The music history of Croatia to date, has not been thoroughly investigated and furthermore, music collections contained within the Croatian archives are insufficiently processed and still remain publicly 'invisible'. This paper aims to highlight a segment of rich music history particular to the region of Zadar, which completes the picture of the musical identity of Croatia, highlighting the musical heritage as an essential entity in the Croatian cultural heritage. The subject of this paper is the musical life of Zadar from 1860 to the First World War. As the above mentioned time span concerns a very turbulent historical period under the Austro-Hungarian rule where the political situation greatly affected the economical, commercial, cultural as well as musical life of the city, this paper takes an interdisciplinary research approach which integrates questions from several scientific fields: the sociology of music, musicology, ethnomusicology, music aesthetics, musical archiving and history. Taking into account all of the preceding papers regarding this subject and considering the discovery and analysis of enormous and heterogeneous collection of historical sources, this paper approaches the interpretation by aiming to explain the phenomena (socio-political and cultural) which had influenced everyday musical life of the people of Zadar, especially in terms of production, consumption and interchange of music. This phenomena and all its multiplicity of expression gives us greater insights into roles and functions of music within the context of Croatian music history as well as the interrelationship between the society and politics to music of Zadar’s past. The interpretation itself consciously avoided customary canonical principles of detailed descriptions of music history and instead tried to encompass the principles of different scientific disciplines and make a particular conceptualisation of music phenomena. From that point of view this paper has achieved several objectives embracing the subject, methodology and scientific discipline. Apart from being descriptive of the music history of Zadar in the period from 1860 to 1914 and due to different social (political and commercial) circumstances, the paper critically analyses the relevant literature on the “musical past” to be able to get an insight into used methodologies, models, interpretations, canons and paradigms. The paper is divided into two major parts: the theoretical-methodological part and the research itself. The first part (of the paper) aims to reveal new approaches in musicological practice, for example, the models of interpretation the music of the past, methodology, the way of using historical musical sources, as well as the awareness of the new paradigms in scientific fields dealing with these topics: in musicology, history of music, sociology of music, cultural studies, aesthetics of music, ethnomusicology etc. The research revealed findings indicating that there is a slow but noticeable progress within Croatian musical historiography and historical musicology, which still does not communicate on the methodology or new paradigms the world has been writing on since 2002. Thus, with the analysis of multiple interdisciplinary literatures this paper has provided an insight into several elements in which a change of the paradigm can be noticed. The elements particular to: the subject of research, historical canons, the role of a researcher, subjective interpretation, cultural diversity, the relationship between culture and music as well as postmodernism and music. The research component of the paper led to specific findings on musical-cultural-artistic activities following individual levels (approach) and a network of social activities and ideological contexts. For this purpose, the strategy of study case has been chosen, in particular a design with one “case” and several entities of analysis. As opposed to earlier papers on musical history of Zadar, this particular paper has taken into account a variety of archival documents (music scores, small print, periodicals, photographs) and numerous historical, historiographical, cultural and musicological literatures. In the context of the history of music, the research has shown some new insights into: musical societies (Società Filarmonica, Società Corale Citadino, Unione Corale citadino, etc.), musicians (singers, instrumentalists, conductors, composers…), repertoire, but also the impact society and politics had had on music. Moreover, some new data has been presented on the life of the most important composer of Zadar, Nikola Strmić, especially those pertaining to his student days in Milan. The paper also discusses the relations between musicians themselves and the political circumstances of that time which more or less impacted upon them. Certain databases have been created for the first time (Philharmonic repertoire, Zoranić choir, National Reading Room, etc.), all of which will be beneficial starting points for many future researchers of Zadar’s (Croatian or international) musical history and hopefully provide new interpretations and analyses. Furthermore, this paper has provided a multi-ethnical representation of Zadar and emphasised the intertwining and permeation of various cultures which have shaped the musical life of that period – a time in history which was rich, vivid, and diverse and in step with many European cities of that time.