The Music Section of Maćica Serbska was founded in 2000. Its aim is to engage with Sorbian music, particularly its heritage, and to critically examine how this heritage is handled—both in the field of Sorbian music history and in the area of traditional Sorbian folk music culture. It also addresses questions concerning the paths and future of Sorbian musical culture.

For some time now, the Music Section of Maćica Serbska has been the only Sorbian association to deal with Sorbian music in both scholarly and popular-academic ways, and indeed with musical culture in its full breadth, focusing primarily on heritage and traditional Sorbian folk music.

Chair: Měrko Scholze

On the Tradition of the Music Section

At its very first founding assembly, the members of Maćica Serbska resolved to organise their own singing festival—an event format that was very popular in Germany at the time. Following the great success of the 1st Wendish Singing Festival on 17 October 1845 in Bautzen and its highly positive reception among the Sorbian population, the organisation of further such folk festivals became a key task for the members of Maćica Serbska. Proposals and calls for additional singing festivals were put forward at the general assemblies, a festival committee was elected, and responsibility for organisation was assigned to it.

It was only at a relatively late stage that a separate music section was established. In 1897, the composer Jurij Pilk assumed the chairmanship. He was succeeded in this role by the cantor Jan Rječka-Retschke, followed by the composers Jurij Słodeńk-Melzer and Bjarnat Krawc-Schneider.

The section’s main responsibility continued to be the preparation of central Sorbian singing festivals and the publication of Sorbian music literature. While this task in Upper Lusatia was taken over after 1923 by the Bund wendischer Gesangvereine (Association of Wendish Choral Societies), founded in the same year, it remained in Lower Lusatia in the hands of the Lower Sorbian Maśica Serbska until the early 1930s (for example, the Wendish Folk Festival in Vetschau).