Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology Od 1991 roku Katedra Muzykologii Uniwersytetu im.Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, z inicjatywy ówczesnego Kierownika Katedry prof. dr hab. Jana Stęszewskiego i dra Macieja Jabłońskiego, organizowała spotkania muzykologów z całej Europy – międzynarodowe konferencje pod nazwą Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology. Organizatorzy cyklu konferencji wyszli z założenia, że na nowocześnie definiowany przedmiot badań muzykologicznych musi składać się refleksję wielu dziedzin, gdyż dopiero na przecięciu owych trajektorii myślenia o muzyce, w wyniku interdyscyplinarnego właśnie oglądu, powstaje prawdziwy i przekonujący obraz fenomenu dzieła muzycznego, czy muzyki w ogóle. To przekonanie nie jest współczesnym pomysłem, odwołuje się bowiem do Adlerowskich Hilfsdisziplinen, ale także do całej tradycji uprawiania muzykologii. Dziś, w dobie dominacji myśli ponowoczesnej, to przekonanie nabiera nowego oblicza. W czterech edycjach konferencji w Poznaniu gościli badacze w wielu krajów: Niemiec, Austrii, Finlandii, Stanów Zjednoczonych, Czech, Wielkiej Brytanii, Włoch, Hiszpanii, Francji, Rosji, Izraela i Polski, reprezentujący szerokie spektrum dziedzin nauki o muzyce: historię, estetykę, semiotykę, antropologię kulturową, filozofię, akustykę i psychologię, socjologię. Biorąc pod uwagę dotychczasowe doświadczenia Katedra Muzykologii UAM podjęła starania, by powołać serię wydawniczą w formie międzynarodowego rocznika muzykologicznego pod nazwą Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology. Od 1993 roku opublikowano 9 tomów. Wśród członków Komitetu Redakcyjnego znaleźli się wybitni muzykolodzy ze świata: prof. prof. Eero Tarasti (Helsinki), Helen Geyer (Weimar), Reinhardt Strohm (Londyn), Mario Baroni (Bolonia), Karol Berger (Stanford) oraz uczeni polscy: prof. prof. Danuta Jasińska (Poznań), Jan Stęszewski (Warszawa – Poznań), Michał Bristiger (Warszawa) i Ryszard J. Wieczorek (Poznań). Redaktorem naczelnym serii jest Maciej Jabłoński (Poznań). Od 2010 roku ISM wydają wspólnie Poznańskie Wydawnictwo Przyjaciół Nauk oraz Wydawnictwo UAM.

(ang.) Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology Since 1991, the Chair of Musicology at the Adam Mickiewicza University in Poznań has hosted international conferences known as Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology. The conference organisers worked on the assumption that the subject matter of musicological studies, to be defined in agreement with current trends, must take in reflection from many fields. Only where such trajectories of musical thought cross, as a result of interdisciplinary scrutiny, does a true and convincing image of a musical work or music in general emerge. This conviction is not a new idea as it refers to the Adlerian concept of Hilfsdisziplinen but also to the whole tradition of practicing musicology. Taking into account the experience from previous conferences and the response of our guests and observers to successive volumes of conference proceedings, we have resolved to start a series of publications in the form of an international musicological yearbook to be called Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology. We intend to publish first papers delivered at the international conferences and guest papers given by scholars from many European countries, United States and Poland. The Editorial Board of ISM is represented by the eminent scholars: prof. prof. Eero Tarasti (Helsinki), Helen Geyer (Weimar), Reinhardt Strohm (London), Mario Baroni (Bolonia), Karol Berger (Stanford), Danuta Jasińska (Poznań), Jan Stęszewski (Warszawa – Poznań), Michał Bristiger (Warszawa) i Ryszard J. Wieczorek (Poznań). Maciej Jabłoński (Poznań) is a editor – in – chef of the series. Since 1993 we published nine volumes of Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology, which is now published by the Adam Mickiewicz University Press and the Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences.

Redaktor naczelny: Piotr Podlipniak
Kontakt:Instytut Muzykologii UAM
ul. Uniwersytetu Poznańskiego 7
61-614 Poznań
tel. (061) 829 14 00
e-mail: muzykolo@amu.edu.pl
strona www: http://muzykologia.amu.edu.pl
Nazwa wydawcy: Instytut Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN
ISSN 1734-2406

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A Polish saint. Historical-national themes in Franz Liszt’s oratorio ‘St Stanislaus’
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Golianek, Ryszard Daniel
Saint Stanislaus, a Polish bishop murdered in 1079 by King Boleslaus the Bold, is the title character of Franz Liszt’s oratorio St Stanislaus. The libretto of St Stanislaus has several authors – the fi rst author was the Cracow man of letters and folklore scholar Lucjan Siemieński, whom Liszt asked to write a text for his oratorio. The libretto, completed in 1869, was translated by Peter Cornelius, who made certain changes to the order of events. Not until 1874 did Liszt set about writing the music for his oratorio in earnest, and that was when he asked Cornelius to revise the libretto. The author’s premature death thwarted that intention, and so Liszt was forced to seek other authors. The version prepared several years later by Karl Erdmann Edler fi nally met the composer’s expectations. In its fi nal version, the libretto comprises four scenes, which form a logical sequence of events and at the same time serve to emphasise Stanislaus’ spiritual strength and the causative power of his actions. Liszt did not succeed in setting the whole text of the libretto; the extant material covers only scenes 1 and 4. The musical style of St Stanislaus indicates that the composer drew on various types of musical inspiration and technique. Hence the work is characterised by a certain heterogeneity – a synthetic character that encapsulates a nineteenth-century aesthetics. Nevertheless, the oratorio is undoubtedly one of the most distinctive manifestations of Liszt’s interest in Polish subjects. The presence of quotations from the Polish songs ‘Boże, coś Polskę’ and ‘Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła’ lends the work a distinct national colouring and evokes a mood of solemnity and religious contemplation, as well as the aura of triumph, victory and domination. Such an attitude may be symptomatic of the typically nineteenth-century perception of Poland as a tormented nation deprived of its statehood, which thanks to its valour and resilience will ultimately regain its independence.
About music, philosophy and science ...
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2011) Dankowska, Jagna
The text attempts to answer the question whether musicians need a philosophy of music. The answer to the question of what music contributes to philosophy – a question superordinate in relation to the investigations of the links between philosophy and music – can be formulated clearly, since we find it in the texts of the most prominent representatives of European philosophical thought, including Schopenhauer, whose ideas are discussed in the paper. These issues are also discussed in literature which explores philosophical issues, by such classics of the genre as Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse, whose profound descriptions bring us closer to an understanding of that which music does directly, by expressing spheres beyond words that cannot be expressed otherwise than through music. Karl Popper regards polyphony as the greatest discovery of European culture, and provides evidence of the closeness of science and philosophy. These three levels of approaching the relationship between philosophy and music lead to demonstrating the axiological essence of music, revealed by performers, who make it possible for music to exist to the full in its sonority, unveiling its metaphysical perfection to its listeners.
Accents of Chopin anniversaries in territories annexed by Prussia
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2010) Piotrowska, Magdalena
This article discusses the way in which the Chopin Year of 1910 was celebrated in Wielkopolska. It presents a script prepared in the nineteenth century and shows similarities with celebrations of Mickiewicz and other Polish heroes and artists. Invariably used in such commemorations was a “symbolic capital” that made it easier to create an intergenerational code, thereby disseminating knowledge of national culture and history. A significant role was played in 1910 by a centenary panel, which produced “Guidelines for popular Chopin celebrations” and also many occasional, popular materials. Chopin’s induction into the national pantheon involved the use of audio material (vocal and instrumental concerts), verbal material (articles, poems, lectures and brochures) and also a visual code (anniversary window stickers, tableaux vivants or tableaux illuminés). Illuminated pictures – recommended by a catalogue of slides produced in Poznań – stimulated the imagination of the masses and served as a guide through the composer’s life and work, and their impact was enhanced by a commentary. Most of the living pictures were probably inspired by Henryk Siemiradzki’s canvas Chopin grający na fortepianie w salonie księcia Radziwiłła [Chopin playing the piano in Prince Radziwiłł’s salon] and Józef Męcina Krzesz’s painting Ostatnie akordy Chopina [Chopin’s last chords]. This combination of codes made it possible to create a model adapted to the times and to the expectations of a mass audience. The Chopin anniversary, in which admiration was inseparably intertwined with manipulation, was a pretext for strengthening the national identity.
Aldo Clementi musicus mathematicus
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Carapezza, Paolo Emilio
Like that of Liszt and Stravinsky, the composers by whom he was attracted in his adolescence and early youth, Aldo Clementi’s (Catania 1925-Rome 2011) musical production went through various phases, greatly changing on the surface and in appearance, though not in depth and substance. He himself suggests a division into fi ve phases: 1. Preliminary (1944-1955), juvenile and apprenticeship works. 2. Structural (1956-1961). 3. Informal material (1961-1964). 4. Non-formal optical (1966-1970). 5. Polydiatonic (1970-2011): groups of letters indicating musical notes (for example: B-A-C-H), or canti dati (modal or tonal – monodic or polyphonic – compositions of the western tradition, from the Stele of Sicilus to Stravinsky), but most often segments of melodic lines inferred from them. But – in the polyphonic counterpoint that derives from it – they are simultaneously intoned in the different voices in different tonalities: hence their superimposition restores the chromatic dodecaphonic total. Clementi himself proclaims the constitutional continuity of this development. The substance of his music consists in the direct transposition of a fi gurative project into a sonorous structure. Geometrie di musica: the title of the 2001 book by Gianluigi Mattietti refers fi rst of all, as the subtitle says, to The diatonic period of Aldo Clementi, but it perfectly defi nes his whole musical production, all pervaded by dense polyphonic counterpoints. For Clementi construction is a goal, not a means to articulate discourse: indeed, he was even to do without discourse in his three central creative periods; and when in the fi fth and latest one he has returned to it, he has enslaved it entirely to construction: he draws fragments from it, to be used as raw material, i.e. the diatonic subjects, of his dodecaphonic counterpoints. After the different phenomenology of the eruptions of sound matter of Varčse and Stravinsky, Clementi’s music represents a further peak of pure construction in the sonorous space. His counterpoint however, like Webern’s, is limpid, subtly articulated, and dominated by reason: but here construction reigns supreme, and the composer in accordance with his requirements uses discursive melodic segments as raw material, as bricks (“modules” he says, and he describes them as mosaic tiles). “The idea of a construction achieved with the dovetailing of mirror-like images is also at the base of the fi gurative research of Escher, hinging on the concept of division of the plane, through repeated fi gures, mirror-like and congruent” (Mattietti). Indeed, Clementi’s music is “disciplina quae de numeris loquitur” (discipline that speaks of numbers), according to the defi nition by Cassiodorus, rather than “scientia bene modulandi” (art of singing well), according to the defi nition by Augustine; and it is, more precisely, paraphrasing the famous defi nition by Leibniz, “exercitium arithmeticae manifestum coscientis se numerare animi” (evident arithmetical exercise of the mind aware of counting). Three compositions of Clementi’s polydiatonic period are here thoroughly considered: two canons for string quartet, the very simple four-voiced Canone on a fragment by Platti (1997) and the very complex eight-voiced Tributo (1988) on “Happy birthday to you!”; and a de-collage, Blues and Blues 2, “fantasies on fragments by Thelonious Monk”, for piano (2001).
An unknown collection of music manuscripts from Otyń (Wartenberg)
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Frankowski, Patryk; Mądry, Alina
The Museum of Musical Instruments in Poznan (a branch of the National Museum) is in possession of a very important collection of music manuscripts from the former Jesuit monastery in Otyń (Ger. Wartenberg), which was dissolved in 1776. The activities of this centre were associated primarily with the fi gure of Karol Reinach, the monastery’s last superior (from 1753). Reinach maintained friendly relations with Frederick II the Great, who was an ardent fl autist, as we know, and visited Otyń from time to time. The Otyń manuscripts were bequeathed to the museum in 1947, along with three preserved instruments: a pair of kettledrums and a bass viola da gamba. At present, the collection of manuscripts from the Jesuit ensemble of Otyń contains fi fty-six compositions, written between 1753 and 1768. Thirty-one pieces have fully certifi ed provenance, refl ected on the title pages of the manuscripts in the form of inscriptions, such as ‘pro Choro Residentiae Wartenbergensis’, and in the names of the Otyń transcribers. Twenty-two compositions were classifi ed as belonging to the Jesuit collection on the basis of its inventory number, placed in the top right corner. Seventeen of the preserved manuscripts were provided with exact dates of origin (ten compositions were dated to the day, the other seven to a particular year). In these manuscripts, one can fi nd compositions of the following types: offertoria, antiphons, Marian hymns (mostly arias), litanies, carols, a cantata, a dialogue and a sequence. All of them are vocal-instrumental. The lyrics were written in Latin and German, and their subject matter is mostly connected with the Marian cult (the antiphons Ave Regina Caelorum, Alma Redemptoris Mater and Regina Coeli Laetare; the hymn Ave Maris Stella), Jesuit themes (a litany of St John Nepomucen, a prayer of St Francis Xavier, O Deus Amo ego te) and Christmas (carols). The well-known composers include František Xaver Brixi (1732–1771), Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739–1799), Carl Heinrich Graun (1704–1759), Johann Adolph Hasse (1699–1783) and Karel Loos (1724–1772), and there are also the less well-known or nearly unknown, such as Carolus Gaebel [Gébel], F. Passelt [?], Joseph Rhödigez, Antonio Josepho Ronge (or Runge [?]), Francisco Rudolph and Wollmann. The continued examination of the collection will certainly reveal more details that are unknown or as yet barely identifi ed. The research is due to be capped with the publication of a thematic catalogue of Otyń’s music manuscripts and their registration in the RISM database.
An unknown source concerning Esaias Reusner Junior from the Music Collection Department of Wrocław University Library
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Joachimiak, Grzegorz
The Music Collection Department of Wrocław University Library is in possession of an old print that contains the following inscription: ‘Esaias Reusner | fürste Brigischer | Lautenist’. This explicitly indicates the lutenist Esaias Reusner junior (1636–1679), who was born in Lwówek Śląski (Ger. Löwenberg). A comparative analysis of the duct of the handwriting in this inscription and in signatures on letters from 1667 and 1668 shows some convergences between the main elements of the script. However, there are also elements that could exclude the possibility that all the autographs were made by the same person. Consequently, it cannot be confi rmed or unequivocally refuted that the inscription is an autograph signature of the lutenist to the court in Brzeg (Ger. Brieg). The old print itself contains a great deal of interesting information, which, in the context of Silesian musical culture of the second half of the seventeenth century and biographical information relating to the lutenist, enable us to become better acquainted with the specifi c character of this region, including the functioning of music in general, and lute music in particular. The print contains a work by Johann Kessel, a composer and organist from Oleśnica (Ger. Öls), who dedicated it to three brothers of the Piast dynasty: Georg III of Brzeg, Ludwig IV of Legnica and Christian of Legnica. It is a ‘Paean to brotherly unity’, which explains the reference to Psalm 133. Published in Brzeg, for the New Year of 1663, by Christoff Tschorn, the print also includes two poetic texts: a sophisticated elegiac distich in the form of a tautogram and a New Year’s ode. It is beneath these texts that we fi nd the above-mentioned inscription relating to Esaias Reusner Jnr. Regardless of whether the autograph on the print is ascribed to Reusner or not, it does indicate his connection with this print, and probably with Kessel’s composition as well. Consequently, we can discover what kind of repertoire the Silesian lutenist played besides familiar lute pieces by his teachers, his own works, and arrangements of his works for chamber ensemble.
Audiomarketing – music as a tool for indirect persuasion
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2011) Makomaska, Sylwia
In modern society, music penetrates most of our everyday activities, and so one is not surprised that it has become commonplace, and even expected by consumers, in places of sale. Contemporary shops are no longer merely points of sale. They have become a sort of medium between clients, on one hand, and vendors and producers, on the other. Audiomarketing is a term used to define a modern marketing tool that uses music to create the unique atmosphere of a particular place and to influence consumer in places of sale. To explain the audiomarketing phenomenon, a review of selected studies concerning the problem of emotional responses to music has been presented. These findings are supported by a review of some investigations indicating that music can have a strong impact on consumer behaviour (e.g. music and the speed of customer activity, music and time perception, the effects of music on sales, etc.). The presented examples of experimental research provide excellent proof that it is worth introducing suitably chosen music into a space where people buy and consume. This is due above all to the fact that present-day society, overwhelmed by vociferous messages, prefers emotional arguments, and music can act as an excellent tool for communicating with consumers on an emotional level.
Between opera and the Lied – ‘Tre sonetti di Petrarca’ by Franz Liszt
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Wojtczak, Ziemowit
Franz Liszt composed his songs in the time when Europe was at the peak of the development of the Romantic form – das Lied. However, it seems that not all of Liszt’s songs should be discussed from this perspective, pointing at least at signifi cant infl uences of the 19th century Italian opera. The second version of a set of Tre sonetti di Petrarca refl ects not only some changes in the composer’s technique or style, but above all, constitutes an evidence of certain tendencies in perceiving vocal technique and the development of Italian and European vocal aesthetics. It might be assumed that, even though the music construction of the second version of the Sonnets – particularly in the layer of melody of the vocal part – brings to mind the Italian operatic aria in its almost purest form, the deeply emotional musical interpretation of Petrarch’s most beautiful love lyrics seems to strongly derive from the already shaped German Romantic song. On the whole, the masterpiece is a bit eclectic, which in the light of Liszt’s reference to the past (belcanto form of an Italian aria, Renaissance lyrics) constitutes – as it could be called today – the author’s postmodern reinterpretation.
Bonum ex integra causa... A dialogue with Mieczysław Tomaszewski's concept of integral interpretation
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Jabłoński, Maciej
The article presents an in-depth and detailed refl ection on the concept of „integral interpretation” put forward by the Polish musicologist Mieczysław Tomaszewski. The problematics of interpretation has for many years been the focus of Tomaszewski’s attention and interest, as evidenced by his numerous publications devoted to it. They culminate in the formulation of this concept, described by the author as the method of an adequate interpretation of a musical work. In contrast to many contemporary approaches to the issue of the scope of musicology’s subject area, for Tomaszewski the concept of a musical work is central to the discipline, and he poses questions concerning its ontology and understanding in the spirit of Roman Ingarden’s theory of musical work, to which he frequently refers. Tomaszewski regards the process of interpretation as a kind of „rising” to the level of the work, the meaning of which (intentio operis), often identifi ed with the authorial meaning (intentio auctoris), stands at the highest point in the hierarchy of meanings ascribed – from this point of view – to the work. In turn, the work itself functions in different phases, existing as a score, a performance, a result of the processes of perception and as its reception within a culture. In my article I attempt not only to present Tomaszewski’s method, but above all to argue against its anachronicity and limitations resulting from a lack of reference both to contemporary artistic practice and contemporary research methodology in the humanities and in musicology.
Chopin and jazz. The case of Andrzej Jagodziński’s arrangement of the Prelude in E minor
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2010) Madeła, Patrycja
The current of jazz interpretations of Chopin’s music appeared in Polish jazz in the early 1990s. On the one hand, it is the most original and native stylistic trend of all trends influencing jazz in Poland. On the other, it is an exceptional phenomenon internationally, since no works of classical music have received so many jazz arrangements worldwide. The achievements of Polish jazz pianists in this regard have become most representative, since piano texture and the process of improvisation on a given theme show the most obvious references – not only musically, but also emotionally – to the musical language of Chopin. The recording of the award-winning album Chopin by the Andrzej Jagodziński Trio in December 1993 triggered a host of artistic arrangements of Chopin works by Polish jazz pianists, each of which constitutes an individual approach to the Chopin material, reflected in basic factors such as the criteria for the selection of compositions or themes and the process of the original’s transformation. Most jazz arrangements of Chopin’s music involve the piano miniatures that dominate the composer’s oeuvre. This is due to the clarity of the melodic lines, which inspire artists to turn them into themes for jazz standards. The Prelude in E minor, Op. 28 No. 4 has become the most frequently arranged piece of Chopin’s music in the field of jazz. The numerous arrangements are also stylistically diverse. Jagodziński’s arrangement is an example of this pattern being adapted for use in a jazz context. For him, the themes and mood of Chopin’s music have become a pretext for the creation of his own jazz compositions largely inspired by Chopin’s melodies and harmonies, but also by symmetrical form. Arrangements of Chopin’s music have been continually criticised by purists, who regard such procedures as a sort of profanation (any patriotic content in Chopin’s original compositions seems to vanish in the chaos of jazz improvisation, which disturbs the integral form of the originals). The basic problem here seems to be ignorance of the fact that Chopin’s music is essentially only a pretext, a kind of external emblem, for the creation of entirely new compositions, carrying different content, characterised by the author’s individuality.
Chopin and Polish FOLK
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2010) Dahlig-Turek, Ewa
Although Chopin’s music is continually analysed within the context of its affinities with traditional folk music, no one has any doubt that these are two separate musical worlds, functioning in different contexts and with different participants, although similarly alien to the aesthetic of mass culture. For a present-day listener, used to the global beat, music from beyond popular circulation must be “translated” into a language he/she can understand; this applies to both authentic folk music and the music of the great composer. In the early nineties, when folk music was flourishing in Poland (I extend the term “folk” to all contemporary phenomena of popular music that refer to traditional music), one could hardly have predicted that it would help to revive seemingly doomed authentic traditional music, and especially that it would also turn to Chopin. It is mainly the mazurkas that are arranged. Their performance in a manner stylised on traditional performance practice is intended to prove their essentially “folk” character. The primary factor facilitating their relatively unproblematic transformation is their descendental triple-time rhythms. The celebrations of the bicentenary of the birth of Fryderyk Chopin, with its scholarly and cultural events of various weight geared towards the whole of society, gave rise to further attempts at transferring the great composer’s music from the domain of elite culture to popular culture, which brings one to reflect on the role that folk music might play in the transmission and assimilation of artistic and traditional genres.
Chopin and the Warsaw literati – part two
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2010) Nowicka, Elżbieta
Chopin’s life in Warsaw fell at a time of important phenomena and processes in history, the arts, aesthetics, etc. This article deals with the artistic and social milieu to which the composer belonged and looks at the question of the common artistic imagination and aesthetic ideas elaborated within that environment, based on the example of Chopin and two poets: Stefan Witwicki and Dominik Magnuszewski. Chopin’s relationship with Witwicki, which gave rise to his songs to the poet’s texts and lasted into their time in exile, is considered in respect to discussion on folk culture that was on-going at that time. That culture was treated as a sign of the nobly archaic or else as a manifestation of modern art, of the “art of the future”. These convictions did not function as alternatives; their overlapping characterised various aspects of early romanticism. The output of Magnuszewski, meanwhile, shows the transformation of traditional figures of rhetoric into Romantic means of expression. It displays a style of writing that constitutes an act of Romantic hermeneutics in respect to the language of tradition. Avoiding simple comparisons of works of very different artistic level and significance, the author analyses Chopin’s relationships with the two poets by reference to the generational experience – as variously understood – of creative artists born during the first decade of the nineteenth century, which connected artists of different levels of talent and varying individual fortunes.
Chopin – Grottger
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2010) Poniatowska, Irena
Is Stanisław Tarnowski’s linking of Fryderyk Chopin and Artur Grottger in his Dwa szkice [Two sketches] justified? Well, the connection is substantiated by the “Romantic-leaning” point of view and the idea of the correspondance des arts that characterised the nineteenth century in which the two creative artists (and Tarnowski himself) lived, although they represented different creative fields. Both the musician Chopin and the artist Grottger were regarded as poets. The former on account of the poetic of his piano playing and musical works, the latter for the poetical dimension of his pictures devoted to the January Rising. Tarnowski called Chopin the fourth bard of Poland, alongside Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński, and Grottger the poet of the Rising, since – as he paradoxically stated – the poetical narrator of those events could only be an artist. Terminology of a literary character belonged to the lexicon of notions employed by critics of art and music at that time. Besides this, the national character is inscribed in the idiom of the work of both these creative artists – the thoroughly patriotic stance that was so strongly manifest in the output of Polish romanticism. Another common denominator in their work is the concept of the cycle. With Chopin, the 24 Preludes, Op. 28 comprise a cycle in which the bonding element is the succession of major keys and their relative minor keys according to the circle of fifths, but they are also an expressive cycle of various states of mind, from despair to joyous reverie. The Preludes show both the semantic capacities and the suppleness of Chopin’s musical language; that is, the ability to express the same feelings through various purely musical means, without any programmatic motto. With Grottger, we have the cycles Warszawa [Warsaw] (two cycles), Polonia, Lituania and Wojna [War]. In them, the metonymy of the narrative sequences is coupled with the notional exposition, with the symbolism. Grottger portrays not the historical scenes of the Rising, but the feelings of grief, despair and fear of individual people, reflecting their experiences. And so the concept is similar. Chopin’s Preludes are like sketches, aphoristic utterances; sketches are also important in the work of Grottger, partly as a self-contained genre. A third plane of analogy is the reduction of media. Chopin confines himself essentially to the piano, from which he produces startling tonal qualities, although he did write several works for chamber or orchestral forces. Grottger, meanwhile, draws his cycles solely in black pencil, using white only to heighten contrasts and give the effect of chiaroscuro. He did not wish to distract the attention of viewers, but wanted them to concentrate on the symbol.
Contemporary music in central Italy: an overview of recent decades
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Mastropietro, Alessandro
The present article tries to make thematic the geographical plan of the present volume, by examining the major focal points of Contemporary Music in Central Italy which act as centres disseminating compositional trends through a long-established interest in recent music, as well as didactical structures and important teachers. Clearly, Rome is a more infl uential centre than Florence (where the endemic tendency of Florentine culture towards a sense of order, the settlement there of Dallapiccola, and the rise of a pioneering activity in the fi eld of electronic music since the ‘60s are noteworthy); this is due to the teaching – through different generations – of Petrassi, Guaccero, Donatoni, Corghi and now Fedele, as well as the presence of many musical institutions, and the availability of artists and writers involved in exchanges and collaborations with composers. For this reason, many composers who were educated or active in Rome developed an outstanding – often prophetic – predilection for mix-media or theatrical works. After Bussotti, Guaccero, Macchi and Bertoncini, Giorgio Battistelli is a pivotal fi gure representing this trend in the next generation of composers; nonetheless an aptitude for it can be perceived also in other composers from both generations (Clementi, Pennisi and Renosto; Sbordoni, Lombardi, Rendine, D’Amico and De Rossi Re), including among the younger ones Silvia Colasanti, Roberta Vacca and Francesco Antonioni. In parallel, electronic music has been cultivated by Evangelisti and Branchi, as a way of renewing musical thought and language from their foundations: researches in the musical application of digital processing have been remarkable in Rome, along with experimentation in real time sound-generation and -transformation (Nottoli, Lupone, Di Scipio). On the whole, the generation born in the 1950s seems to tend (in aesthetics as well as in poetics) towards a change of thinking about musical form, integrating paradigmatic (structural) categories, typical of serial music, with syntagmatic (fi ctional) ones. Such an integration is perceivable as early as in the works of Donatoni, which have widely infl uenced many younger Italian composers, whether they have studied under him or not. The compositional horizon in Central Italy will be examined, with a special focus on that generation, with regard to two issues: 1) Has this change been determined (or helped) by post-modernism? Before post-modernism became widespread during the 1980s, some composers from Rome had already elaborated a language which included heterogeneous sound materials and playing with musical codes, even if they did not deny the necessity of historical progress of musical language. Furthermore, postmodernism doesn’t suffi ce to explain the music of many composers, for whom the stratifi cation of musical language and the sphericity of internal relationship inside a work is a result of the theory of complexity. 2) What is the aesthetical and poetical tendency in the youngest generation of composers, since a radicalization between a fi ctional and a visionary approach seems to have been established in their music?
Federico Incardona and Giovanni Damiani
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Carapezza, Paolo Emilio
Together with Sciarrino and Casale, Incardona and Damiani are the most important composers trained at Palermo University’s Musicological Institute. Federico Incardona (Palermo, 1958–2006) reconciles the social commitment of Berg and the political tension of Nono with the sublimated eroticism of Szymanowski. If Nono’s works, like those of Evangelisti in a different way, blend dodecaphonic dialectic with the corporeity of the sound of Varèse, Incardona blends Evangelisti’s sonorous cosmogony with the erotic immediateness of Bussotti. But his principal reference point is Mahler. His music is rich in meaning and strong emotional intensity, concentrated and sublimated: it is like “processes of denuding of the melody, carnal embraces between the parts, dodecaphonic series modelled on the body of the loved one” (Spagnolo). Its “new linearity and temporal tension”, is wedded to the “absolute primacy of expression and emotion”, in full awareness of the “deep unity of emotion and knowledge” (Lombardi Vallauri). Indeed, in the intense expressionism of his music, dodecaphonic construction is always at the service of a dialectical discourse which is dense and deep, but – in his last works – clear and fl uid like a melody by Bellini. “Infi nite melos”, Marco Crescimanno defi nes it: harmonic richness and dense heterophonic complexities are blended; the counterpoint is based “on the superimposition of manifold variations on the same fi gure, with precise control of the vertical encounters on its melodic-harmonic hinges”. Born into a dynasty of engineers and architects, Giovanni Damiani (Palermo, 1966) is himself an engineer and architect, but in sound space. Rather than music, his works are organized Sound: “embodiment of the intelligence inherent in sounds themselves”, in the manner of Varèse, and specifi cally “sound vegetation”, in the manner of Bartók. His most important work, Salve follie precise (1998–2004: on a libretto in verse by Francesco Carapezza, based on Semmelweis et l’infection puerpérale that Louis-Ferdinand Céline wrote between 1924 and 1929), represents precisely the germination of life (of algae from water, of grass from rock, of man from woman, of sounds from Sound) and the threats of death that surround it, that is to say of regression of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to the mineral kingdom. In it Damiani exclusively uses, as previously in the great symphony Matrice/Organon (1995), natural harmonic sounds. We thus assist at harmonic germination; Sound generates sounds, the Note generates notes. If Damiani as a musicologist follows on from Réti, as a composer he follows on from Schenker. For him the note, seen as pure Sound internally structured a priori, is everything: the universe of artistic creation in sound space is only unfolding of the tension internal to the note itself. Everything (melody, tonality, polyphony, harmony), as Cesare Brandi wrote, “comes from the very nature of the note, which is, in the stratifi cation of harmonics, tonic, isolated note (of a melody), vertical chord and horizontal encounter of polyphonic lines”.
Form, fi gure, and the experience of time in seven southern composers of the 1950s-60s
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2012) Vallauri, Stefano Lombardi
After the 1980s it is diffi cult, following stylistic criteria, to draw a map of contemporary academic music. All styles are compossible, and all are practiced. In this context, the geographical entity “South of Italy” does not stand out for a musical identity with special technical-stylistic features. Rather, at a socio-cultural level, the South remains today – in music no less than in all areas where there is a gap between top development and stagnation – a land of emigrants: six out of the seven composers treated (Ivan Fedele, Giuseppe Colardo, Rosario Mirigliano, Giuseppe Soccio, Nicola Cisternino, Biagio Putignano, Paolo Aralla) live in the North of Italy. The positive aspect of this is the affi nity of the South with the transnational and superstructural community of contemporary music, which from European and Western has now become almost global. The composers under consideration belong to the generation of the ‘50s, rooted in the serial and post-serial movements (from which Franco Donatoni, Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono, Salvatore Sciarrino, Giacinto Scelsi, are the principals models, to mention only the Italians), dipped in the general phenomenon of timbrism (particularly spectralism), and acquainted with electronics. They draw from these sources various instruments of compositional technique and aspects of their poetics. In particular these composers, active from the ‘80s, develop new ways of construction of the temporal form of music. They share the goal to establish a new continuity, different from the tonal one but at the same time transcending the serial and post-serial disintegration and fragmentation. The primary means to this end is a new enhancement of the category of fi gure, as a clear and distinct, recognizable aggregate of pitches, intervals, register, durations, timbre, articulation, dynamics, and texture. Each composer elaborates the atonal fi gural material in different ways, emphasizing one aspect or another. For example, Fedele (1953) is a master in the management of form per se, Colardo (1953) in the activation of disturbed harmonic effects, Mirigliano (1950) in the creation of a slight tension from the smallest vibrations of sound, Soccio (1950) in the set up of movement by means of accumulations and discharges of energy, Cisternino (1957) in a Cagean-Scelsian emphasis on sound as such, Putignano (1960) in the suspension of time through the succession and transformation of images, Aralla (1960) in the foundation of form from below, from the concreteness of sound.
From the Editors
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2011) Humięcka-Jakubowska, Justyna; Podlipniak, Piotr
The tenth volume of Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology is devoted to the work of the outstanding Polish musicologist and acoustician, Professor Andrzej Rakowski, who celebrates his Eightieth Birthday in 2011. This dedication expresses the recognition of Professor Rakowski’s scientific achievements, as well as his steadfast efforts to improve the condition of Polish culture and music education.
From the Editors
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2010) Gmys, Marcin; Jasińska, Danuta; Lubońska, Anna
We hereby present the ninth volume in the series Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology, entitled 1810-1910-2010: Chopin’s Shadow. Transformations of the composer’s image in culture and the arts. As the title indicates – its first part is indebted to a poem by the once exceptionally popular Young Poland poet Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer – our interest was aroused more by the resonance of his music in the history of culture as broadly understood than by the composer’s actual oeuvre, around which an imposing, multi-storeyed library of Chopin scholarship has already been erected.
From the reprise overture to Liszt’s B minor Sonata. Romantic creations in an eighteenth century formal ‘corset’?
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Ryszka-Komarnicka, Anna
The present paper summarises the general affi nities that link the great romantic piano fantasies (Schubert’s Op. 15, Schumann’s Op. 17, Chopin’s Op. 49 and Liszt’s B minor Sonata) by means of the presence of dual structures of various kinds, including the tonal, formal and an extramusical, interpretational ‘false bottom’, the latest often of autobiographical nature. One of the most prominent dual structures present in all the above mentioned fantasies is a so-called ‘duble-function form’ (apart from far-reaching individualism in detailed solutions) which have no roots in the tradition of keyboard fantasia written by predecessors. As possible source of inspiration some oeuvres of Beethoven are often evoked. However, the paper juxtaposes them with the tradition of the so-called reprise-overture, a particular kind of sonata form (called also ‘interpolated sonata form’ as its key element consists in an intrusion of slow movement within the course of sonata form) that emerged in the circles of Italian 18th century opera, widespread often in conjunction with the scope to link an operatic sinfonia with the rest of the drama. Examples by Salieri, Mozart and Haydn are briefl y analyzed to show the variety of solutions and posing the hypothesis that reprise overture might be (as transferred well into the 19th century by many operatic composers and ‘kleine Meisters’ that used it in purely instrumental pieces) one of the possible – and unexpected – roots of the formal design of the greatest oeuvres in piano literature ever composed.
Fryderyk Chopin in popular instrumental music
(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2010) Kasperski, Jakub
The author considers whether Fryderyk Chopin and his oeuvre may be regarded as part of popular culture – and if so, to what extent. However, the text is mostly taken up with analysis of popular instrumental music inspired by Chopin’s works in various ways: from simple quotation, adaptation and transcription to more sophisticated instrumentation and arrangement, free improvisation or even the creation of a completely new work derived from a single motif or sample from Chopin. Consequently, the author deals with the problem of reception, but also with the issue of transculturation and the relationship between high and popular culture. The article shows and describes the variety of Chopin inspiration in a wide range of styles and genres of popular music, such as rock music, easy-listening, electronic music, dance music and disco.

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