So now we have here approximately 100 Slovenian compositions, mainly performed by solo singers (with piano or orchestra accompaniment) and by different orchestras and smaller vocal groups. Independent instrumental performances (usually the accordion, wind instruments orchestra) are rare. We can listen to the recordings of the singer and theatre actor Avgusta Danilova who recorded for Columbia Records in New York around 1918 and later for the company Victor Talking Machine. She was accompanied on piano by her brother Ivan Subelj. His brother, tenor singer Anton Subelj recorded on his own or together with soprano singer Aneta Mandic and always accompanied by a so-called “sramel” trio or quartet (an orchestra playing entertaining or dance music with changing cast – two violins, accordion or piano and clarinet or guitar, typical for Austrian restaurants and gardens in the second half of the 19th century). They sang popular versions of Slovenian country songs. Slovenian singers Josephine Lausche and Mary Udovich succeeded with the same genre. They usually performed as a duo and their songs are preserved on gramophone records of Columbia. Around 1930, the company Elektroton recorded popular country songs sung by duo Mirko Jelacin and Drago Zagar.

At the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th century there were not many Slovenian instrumental orchestras and they often had many problems, so the recording of military Band of the Drava Division playing the composition of the Slovenian romantic composer Viktor Parma titled Salute to Gorenjska is of extreme importance. A real rarity is also represented by its follower, the Country Band from Ljubljana, recording after the World War II with the Zagreb company Yugoton.

It is not surprising that among rare old records recordings of waltzes and polkas of the emigrant Slovenian Matt Hoyer were found too. Matt was born in 1891, left Slovenia in 1911 and settled in Cleveland. There he perfected his musical talent stemming from the experience of traditional Slovenian popular music. He excelled in his play on button accordion and the audience delighted in his “sweet to the ear” melodies. The music played by his orchestra called Hoyer trio became extremely popular and enticed a movement which was later called “Cleveland-style Polka movement”. Today, he is known as the “grand-daddy” of button accordion players and pioneer performer of Slovenian polkas and waltzes in the United States.

The Hoyer Trio was among the first entertaining orchestras in America and recordings took place one after the other. Around 1919 recordings were made for the company Victor Talking Machine, later also for Columbia and Okeh Records. So the movement Cleveland-Style Polkas developed further and was finally acknowledged as an artistic genre outside the borders of Slovenian ethnic territory. Among our recording there is also their hit piece, a polka arranged from the Vienna march titled Vienna stays Vienna.

The complete repertory is therefore limited to arrangements of popular songs and to artistic compositions, and partly also to “funny” sketches with singing. Gramophone records were published by different, in most cases foreign publishers, among them Columbia, Victor Talking Machine, Elektroton, Edison Bell Radio, His Master’s Voice, Odeon and others.

Digitization therefore enabled a professional insight into a cross-cut of our recording activities and their extent from a certain period of Slovenian music history, mainly of the period before the World War II, a thorough bibliographic processing of the resources and the composition of efficient metadata or basic information about the materials all of which ads to the survey of the state of the preserved documents and to, last but not least, an authentic acoustic experience. Our project can serve as a starting point for further research of historical, cultural and/or publishing significance and role of the discographer production in Slovenia and elsewhere.

The work performed enabled revitalization and access to almost forgotten and inaccessible Slovenian cultural heritage. It also reveals performance, reception and stylistic traits of the time which could have been so far only partially reconstructed from secondary sources (published reports and commentaries, memoirs, correspondence etc.). For the understanding and study of the history of music this acoustic documentation is invaluable and adds to the central task of the national library, i.e. collecting, preservation and use of important cultural heritage.