The musical life of a certain society can be identified as a series of phenomena in a particular timeframe: in this case study, that of the Croatian Music Institute (Hrvatski glazbeni zavod, or, Musikverein in German) at the decline of Habsburg neo-absolutist reign in Croatia. The fundaments of this research were the documents written by the Board of Directors of the Croatian Music Institute, currently stored in the Archives of that institution. Owing to the fact that the notes were written in Gothic script, today widely considered out of use, no documents were translated nor transliterated into the Latin script. Therefore, the forethought of this research was based on the complete transliteration of all the documents and the translation of those written in German. The accumulated data served as a cornerstone of interpretation of the conditions in Croatian Music Institute's then-present musical life and functioning, its financial troubles that had to be dealt with accordingly to the overall political situation in 1860s Zagreb.