Page 265 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

To be or not to be a civil association?
3
this was called the Hungarian Art Music Society. We all felt that new or-
ganisations were needed. One of the first of these was the Hungarian Com-
posers’ Union, followed by organisations for performing artists, music
educators, music schools and so on, including societies for individual in-
struments. The first umbrella organisation, the Hungarian Music Council,
had over 40 members. The boom year was 1990, when the Composers’ Un-
ion, Music Council and a great many other societies were founded. The first
freely elected government also began making great changes to the structure
of the music scene. On seeing that the Music Council had many member
societies which did not follow the right-wing government line, the author-
ities decided to establish another umbrella organisation. This became the
Hungarian Chamber of Music, which later changed its name to the Hungar-
ian Music Forum. (Look, we are in Hungary, where everything is soon di-
vided into at least two separate institutions…)
As soon as the Music Council was founded, the Hungarian Com-
posers’ Union decided not to ask for membership. The board noted that
the Union was not one of the smaller societies, and that its voice would be
heard much better if it did not join an umbrella organisation, and instead
remained independent. As soon as the other umbrella organisation stepped
on the stage, we all felt we had been right to avoid joining. What was the re-
sult of this? For many long years both left- and right-wing governments in-
vited three organisations to discuss everything in musical life: the two um-
brella organisations and the Composers’ Union. It was the same with the
various self-governing bodies and the media as well.
Starting in 2010, the role of civil society in Hungary gradually dimin-
ished, a political course that continues to this day. The sad fact is that nei-
ther the Music Council nor the Composers’ Union are engaged with by
the government, while the second umbrella organisation, the Music Forum,
has already ceased its activities. There were almost two decades in which
the Minister of Culture simply chose from a list produced by musical or-
ganisations the person to whom he wanted to award certain ministerial
4
prizes (not only in music, but in all kinds of arts). Under this system, we –
the delegates of the various music societies and members of the award-pro-
posing committees – were always satisfied that, regardless of artistic pref-
erences and very much regardless of political pressures, we could come to
3 Budapest Music Center, “Zsolt Durkó,” BMC Database, https://info.bmc.hu/en
/composers/21-durko-zsolt.
4 In the field of music, the main prizes are the Liszt Prize for performers, Erkel Prize
for composers, and Szabolcsi Prize for musicologists.

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