ACM ran concert series and published magazines promoting the modernist music of Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Krenek, and Hindemith, as well as the work of its members.
Its leading members were Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Vissarion Shebalin, Alexander Mosolov, Gavriil Popov, and Vladimir Shcherbachev.
The organization's enthusiasm for avant-garde Western music and for experimentation met with opposition from the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), which by the late 1920s had eclipsed the ACM in terms of cultural influence.
ASM was formally disbanded in 1931,[1] whereas RAPM existed until 23 April 1932, when it was abolished by the Decree on the Reformation of Literary and Artistic Organizations.
Eminent composers like Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke, Valentin Silvestrov, and Tigran Mansuryan were invited to join the ACM.