Prešeren and Folk Song

About the Event

To mark the birthday of Dr France Prešeren, celebrated on 3 December, the Gorenjska Museum is opening the exhibition Prešeren and Folk Song, created in collaboration with Kranj Kindergartens.

The opening will take place on Thursday, 3 December 2026, at 7 pm in the gallery of Prešeren House.

Prešeren’s creative period coincided with the efforts of various collectors of folk traditions, including folk songs. At first, Prešeren regarded folk songs as material for his own literary works. He reworked well-known motifs such as Fair Vida, Rošlin and Verjanko, and King Matjaž, among others. Over time, he came to recognise that folk song, in the very form in which it had been passed down from generation to generation, was the purest expression of a nation’s linguistic identity. Its themes of unrequited love, longing and homesickness, its tragic ballad endings, dialogue, narrative quality and musicality all resonated with the Romantic view of the world. Prešeren therefore stopped adapting these texts into his own works, although he continued to be drawn to similar emotions when collecting folk songs.

The Romantics saw folk songs as expressions of sincere, direct emotion, a connection with nature, a nation’s historical memory and national identity. Collecting folk traditions was therefore a key part of the national awakening.

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