Ivan Mane Jarnović, Croatian Composer 1

"The intention of this Reader on the 18th century Croatian composer Ivan Mane Jarnović (1740-1804) is to gather the most interesting and the most relevant information published on Jarnović in Croatian and international musicology within about forty years prior to this publication of this edition (1978). It proved that older researchers, who are more numerous both in the general bibliography on Jarnović and in this reader, were much more intrigued by Jarnović’s adventurous life and the virtuosity of his performance. Only recently, and this mainly among younger musicologists, there has appeared an interest for the structural and stylistic aspect of the music he created. This is why this reader also presents Jarnović more as a person whose extravagancy fascinated the musical establishment of Europe of his time, and less (only in one paper) as a creator whose oeuvre in its fundamental category, the pre-classicistic violin concerto, can in some aspects be considered very interesting even from a wider, European, point of view." (S. Tuksar)