Page 139 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2026. Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes: preplet stanovskega in nacionalnega | Composers’ Societies Past and Present: Combining the Professional and the National
Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-555-9.139-158
© 2026 Joanna Bullivant

The Composers’ Guild of Great Britain and
“unofficial” musical diplomacy in Eastern Europe

Joanna Bullivant
Kraljevi konservatorij v Birminghamu
The Royal Birmingham Conservatory

British “official” musical diplomacy with Eastern Europe has been perceived
as a project that began only in the 1950s. Cameron Pyke has described the
“Test Match” delegation led by Sir Arthur Bliss who visited the Soviet Un-
1
ion at the behest of the British Council in 1956. This tour, prompted by gov-
ernment plans to use cultural exchange to foster economic relations with
the Soviet Union, prefigured the legendary visits made by Benjamin Britten
between 1963 and 1971. Taking into account the Balkans, it was also Britten
who visited Yugoslavia in 1955 in the first stage of his famous tour of the Far
East. Britten and Peter Pears visited Ljubljana, Maribor, Zagreb and Belgrade
between the 20 and 30 November, giving several concerts, hearing a per-
th
th
formance of Peter Grimes in Serbo-Croat, and meeting President Josip Tito
himself on 29 November. While J.P.E. Harper-Scott has doubted sugges-
th
tions that the tour had any political dimension, it is certainly the case that
2
the British Council – the body generally responsible for cultural diplomacy
* I am extremely grateful to Sonja Kralj and Jernej Weiss for help with researching
Bush’s visit to Ljubljana. A shortened version of my discussion of the First Inter-
national Congress in Prague is forthcoming in: Joanna Bullivant, “The Compos-
er’s Guild,” in Elizabeth Maconchy in Context, eds. Justin Vickers and Lucy Walker
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026).
1 Cameron Pyke, “‘An Exciting Time with All the Russians’: Anglo-Soviet Musical
Contacts,” in Benjamin Britten in Context, eds. Vicki P. Stroeher and Justin Vickers
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 188.
2 J.P.E. Harper-Scott, Ideology in Britten’s Operas (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2018), 218–9.

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