Page 150 - 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
been arranged for his benefit) was matched by Bush’s impression of the
beneficial conditions for composers:
The composers are very well organised in all three countries. There
are societies of composers in the three main cities of Czechoslova-
kia and in the capitals of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia in Yugoslavia.
There organisation involve state support in some cases, and are able
to publish music as well as organise concerts, lectures and congress-
es. They are in close touch with the Radio Stations of their city, and
are responsible for concerts of new music and concerts by young and
unknown composers. The Radio Directors are keenly alive to their
responsibilities for helping in the development of their own creative
musical life. This familiarity with their own new composers accounts
for the great interest shown by the public in the six concerts of Brit-
ish music which I conducted. Most of the halls could have been filled
twice over, and in only one was the concert not entirely sold out, and
on that occasion there were over 1200 people present. Except in Sofia
British music had not been played in public in any of the towns I vis-
ited, as far as anyone could remember. The audiences were both criti-
cal and appreciative. 36
These observations are particularly important. What Bush saw was
not only a blueprint for the kind of role a composers’ society could ideally
play to ensure performances and broadcasts of new music, but a perceived
benefit in the growth of public cultivation and enthusiasm for classical mu-
sic in turn. Importantly, it would be these impressions above all that Bush
would take back to the Composers’ Guild, and that he would carry on to
the First International Congress of Composers and Music Critics in Prague
that May.
The impact of Bush’s experiences on the activities of the Guild may be
seen clearly from the evidence of an article he wrote as Chairman for the
Society of Authors’ publication The Author, and which evidently post-dates
his tour of Eastern Europe. As the composer wrote of the organisation’s
progress since 1945

We have taken steps to link ourselves up with similar organisations of
composers in foreign countries. We are in touch with such societies in
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Sweden, U.S.A., U.S.S.R., and Yugo-
slavia. In some of these countries the organisation of composers is con-
siderably in advance of the position here. […] We have discovered that

36 Ibid., 2.

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