Page 24 - 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
resources, was dependent on the programmatic openness of the Concert
Agency of Slovenia, the Slovenian Philharmonic and other partners.
From the systemic point of view, a significant predecessor of auton-
omous concert activities by the Society was the “joint working format” of
members of Slovenia’s composers’ and musical artists’ organisations under
the name Collegium musicum, an ensemble that operated under the artistic
direction of composer and pianist Pavel Šivic for a decade after its founda-
tion in 1957. Although foreign exchange restrictions and a shortage of sheet
music made scheduling concerts difficult, the “musical comradery” estab-
lished itself as important patron of the creators of contemporary music by
performing an impressive range of contemporary repertoire. One particu-
lar achievement of the Collegium musicum ensemble was its pioneering
work in educating listeners about contemporary music. Through themat-
ically coherent concert evenings enhanced by expert commentary, it pre-
sented musical works to which listeners would not otherwise have had ac-
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cess, and did so in an engaging way.

The third period of the Society’s activity
The social context of the third period of the Society’s activity ranges from
liberalisation and the implementation of constitutional changes in Yugo-
slavia 1966 to the introduction of a system of “self-management cultural
policy” in 1974. In the history of the Society, this period represents a hey-
day in all areas of its activity, fostered on the one hand by external factors
such as the relaxation of the social atmosphere and the introduction of rel-
ative professional independence for those sectors that were considered “less
dangerous” to the political system, and on the other by the acquisition of its
own premises and the “thawing” of status restrictions within the Society’s
ranks. Thus, among the numerous activities that the Society now organised
into sections for the first time, representatives of popular music also found
a place – something that a decade earlier, when some members were anx-
iously warning the public about jazz, which was said to be “spreading like
weeds”, and causing young people to “give free rein to their instincts and for-
12
get about folk song and serious, noble music”, would have seemed almost
unimaginable.

11 Sonja Kralj, “Sobivanje družbenega, stanovskega in umetniškega v zgodovini Društ-
va slovenskih skladateljev” (PhD thesis, University of Ljubljana, 2011), 97–103.
12 Dragotin Cvetko, “Ob sodobnih problemih glasbene vzgoje,” Slovenska glasbena re-
vija II, no. 4 (1954): 59–62.

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