Franjo Kuhač

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (Osijek, 1834 - Zagreb, 1911) was a piano teacher, choral conductor, and comparative musicologist who studied Croatian folk music. Kuhač did a great deal of field work in this area, collecting and publishing 1600 folk songs. Like Cecil Sharp, who did similar work in Britain and Appalachia, Kuhač published the folk songs with a piano accompaniment.

Kuhač taught piano in Zagreb at the Croatian Musical Institute (HGZ). He also prepared a dictionary of music. He published the following books:

• Valpovo i njegovi gospodari, Zagreb 1876.
• Ilirski glazbenici, Zagreb 1893.

Kuhač became well known for tracing similarities between the Croatian folk tunes he collected and various themes in the music of Joseph Haydn. He also was known for his conjecture that Haydn was not Austrian but Croatian, a member of the Croatian ethnic minority resident in the Burgenland region of Austria. For more on both of these aspects of Kuhač's research, see Haydn and folk music.