International Seminars on New Music, Smolenice

Annual International Seminars on New Music were organized on the initiative of musicologist Peter Faltýn and composers Peter Kolman and Ladislav Kupkovič at the end of 1960s. The first three years of the event, held at Smolenice castle near Bratislava in 1968-1970, attracted Stockhausen, Kagel, Ligeti, Lutoslawski and other personalities to Slovakia and thus created an important platform for presentation of domestic musical production and for its confrontation with world trends. Unfortunately, the partial opening of iron curtain and the general cultural upsurge of the 1960s were frozen by tanks in 1968. Neo-stalinistic "normalization" of the early 1970s violently pushed this - and not only this - creative branch beyond the borders of permitted cultural activities. A number of composers were pushed into background, established international contacts were lost, public interest in experimenting decreased.[1]

See also: Electroacoustic_music_in_Slovakia