Fra Branko Marić, etnomuzikolog – pokušaj percepcije bosanskohercegovačke melodike kroz prizmu (zapadnoevropske) muzičke teorije

Father Branko Marić, PhD, is the first BH scientist to seriously deal with the aspects of musical tradition in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The subject of this paper is his doctoral dissertation Volksmusik Bosniens und der Herzegowina (Vienna, 1936), that is, the first chapter of the dissertation in which Marić discusses the aspects of the musical score of BH vocal music tradition through the prism of tonal relationships and scale sequences, and their possible functionality in the Western European music theory system. Marić is a researcher with expressed sensitivity to the tradition from which he came up as a priest. He criticizes earlier attempts to ponder about the systematization of this very complex musical material, and at the same time, he is very cautious in generalizing the conclusions. Although a folklorist by vocation, research efforts in the first chapter of Marić’s dissertation will establish him as the first music theorist of Bosnian-Herzegovinian provenance.