in music early in his childhood and jotted down his first folk song in 1908. In 1916, he published his first book of Croatian folk songs from Međimurje. Later he extended the work to cover the Bunjevci Croats in Hungary and Croats from Gradišće in Austria. He studied theology and later law, becoming a Doctor of Law in 1919. The

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and

Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...

kept in close contact with him while collecting folk songs along the border of Hungary and Croatia. Bartók respected Žganec because of both the accuracy of his research and the notation. Music started to be his primary focus in 1945 when he became the head of the

Ethnographic Museum Ethnographic museums conserve, display and contextualize items relevant to the field of ethnography, the systematic study of people and cultures. Such museums include: List by country/region Albania * Ethnographic Museum of Kavajë, * Gjirokast� ...

in Zagreb. During the span of his research, Žganec collected, recorded, and wrote down more than 19,000 songs, including many

Croatian tamburica Croatian tamburitza (tam•bu•rit•za) is a folk song played with a tambura (cousins with Russian balalaika and the Italian mandolin) and is accompanied with a dance. The origin is most commonly thought to be introduced from the Turks by w ...

; these have been preserved for future generations to be used and studied. There is some evidence that he collected more than 25,000 songs (15,000 just from his native Međimurje). Some of them were not entirely documented. Žganec became the first director of the Institute of Folklore Research, and was an active participant in the

Folklorist Society of Croatia Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

. He taught at the

Academy of Music in Zagreb The Academy of Music ( hr, Muzička akademija or MUZA) is a Croatian music school based in Zagreb. It is one of the three art academies affiliated with the University of Zagreb, along with the Academy of Dramatic Art and the Academy of Fine Arts. ...

where he was a great influence on his colleagues and

students A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution. In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementary ...

. Similar to Žganec's work was that of

Franjo Kuhač Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (November 20, 1834 – June 18, 1911) was a piano teacher, choral conductor, composer, and comparative musicologist who studied Croatian folk music. Kuhač did a great deal of field work in this area, collecting and publishing ...

, another man who devoted his life to research on the national cultural heritage.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zganec, Vinko 1890 births 1976 deaths People from Vratišinec Croatian ethnomusicologists Croatian lawyers Members of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts 20th-century musicologists Yugoslav lawyers Međimurje