Page 27 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

The Coexistence of the Social, the Professional and the Artistic
publisher purchased a specific number of the Society’s editions, bound
them in covers with its own logos, and presented them on the internation-
al market as its own editions.
The signing of the agreement attracted considerable attention in do-
mestic cultural circles, since it was the first of its kind in Yugoslavia. The
Society was very proud of it, although from the point of view of revenue, the
results for Slovene composers were not exactly encouraging. In actual fact,
some aspects of the arrangement, including the printing of additional cata-
logues and brochures in foreign languages, meant that fulfilling the agree-
ment caused considerable additional expenses for the Society. Even so, the
final balance could be said to be positive, primarily because the partner-
ship with Hans Gerig was the first direct connection with the internation-
al publishing market. At a time when the Society was still establishing itself
as an independent music publishing house, it opened the door to opportu-
nities which, for reasons including politics, a lack of business connections
and unfamiliarity with market principles, it would not have obtained on
its own. Following this first international partnership, the next ones came
more easily. In 1974 the Society signed its second international general rep-
resentation agreement, this time with the German publisher Edition Peters
17
of Leipzig.
This was followed by a third agreement in 1978 with the Hungarian
publisher Editio Musica Budapest. The contract with the largest Hungarian
music publisher was signed at the Edicije DSS exhibition, which was held at
the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest in March 1978. This agree-
ment granted DSS the rights to represent the publisher’s performance ma-
terials throughout Yugoslavia, thereby increasing the society’s income and
furthering its growing reputation. 18
The publishing activities of the Society also included new initiatives
such as a collection of early Slovene works entitled Slovensko glasbeno iz-
ročilo (The Slovene musical tradition), launched in 1967, which, however,
did not remain under the Society’s auspices for long and in 1972 was ceded
under contract to the publishing house Obzorje, along with the funds ear-
marked for it; the Society’s newsletter Bilten (Bulletin), produced under the

17 D(ane) Š(kerl), “Veliko priznanje. Glasbeno-založniško sodelovanje med Edicijami
Društva slovenskih skladateljev in Edition Peters iz Leipziga,” Delo XVI, no. 230
(1974): 8.
18 Minutes of the General Assembly of the Slovene Composers’ Society, 17 May 1978
and Letter from the DSS to the Slovenian Institute for International, Scientific, Tech-
nical and Educational-Cultural Cooperation, 18 September 1978, DSS Archive.

27