The purpose of this thematic issue of the Musicological Annual is to reveal the stylistic and compositional-technical diversity of smaller (“non-historic”) national and even narrower musical cultures dependent on their respective social coordinates. The musicologists invited to contribute are mainly from countries that share a similar socio-historical fate with Slovenia: integration in a multinational state organisation, a relatively peripheral position with respect to the main music centres, and a strong dependence on powerful ideologies, including totalitarianism.