Page 148 - 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
As a representation of the finest orchestral work by British composers,
this left a great deal to be desired. However, from Bush’s perspective, there
was a certain logic, beyond the showcasing of both himself and his teacher
Ireland. The inclusion of Purcell (17 century), Boyce (18 century), and El-
th
th
gar alongside the living composers gave the programme the character of a
historic journey through British music. The choice of Cockaigne (the name
signifying ‘old London town’) may have been intended by Bush to give an
unambiguous sense of British place, while being more manageable for an
unknown and ad hoc blended orchestra than, say, one of the symphonies
of Elgar or Vaughan Williams. Finally, the inclusion of Bush’s own works
on such explicitly political topics enabled him to project a notion of Brit-
ish culture as, at least potentially, in sympathy with the values of commu-
nist Yugoslavia. Indeed, this reimagining of British musical history as one
of historic popular resistance building towards a communist future was
one with which Bush had been concerned for some time. His pageant for
the 1939 Festival of Music for the People, his recently composed English
Suite (1945–6) and Piers Plowman’s Day (1946–7) all invoked English folk
and mediaeval musics and would form the groundwork for his first opera,
Wat Tyler (1948–50), a retelling of the 1381 English Peasants’ Revolt. If this
was Bush’s intention with his programme, it did not achieve the desired re-
action in Ljubljana at least. Leading Slovenian musicologist Dragotin Cvet-
ko reviewed the concert for Slovenski poročevalec, and was lukewarm about
Bush’s own compositions in particular. The Fantasia on Soviet Themes es-
29
30
pecially provoked criticism as a jumble of motifs from Soviet films and
partisan songs that were not connected effectively either expressively or
31
musically. While noting the general unfamiliarity of British music, Cv-
etko himself was well-informed, noting that it would have been preferable
to gain an understanding of the very latest developments in British music
by hearing music by Britten, Tippett and Rawsthorne. For Cvetko, at least,
Bush’s attempt to introduce a political dimension into his programmes was
uninteresting in comparison to learning the musical qualities of British
music.
Bush’s own impressions of Eastern Europe were, however, distinct-
ly framed by his politics. In his reductive Marxist dialectical reading, the

29 Dragotin Cvetko, “Kulturni pregled: Naše koncertno življenje,” Slovenski poročeva-
lec 41, no. 4 (18 February 1947): 4.
30 Cvetko was incorrect in determining the origin of the songs in film: in fact all were
revolutionary or mass songs.
31 Cvetko, “Kulturni pregled: Naše koncertno življenje,” 4.

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