Page 142 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes | Composers’ Societies Past and Present
11
and performers, but was disbanded in 1865. The Society of Professional Mu-
sicians, later the still-existing Independent Society of Musicians, was found-
ed in 1882, and the Musicians’ Union (as the Amalgamated Musicians’ Un-
ion) in 1893. While these both performed crucial functions in supporting
professional musicians’ activities and employment rights, neither was exclu-
sively concerned with composers. Composer Elisabeth Lutyens and her fu-
ture husband, Edward Clark, formed a new Association of British Compos-
ers in early 1940, but the endeavour foundered after only a few months due to
12
poor planning and the conditions of war. In the atmosphere of reconstruc-
tion in the final months of the war, however, the time was ripe for a renewed
attempt.
The Guild was founded as a reorganisation of the existing Composers’
Committee of the Society of Authors by composers William Alwyn, Bush,
Theodore Holland, Hubert Clifford, and Norman Demuth, with Bush’s
wife Nancy initially acting as the honorary (thus presumably unpaid) sec-
retary. At its inaugural meeting, the Guild appointed Vaughan Williams
as President and Thomas Dunhill as Chairman, the latter a composer of
light music and active advocate for composers through bodies like the Per-
forming Rights Society (PRS). Following Dunhill’s sudden death in 1946,
he was succeeded by Holland and then Bush. The agenda for this inaugu-
ral meeting gives an immediate insight into the priorities of the new or-
ganisation, setting out for discussion, among other things, co-operation
with American, French and Russian organizations with similar aims; rela-
tions with the BBC, the Performing Rights Society, and the Musicians’ Un-
ion, the creation of specialist sub-committees; and the possible interchange
of lectures with other countries. Importantly, unlike its counterparts that
13
would emerge or had been formed in Eastern Europe, the Guild was not an
organisation either receiving government subsidy or under its control. Brit-
ain had formed the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1946 to provide pub-
lic subsidy for the arts, but the organisation would become another antag-
onist to whom the Guild would make representations regarding support

11 See: Deborah Rohr, The Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850: A Profession of Arti-
sans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 171.
12 See: Annika Forkert, Elisabeth Lutyens and Edward Clark: The Orchestration of Pro-
gress in British Twentieth-Century Music (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2023), 148–59.
13 Composers’ Guild to Alan Bush, undat [1945], British Library Alan Bush Collection,
MS Mus. 642: Correspondence with the Composers’ Guild I, 1945–60.

142