If there was one thing the Active Society for the Promotion of Contemporary Music did not do for contemporary music, it was to support Erik Chisholm. It did occasionally focus on Scottish composers, but there was no attempt to pursue a Scottish agenda, whether in terms of native composers or native idioms. Chisholm redressed the balance through his own compositions and by resurrecting the Dunedin Association (see Chapter 4).

Scotland had, and has, highly distinctive native idioms, and no one was more aware of this at the time than Chisholm himself. The latter half of this chapter is given over to discussion of several of the works in which he explored the Scottish idiom, but it is useful to begin with the background from which his unique and challenging contribution emerged.

There are those who, thinking to prove themselves cosmopolitan, consider any focus upon particular national styles a kind of offence against internationalism – a word rendered meaningless if there is no such thing as nationalism. In most sophisticated cultures this is not an issue: unfortunately, in Scotland it was and remains a major issue, and it was one which Chisholm himself had to confront.