The “Illyrian” period of the years 1835-48 saw the emergence of the kolo (reel dance) as a performative metaphor for harmony and friendship between Croats in particular and the Slavic peoples in general. During the Carnival of 1840, a traditional rural kolo was introduced in a Zagreb ballroom, performed by dancers wearing traditional dress and accompanied by bagpipe music, as a replacement for French quadrille and Viennese waltz. Since dancers trained in urban dance forms were generally unfamiliar with the traditional steps, the dance amateur Marko Bogunović choreographed in late 1841 the slavonsko kolo and the hrvatsko kolo, with steps based on Croatian rural dances. Both forms were often called by a general name, the dvoransko kolo (“ballroom kolo”) or salonsko kolo (“salon kolo”), to distinguish it from its rustic prototype. In the later century, the terms came to be used interchangeably.
These urban kolos were organized in sets modelled on the quadrille, and performed by groups of four to fourteen couples. The figures included stylizations of the emblems of the Illyrian movement: a six-point star and a crescent. The initial part of each figure was in allegro tempo, with dancers performing in a circle; the second part was slower, with dancers performing figures in couples. The salonsko kolo had its climax in the final circle dance, the hrvatsko kolo ended in the figure called ilirski gèrb (“the Illyrian shield”). Because of its strong political colouring, the hrvatsko kolo was suppressed in the course of the 1840s; in 1842, Stanko Vraz named his cultural review after it.
During the post-1848 absolutist backlash, Croatian dances disappeared from ballrooms. With the relaxation of the 1860s, the kolo was revitalized, mainly with the choreographies by the Italian-born dance master Pietro Coronelli (1825–1902). His version of the salonsko kolo consisted of five figures, one of which involved steps which Coronelli claimed to have based on a zigzag movement from the regions of Slavonija and Srijem.
Although the kolo had been popular on and off throughout the century, few melodies composed for it have been preserved. It is likely that at dances, instrumental accompaniment was improvised rather than written down. The music for the inaugural kolo, choreographed by Bogunović and performed on 27 January 1842, was written by Vatroslav Lisinski and orchestrated by Antun Kirschhofer (1807–1849). Later in his career, Lisinski composed two more specimens of slavonsko kolo (1843; 1851) and of hrvatsko kolo (1843; 1847). Other composers of the slavonsko kolo include Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (Južno-Slovjenske Narodne Popievke, 1881), Hinko Hladaček, Josip Kwiatkovski, Antun Schwarz, Vilko Müller and Franjo Ksaver Vilhar. The hrvatsko kolo was composed by Otto Hauška and Vilko Müller. However, neither the stature of these composers nor the presence of a Croatian diaspora was sufficient to ensure for the hrvatsko kolo or the salonsko kolo the international dissemination that was achieved by similarly-derived analogues such as the polonaise or mazurka.
A powerful symbolic marker of authentic, vernacular rooted nationalism (comparable to the Scottish bagpipe) was, beside the tamburica, the gusle – not only for Croats, but for South Slavs in general. Used for accompaniment of oral epic poetry in Croatia (Dalmatia, Lika), Bosnia/Hercegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania, the gusle is a bowed one-stringed instrument of limited tonal range, with a wooden pear-shaped body on which is stretched an animal skin. The instrument usually has one string, on which the sound is produced with a short arched bow.
Following its iconic usage in the text editions of Vuk Karadžić (and the Romantic forgery La guzla by Prosper Mérimée), the gusle bacame an emblematic symbol for the Illyrian movement, with its South-Slavic sense of ethnic unity. The Croatian urban classes developed a taste for improvised traditional epics, seen then as the embodiment of national rhetoric, and epics were not only transcribed and presented in published collections, but writers were also attempting to create their own poetry in the style of traditional epics.
Accordingly, the instrument itself became a frequent and revered topos for 19th-century painters, with representations ranging from the realistic to the symbolic. The literary weekly Danica ilirska from 1838 on juxtaposed in its title-page masthead military emblems (weapons, flags, a drum) with symbols of prosperity (beehive, anchor, scythe) and national identity – these last represented through musical instruments (the gusle, the tamburica and the bagpipe). The guslar (gusle player) occupied a prominent place in the painted medallion in the centre of the curtain at the Zagreb theatre between 1844 and 1847. Attributed to Vjekoslav Karas (1821–1858), the medallion visualized the poem Djed i unuk (“The grandfather and his grandson”) by Petar Preradović, in which the grandfather tells his grandson about the impending renewal and a new order rooted in the national tradition – symbolized by the guslar and a fortress seen in the distance, evoking the nation’s heroic history.
Similar messages could be read in other artworks, such as Dolazak Hrvata (“Arrival of the Croats”, 1903) by Mato Celestin Medović (1857–1920), depicting the 17th-century arrival of the Croats at the Adriatic coast. One figure in the foreground of the composition is carrying the gusle on his back, metaphorically suggesting that the instrument, and by extension the tradition of epic telling, is as old as the Croatian nation itself. Such symbolic usage of the gusle icon continued until after the foundation of the Yugoslav state in 1918, when the motif started carrying a Yugoslavian national meaning.
