Page 152 - 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
Limits of Co-operation
While his article may have captured a particular moment of postwar op-
portunity, Bush’s ambitions for both international cooperation and the di-
rection of the Composers’ Guild were soon overtaken by events. Of particu-
lar importance in this respect is Bush’s attendance at the First International
Congress of Composers and Music Critics, organized by the Syndicate of
Czech Composers and attended by musicians from 16 countries. The event
articulated the kind of aims that Bush would be in wholehearted agreement
with, marking

the first Congress of this kind during which the guests of all Worlds
parts [sic] had the opportunity of meeting, of mutual comparison of
musical cultures of their nations, of discussing the most important
problems of modern music so as to build up fundamental conditions for
a clear-sighted collaboration in the future. 39
Yet as Thomas D. Svatos has discussed, while the Syndicate rapidly or-
ganised a Second Congress for 1948 to continue to build international co-
operation, in the meantime Czechoslovakia underwent a dramatic com-
munist coup which stifled political opposition and aligned the country
with the Soviet Union. In the Czech musical world, Miroslav Barvík was
40
instrumental in consolidating musical publications into a single, state-ap-
proved journal and transforming the Syndicate and other associations into
a single, Soviet-inspired Union of Czech Composers under his control, with
41
socialist realism as the sanctioned musical aesthetic. In Britain, too, there
was widespread awareness and condemnation of the attacks on Soviet com-
posers, including Shostakovich, that took place in January 1948.
Bush, for his part, remained true to his Stalinist principles and wel-
comed the Soviet condemnations as an important reset to return compos-
42
ers to their true goal of serving the people. He also attended the Second
International Congress and made crucial contributions to the discussions

39 Syndikat Ceskych Skladatelu [Syndicate of Czech Composers] to Alan Bush, 24 Jan-
uary 1948, British Library Alan Bush Collection MS Mus. 655: SPNM; Syndikat
Ceskych Skladatelu.
40 Thomas D. Svatos, “Sovietizing Czechoslovak Music: The ‘Hatchet-Man’ Miroslav
Barvík and his Speech The Composers Go With the People,” Music & Politics IV, no. 1
(Winter 2010), https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0004.101.
41 Ibid.
42 See: Alan Bush, “A Remarkable Document,” Anglo-Soviet Journal 10, no. 3 (Autumn
1949):19.

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