Page 240 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2024. Glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes ▪︎ Music Criticism – Yesterday and Today. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 7
P. 240
glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes | music criticism – yesterday and today
as a composer. To banish such a composer to a lower gymnasium in
Domžale is the very height of shortsightedness. This is not how culture
is supported.49
Open controversy was, of course, disagreeable to party apparatchiks,
with the result that even Lipovšek soon had to stop speaking out on the
matter. Despite the apparently softer positions with regard to the Catholic
intelligentsia that had been adopted that same year at a meeting of the Ex-
ecutive Committee of the League of Communist of Slovenia,50 the author-
ities interpreted the whole affair as an attempt at strengthening Catholic
ideological influence. At a meeting of the executive committee of the Cen-
tral Committee of the Slovenian Union of Communists on 29 October 1956,
it was agreed that concessions could be made on some issues, and that cer-
tain rules on the religious press, monument protection, church buildings,
etc., could be relaxed.
Decades later, in 1973, a year that saw numerous celebrations of the
fourth centenary of the peasant revolts in Slovenia, Tomc wrote a letter to
Radovan Gobec that appears to have been dictated by long-standing bitter-
ness (following the incident at the premiere, Stara pravda was never again
included in a concert programme). In it, he writes with some resignation:
That even this year there would be no performance of Stara pravda was
immediately obvious to me as soon as I saw the composition of the com-
mission responsible for organising all this year’s celebrations.51
Decisions on the suitability of individual works and artists were taken
by ideological commissions. In 1973 Tomc probably believed that the “qual-
ified public” might have come to its senses by then, and that in the more lib-
eral times that followed the government of Stane Kavčič, in the huge enthu-
siasm surrounding the celebrations of the peasant revolts, someone might
have remembered his cantata. Yet it was not to be.
As a result of the affair Tomc was compelled to withdraw from pub-
lic life, while the two key figures in the regime’s cultural and political op-
eration, Vošnjak as editor of Slovenia’s main daily newspaper and Ziherl as
president of the ideological commission of the Central Communist Com-
49 Marijan Lipovšek, “Iz našega glasbenega življenja. Edicije DZS,” Slovenska glasbena
revija 3, no. 1–2 (1955): 41.
50 Aleš Gabrič, Socialistična kulturna revolucija. Slovenska kulturna politika 1953–1962
(Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1995), 185.
51 A letter from Matija Tomc to Radovan Gobec (Domžale, 1973) is preserved by
Gobec’s wife, Jožica Gobec.
240
as a composer. To banish such a composer to a lower gymnasium in
Domžale is the very height of shortsightedness. This is not how culture
is supported.49
Open controversy was, of course, disagreeable to party apparatchiks,
with the result that even Lipovšek soon had to stop speaking out on the
matter. Despite the apparently softer positions with regard to the Catholic
intelligentsia that had been adopted that same year at a meeting of the Ex-
ecutive Committee of the League of Communist of Slovenia,50 the author-
ities interpreted the whole affair as an attempt at strengthening Catholic
ideological influence. At a meeting of the executive committee of the Cen-
tral Committee of the Slovenian Union of Communists on 29 October 1956,
it was agreed that concessions could be made on some issues, and that cer-
tain rules on the religious press, monument protection, church buildings,
etc., could be relaxed.
Decades later, in 1973, a year that saw numerous celebrations of the
fourth centenary of the peasant revolts in Slovenia, Tomc wrote a letter to
Radovan Gobec that appears to have been dictated by long-standing bitter-
ness (following the incident at the premiere, Stara pravda was never again
included in a concert programme). In it, he writes with some resignation:
That even this year there would be no performance of Stara pravda was
immediately obvious to me as soon as I saw the composition of the com-
mission responsible for organising all this year’s celebrations.51
Decisions on the suitability of individual works and artists were taken
by ideological commissions. In 1973 Tomc probably believed that the “qual-
ified public” might have come to its senses by then, and that in the more lib-
eral times that followed the government of Stane Kavčič, in the huge enthu-
siasm surrounding the celebrations of the peasant revolts, someone might
have remembered his cantata. Yet it was not to be.
As a result of the affair Tomc was compelled to withdraw from pub-
lic life, while the two key figures in the regime’s cultural and political op-
eration, Vošnjak as editor of Slovenia’s main daily newspaper and Ziherl as
president of the ideological commission of the Central Communist Com-
49 Marijan Lipovšek, “Iz našega glasbenega življenja. Edicije DZS,” Slovenska glasbena
revija 3, no. 1–2 (1955): 41.
50 Aleš Gabrič, Socialistična kulturna revolucija. Slovenska kulturna politika 1953–1962
(Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1995), 185.
51 A letter from Matija Tomc to Radovan Gobec (Domžale, 1973) is preserved by
Gobec’s wife, Jožica Gobec.
240
