Croatia is a magnificent land full of surprises. Visitors are amazed to discover a country with spectacular natural wonders, a great culinary tradition, excellent wine, architecture, a beautiful language, and a vibrant national culture. While it is a small country when measured in square miles, market size, or military power, it has a rich culture that has profoundly impacted the world. The contributors to Croatian Cultural Renaissance: From the Margins to the Crossroad of Europe were the protagonists who survived the communist period and then lived through the fraught period of the Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s; they worked to understand, build, and preserve their cultural identity and freedom as Croatian people. They are diplomats, government officials, artists, and academics who are recognized within Croatia for their intellectual prowess and for their vital and noteworthy contributions to their country. While the chapters explore different areas of Croatia’s national culture, they are united in showing how the national identity and ethos have deep roots and provide insight in what it means to be Croatian today.

This book is the first more comprehensive effort dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of Renaissance music in Croatia. On the pages of this book the dramatis personae comprise priests and heretics, noblemen and tradesmen, men of learning and illiterate fishermen, ladies from high society and courtesans, printers and scribes, patrons of the arts and their proteges - in other words, people participating in one way or another in cultural and artistic events. In spite of grave political problems during the 15th and 16th centuries (the Turks established their power in the north and eastern regions), the Croatian soil was a theatre of vivid musical life. The variety of cultural influences (most important comming from Italy) has been reflectedin some specific phenomena in the Croatian cultural and musical life. Among them are the Catholic liturgy in the native language, the Petrarchan poetry in the Italian language, with which some Dalmatian poets managed to attract the attention of contemporary Italian composers, and finally, the fact that the Croatian coastland was the extreme south-eastern point reached by the widely spreading Netherland Renaissance polyphony. This book focuses on identifying, contextualing and presenting this less known European musical heritage to the wider international public.

This volume is the first scholarly study in the English language of Croatia's extraordinary artistic heritage. Leading specialists analyse the key cultural developments in this small country's history, from the extensive Roman remains on the Adriatic coast, through the gothic splendour of the Dalmatian cities in the Middle Ages and intensive artistic exchange with Italy during the Renaissance, to the grand houses and art collections of continental Croatia. The essays address iconic monuments like Diocletian's palace at Split and the walled city of Dubrovnik alongside more unfamiliar treasures, some never published before. This books sets Croatia's cultural past in context, reflecting the country's unique history at the crossroads between Italy, Central Europe and the Mediterranean. With contributions by leading British, American and Croatian writers and scholars, including John Julius Norwich, Timothy Clifford, Marcus Binney, Brian Sewell and Sheila McNally this book presents for the first time a portrait of the culture of this captivating and too little known country.

First published in 1994 in one volume. An A-Z of the music, musicians and discs. 2006 edition available as an e-book.

In this book, Muir explores an era of cultural innovation that promoted free inquiry in the face of philosophical and theological orthodoxy, advocated libertine morals, critiqued the tyranny of aristocratic fathers over their daughters, and expanded the theatrical potential of grand opera. In so doing, he reveals the distinguished past of today's culture wars, including debates about the place of women in society, the clash between science and faith, and the power of the arts to stir emotions.

When in the fourth century the Roman empire split into the Western and Eastern empires, the boundary between the two stretched from the Montenegrin coast up the river Drina to the confluence of the Sava and the Danube and then further north. This boundary has remained virtually unchanged for 1,500 years: the European, Catholic West and the Orthodox East meet on Slav territory. There were, and still are, ethnic similarities between the peoples on either side of the divide, but their culture and history differ fundamentally. The Croats and Croatia, on the western side of the divide, are traditionally linked with Hungarian, Italian, and German regions and Western Europe, and are also influenced by their long Mediterranean coastline. Ivo Goldstein's Croatia provides a necessary, accessible history of development of what is now an independent state. Croatia includes major sections on the early medieval Croatian state (until 1101), the periods of union with Hungary (1102-1526) and with Austria (1526-1918), incorporation in Yugoslavia (1918-91) and the creation of a sovereign state. Charting social, economic, and cultural developments, Goldstein shows us that this complex historical pattern explains many of the political developments of today.

Struggling against high odds, Yugoslavia managed to survive from its inception in 1918 until the early 1990s. But now, tragic ethnic and regional conflicts have irrevocably fragmented the country. In his timely book, Lenard Cohen explores the original conception and motives underlying the ?Yugoslav idea,? looking at the state's major problems, achievements, and failures during its short and troubled history.Cohen answers a broad range of questions concerning contemporary Yugoslavia: How did the state plunge from its position as a positive model to an essentially negative case of socialist reform? What measures for recovery were proposed by the country's ethnically and regionally segmented one-party elite? What were the reasons for the eventual abandonment of reform socialism, the elimination of the single party's monopoly, and the rapid delegitimation of the country's federal political institutions? What programs have been offered by the noncommunist and ?born again? communist leaders elected to power during the revival of multiparty pluralism in 1990? How did their efforts to achieve regional and ethnic sovereignty place the country in such a precarious and ultimately fatal position?The concluding chapters of the book offer an analysis of the causes and horrifying consequences of the military conflict and civil war from 1991 to 1994, including a discussion of the impotent efforts at peacekeeping, the dynamics of the complex and savage struggle in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and an examination of the problems faced by Yugoslavia's successor states.