Page 155 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

The Composers’ Guild of Great Britain and “unofficial” musical diplomacy …
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speaker, though not as a musician. In the newly hardened Cold War con-
ditions of 1948, Bush’s politics were no longer tolerable and, for the Com-
posers’ Guild, any sort of international collaboration that raised suspicions
of a political dimension was resolutely to be avoided.

Legacies
We might judge that in many respects Bush’s diplomatic work for the Com-
posers’ Guild in Eastern Europe had little legacy. His visit is largely forgot-
ten in the music histories of the region, and he became a figure of such sus-
picion in British government circles that in the 1950s their efforts at cultural
diplomacy began again, ex nihilo, with Britten and Henry Moore. On the
other hand, the visits were important in three respects. Firstly, the Com-
posers’ Guild did not lose all interest in relations with Eastern Europe, and
in 1960 Bush was instrumental in arranging a visit to the Soviet Union
with then-Chair Elizabeth Maconchy to address important issues of Sovi-
et non-compliance with copyright laws and the difficulties this created for
52
greater musical cooperation. The Guild subsequently received a follow-up
visit by two Russian delegates, and then an invitation to the Prague Spring
Festival from the Union of Czech composers, all predating Britten’s trav-
els. However modest, Bush’s groundwork in making connections and in-
troducing British music to Eastern Europe partly facilitated aspects of the
later efforts towards normalising cultural relations in the 1950s and 60. Sec-
ondly, shorn of politics, Bush’s fact-finding shaped the priorities and activi-
ties of the Composers’ Guild in its formative period towards advocating for
British composers to receive the kind of opportunities for broadcasting and
publishing they saw enjoyed by musicians in Eastern Europe. While few
shared Bush’s desire for a radical transition to full socialism, the opportu-
nities and limitations of state support for culture were just being worked
out in Britain in this period. Finally, Bush’s activities provide a reminder of
the dangers of ignoring the nuances of history. While the British govern-
ment position would always be allied with the US and suspicion of the So-
viet Union ran deep, leading to the freeze in cultural relations before the
mid-1950s, diplomacy could operate on many levels from the state to the in-
dividual, and in the immediate postwar period of 1945–8, not only was So-
viet ideological control of Eastern Europe incomplete, but the process of

51 Item 125a, TNA: PRO KV2/3516.
52 Erica Siegel, The Life and Music of Elizabeth Maconchy (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
2023), 183.

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