Page 268 - 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
about this is that I do not see any ambition in my colleagues, even the young
ones, to take over. And perhaps this is a rude question, but is a composers’
association really that unimportant for the community of composers?
I remember, in the early 2010s, a friend of mine, the president of the Hun-
garian Art Music Society at the time, who I worked with very well – he used
to be the leader of the music department of the Ministry of Culture for some
years – once said to me: “the time of the artists’ societies is over, we are no
longer of interest to those in power”. I felt hurt and angry about this. Since then
he has passed away, but nowadays I feel that he was probably correct. I still feel
convinced that a community of professionals, a guild, is really important. But
a story comes to my mind here. In the early 1990s a Deputy State Secretary
of Culture who wanted to have an influence on Hungarian cultural life, like
“comrade” Aczél did in the communist era, told me a story. He went to Germa-
ny for some talks. There he was told that in Germany nobody knows who the
Minister of Culture is… Could it be that after a while there would be no inter-
est in a composers’ society, either? Let us say OK, no problem. But this would
mean that some more or less active and self-interested composers could create
a group of three or five members. But what then happens to those composers
who do not have the drive or talent to organise something like that?
The Slovenian Composers’ Union seems to be a promising example of
a solution to such a problem. So finally, good luck and much success to our
elder brother!

Bibliography
Literature
Boronkay, Antal, and Rachel Beckles Willson. “Láng, István.” Grove Music
Online, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.15963.
Csikota, Josef. “Development of Musical Culture in Hungary in the 20
th
Century.” In Proceedings of the International Conference on Arts, Social
Sciences, Education and Humanities (ICASSEE 2017), Advances in Social
Science, Education and Humanities Research 171. Paris: Atlantis Press, 2017.
https://doi.org/10.2991/icassee-17.2018.6
Halász, Péter. “Láng, István.” In Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart:
nd
Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, 2 rev. ed., edited by Ludwig Finscher.
Personenteil 10: Kem–Ker, 1154–5. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2003.

Other Sources
Budapest Music Center. “Zsolt Durkó.” BMC Data base. https://info.bmc.hu/en
/composers/21-durko-zsolt.

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