Page 320 - 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
with Lucijan Marija Škerjanc and conducting with Danilo Švara, gradu-
ating in both disciplines in 1958. Petrić, who headed the DSS’s publishing
arm Edicije Društva slovenskih skladateljev from 1970 until 2002, was also
the Ensemble’s artistic director from the outset. It is via him that the En-
semble’s activities are most closely connected to those of the Society of Slo-
vene Composers (DSS).
This article is an attempt to determine the degree of interdependence
between the Ensemble and the DSS and answer the question of how the ac-
tivities of the Ensemble (until they ceased in 1981) contributed to the inter-
national affirmation and promotion of the creative work of DSS members
in other countries.
There is no doubt that the younger generation of composers who joined
together to form Pro musica viva, the most important group of avant-gar-
de Slovene composers after the Second World War, shared a desire to have
their own compositions heard and exchange artistic ideas. 1
Although the authorities of the day did not explicitly prohibit contacts
between Slovene composers and their foreign counterparts, in practice it
was anything but easy for Slovene composers to establish personal con-
2
tacts with the West, since financial assistance for journeys abroad was very
limited and “carefully” allocated. The activity of an ensemble of this kind,
which encouraged the creation of new Slovene music, therefore seemed all
the more crucial. As Petrić notes, no one was interested in composing mu-
sic merely for it to be left “in the drawer.” 3
Petrić goes on to say:

At that time the need for an ensemble like this was ‘in the air’. The main
thing that differentiated us from Collegium musicum was that we placed
an emphasis on [Slovene] works. And so we appeared for the [very] first
time at the evening of twentieth-century chamber music organised by
1 Matjaž Barbo, Pro musica viva (Ljubljana: Znanstveni inštitut Filozofske fakultete,
2001), 90.
2 During the first decade after the war, cooperation with Western European cultur-
al metropolises was practically impossible. More or less carefully selected delega-
tions of Yugoslav composers were sent to contemporary music festivals. Leon Ste-
fanija, “Totalitarnost režima in glasba,” in In memoriam Danilo Pokorn, eds. Nataša
Cigoj Krstulović, Tomaž Faganel and Metoda Kokole (Ljubljana: Muzikološki in-
štitut ZRC SAZU, 2004), 139, https://omp.zrc-sazu.si/zalozba/catalog/download/827
/3497/290?inline=1.
3 The conversation with Ivo Petrić is documented in full in the fifth chapter of Tjaša
Štular’s bachelor’s thesis. Tjaša Štular, Glasbeno delo Ansambla Slavko Osterc (B.A.,
University of Ljubljana, 1998), 96–9.

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