Page 248 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2023. Glasbena društva v dolgem 19. stoletju: med ljubiteljsko in profesionalno kulturo ▪︎ Music societies in the long 19th century: Between amateur and professional culture. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 6
P. 248
glasbena društva v dolgem 19. stoletju: med ljubiteljsko in profesionalno kulturo
Vienna Philharmonic certainly did not. Pecuniary goals aside, with its or-
ganisational form, which after 1867 and until 1908 was really not in line an-
ymore with the state regulation, it crafted a particular sui generis form that
allowed it to aspire to the very same notion of self-government, away from
the state’s supervisory eye, that the so called liberal 1867 Act had not yet
permitted. In Ljubljana, too, within the music associations, particular kind
of strategies of adaptation to the 1867 Act evolved. As the pre-and post-
1918 archival material on the first Slovene Philharmonic and later on the so
called Orkestralno društvo showed, their members, largely jurists by vo-
cation, contributed to overcoming of the challenging issue of how to suc-
cessfully and above all, viably, integrate larger orchestral bodies within the
existing organisational form of (music) associations. In terms of their in-
ternal organisation, management, inter-personal dynamics and cost, these
were much harder to maintain within the existing associations than out-
side them. I propose to see the operative idea of a “loose link” by Milčinski
as a case in point.
And what of freedom? The main title of my contribution is a para-
phrase of the famous first article from the Provisonary Local Community
Act by Franz-Joseph from March 1849.80 Programmatic in form and liber-
al in content, it became famous for its emphasis on the freedom of territo-
rially defined local communities (die freien Gemeinden) as the basis for a
so-called free state (der freie Staat). It is fair to say that after its adoption in
1849 and especially after 1867, it lived up to the general expectations of (out-
er) freedom – in the sense of free from state intervention – much more than
the Associations’ Act. That is not to say that concerning personal freedoms,
the liberal post-1848 era with its constitutional catalogue of fundamental
rights of a person did not allow for significant changes (yet to be inter-
nalised). Evoking again Andrejka’s metaphor of an association as a rein-
forced person, and having complex experiences in this regard of Karel Jer-
aj in mind, there is one that in my mind particularly stands out. Not only
free to join and diligently to persevere, a person after 1848 is much more –
free to leave. And to start all over, generating the necessary new dynamics
by following the inner freedom and aspirations which span over any given
time and space and that any creative and deeply human endeavour such as
art, music, of course, too, and above all, any free(er) large-scale communi-
80 Die Grudnfeste des freien Staats ist die freie Gemeinde. Article 1 des Provisorisches
Gemeindegesetzes vom 17. März 1849, R. G. Bl. Nr. 170.
246
Vienna Philharmonic certainly did not. Pecuniary goals aside, with its or-
ganisational form, which after 1867 and until 1908 was really not in line an-
ymore with the state regulation, it crafted a particular sui generis form that
allowed it to aspire to the very same notion of self-government, away from
the state’s supervisory eye, that the so called liberal 1867 Act had not yet
permitted. In Ljubljana, too, within the music associations, particular kind
of strategies of adaptation to the 1867 Act evolved. As the pre-and post-
1918 archival material on the first Slovene Philharmonic and later on the so
called Orkestralno društvo showed, their members, largely jurists by vo-
cation, contributed to overcoming of the challenging issue of how to suc-
cessfully and above all, viably, integrate larger orchestral bodies within the
existing organisational form of (music) associations. In terms of their in-
ternal organisation, management, inter-personal dynamics and cost, these
were much harder to maintain within the existing associations than out-
side them. I propose to see the operative idea of a “loose link” by Milčinski
as a case in point.
And what of freedom? The main title of my contribution is a para-
phrase of the famous first article from the Provisonary Local Community
Act by Franz-Joseph from March 1849.80 Programmatic in form and liber-
al in content, it became famous for its emphasis on the freedom of territo-
rially defined local communities (die freien Gemeinden) as the basis for a
so-called free state (der freie Staat). It is fair to say that after its adoption in
1849 and especially after 1867, it lived up to the general expectations of (out-
er) freedom – in the sense of free from state intervention – much more than
the Associations’ Act. That is not to say that concerning personal freedoms,
the liberal post-1848 era with its constitutional catalogue of fundamental
rights of a person did not allow for significant changes (yet to be inter-
nalised). Evoking again Andrejka’s metaphor of an association as a rein-
forced person, and having complex experiences in this regard of Karel Jer-
aj in mind, there is one that in my mind particularly stands out. Not only
free to join and diligently to persevere, a person after 1848 is much more –
free to leave. And to start all over, generating the necessary new dynamics
by following the inner freedom and aspirations which span over any given
time and space and that any creative and deeply human endeavour such as
art, music, of course, too, and above all, any free(er) large-scale communi-
80 Die Grudnfeste des freien Staats ist die freie Gemeinde. Article 1 des Provisorisches
Gemeindegesetzes vom 17. März 1849, R. G. Bl. Nr. 170.
246
