Page 263 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2026. Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes: preplet stanovskega in nacionalnega | Composers’ Societies Past and Present: Combining the Professional and the National
Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-555-9.263-268
© 2026 Máté Hollós

To be or not to be a civil association?

Máté Hollós
Združenje madžarskih skladateljev
The Hungarian Composers’ Union

Some of you from a country with a similar history to Hungary may remem-
ber the structure of cultural life in the so-called Soviet-type states. The gov-
ernment controlled all kinds of institutions: the central concert organising
bureau, the state-owned – and most likely only – record company, the mu-
sic publishing house, the single radio and television broadcaster, as well as
an office to organise the foreign work of musicians. This last office, known
as Interkoncert in Hungary, was there to arrange the travel to any places
musicians were invited to, and took the majority of the money earned from
such trips, if it let them travel at all, as in some cases the office would lie to
the foreign institution that had made the invitation and say the musicians
were sick or busy, or sometimes simply ignore the invitation. In the Hunga-
ry of these years, Interkoncert, along with the state-owned record compa-
ny Hungaroton, collected the money earned from such activities, including
the more valuable Western currencies, and this was used to fund domestic
concerts and other musical projects within the country.
In this context the musical social life of Hungary was represented by
the Association of Hungarian Musicians (AHM), which included compos-
ers, performing artists, musicologists, music education experts, and cho-
ral and wind band specialists, along with people engaged in the field of
“mass music”, including the top entertainment and pop music artists.
These groups all had their own departments that organised the related pro-
grammes, often at a high professional level. The Association of Hungarian

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