Page 28 - 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
editorship of Borut Loparnik; and promotional leaflets for Slovene compos-
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ers prepared by Alojz Srebotnjak.
A significant expansion into the publishing of sound recordings came
with the launch of the Musica Slovenica collection of gramophone records,
a joint initiative of the Society, RTV Ljubljana and the Helidon label, which
began in 1970. The Society was not as fortunate in this venture as it had
been with Edicije DSS, for several reasons. First, when planning its release
programme it was entirely dependent on RTV’s recording schedule and
archive recordings; secondly, it was also dependent on Helidon’s release
schedule, which prioritised commercial sound recordings; thirdly, there
was the issue of the lack of availability of high-quality vinyl pellets to press
into discs. Once these difficulties were joined by the financial problems that
characterised the Society’s existence in the subsequent period, the decision
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was taken in 1979 to surrender the collection to Helidon. This led to a gap
in the Society’s music publishing activities that would not be filled until the
creation of the Ars SlovenicA digital collection in 1996. 21
At this point it is worth mentioning another significant expansion of
the Society’s activities in this period. Although the first initiative to com-
mission new Slovene works came from the Union of Composers of Yugo-
slavia, which in 1966 invited composers to create works to mark a political
jubilee, namely the 25 anniversary of the uprising of the Slovene nation,
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th
support for the creation of original Slovene musical works was from that
moment on a constant part of the Society’s programme.

The fourth period of the Society’s history
The fourth period of the Society’s history may be said to have begun after
the anti-liberal purges of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the new Yu-
goslav constitution introduced a system of “self-management cultural pol-
icy”. It was in this period that the first tendencies towards centralism and
unitarism began to be felt. These became apparent in education and cul-
ture through proposals for common core curricula, and also significantly

19 Anon., “Poziv na subskripcio zbirke Slovensko glasbeno izročilo,” Zvuk, no. 80
(1967): 83; Anon., “Seja UO DSS dne 1. 9.,” Bilten DSS II, no. 8 (1967): 7.
20 Minutes of the Committee for the Release of Slovenian Art Music Records, Decem-
ber 8, 1969 and document no. 224, 5 July 1979, DSS Archive.
21 Invitation to a press conference on the release of CDs, 18 April 15, 1997, DSS Archive.
22 Minutes of the Executive Board, 30 June 1966, DSS Archive.

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