POKOLENIE STALOWOWOLSKIE [pdf] - Radio Katowice SA

1st Quartet (B Version), as far as the content is concerned, results largely from A Version, however is, both
expressionally and aesthetically, significantly different. And this is not only because it is definitely shorter.
This version of 1 st Quartet, dedicated to the composer’s wife Grażyna – also a composer – was conceived
in 1976 and was in the same year awarded the 1 st prize at the Artur Malawski’s Composer Competition,
and in the following year, on the 15 th of December 1977, the piece enjoyed its first performance in Cracow
by the Wilanów Quartet. On the contrary to the chronology of the conception of both versions – B Version
had its first performance prior to A Version. In the auto-commentary accompanying the piece, performed
again during the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1980, Andrzej Krzanowski wrote: “I had been inspired by the
memorable performance of Black Angels by Robert Crumb by the Wilanów Quartet in Warsaw and
Baranów Sandomierski, but also by the speech by Marek Dyżewski on Stabat Mater. The performers of
Quartet, apart from the actual standard instruments, also use the percussion instruments. The integral
part of the piece is a part of the tape with a recorded fragment of Quartet, a fragment of part IV of Karol
Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, fragments from the recited sequence of Stabat Mater, and the soprano vocal
realized by Olga Szwajgier. The dynamics of particular parts of the tape depends on the concept of the
performers, thus on every occasion slightly different sound valour can be obtained”.
This piece seems to be growing out of the space which Andrzej Krzanowski would build in his early days
in the cycle of works under the common title of Broadcasts. The “radiowise” title, the poetic word, and its
musical supplement. The word dug out onto the surface, along with its meaning and message, and has
never been treated as a collection of syllables, phonemes being scattered chaotically in the matter of
the musical sound. This B Version is also a peculiar “broadcast”, perhaps even more radio-like than any
other of his Broadcasts. After the first, purely quartet-like, part, there comes the second part, with the use
of the percussion instruments (four flexatones of a different volume, the tom-tom, the soprano and the
bass siren, and the bells), and four tapes with recorded elements, which brings the effect of the collage
montage, characteristic for the radio technique, and strongly underlines the expression of this musical
piety. This piece, also written at the end of 1976, is in some symbolic way meaningful – in that year, after
Andrzej Krzanowski’s monographic concert at the “Young Musicians for Young Town” Festival in Stalowa
Wola, a very similar to this one concert took place during the “Music Meetings” at Baranów Sandomierski.
This is also where the Wilanów Quarter performed George Crumb’s Black Angels for the string quartet;
and this is also where someone first expressed the opinion that the aesthetics of the Crumb’s music and
that of Krzanowski’s justifies the thought that there has come the beginning of the time of “new romanti-
cism” in music. This is then in this exactly a piece where the composer – perhaps quite unintentionally
– decides to continue this diagnosis.
*
In 2nd Quartet finished in November of 1978, Andrzej Krzanowski seems to have been drawing the
consequences from 1st Quartet (A Version). After B Version he comes to the music “strictly” quartet-like,
and “strictly” absolute, and that is without extra percussion instruments, without tapes with recorded
motifs, citations, and texts, without the aesthetics and strategy of his Broadcast cycle, which at that time
exactly on the monument of V he had just finished (the thread would anyway be picked up again in 1982
in Broadcast VI). Here, too, as well as in the works to come, he will not attempt to bind his music not
only with poetry, not only with quoting from the music of Karol Szymanowski, but also with opening it
intensely to the plastic arts, of which a very special example came to be Broadcast III, Broadcast V, and
the multimedial spectacle prepared in co-operation with Kazimierz Urbański, and presented for the first
time in the courtyard of the Baranów Castle in 1977, Transplainting, where on its musical level that we are
presented with the citation from the music of Karol Szymanowski, and over the castle, quite “aleatorically”
is rising the Moon… And this piece, too, was presented with the 3rd award at the following Karl Maria
Weber’s International Composer Competition in Dresden, this time in 1979. The composition enjoyed its
first performance by Silesian String Quartet of that time (Marek Moś – Arkadiusz Kubica – Witold Serafin
– Józef Gomolka) on the 18th of July 1981 in Bologna.
Let us now digress for a moment. The piece was conceived, coinciding with the time of the creation of the new
string quartet consisting of some students of the National Music Academy in Katowice. In the following year
(March of 1979) the ensemble was awarded the first prize at the International Competition for the Student
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Chamber Ensembles in Cracow, in August of 1980, then it was invited to participate at the International Festival
of String Quartets, organized by the Polish Radio and Television in Łódź, as well as to perform at the first
private festival organized by Elżbieta and Krzysztof Penderecki at Lusławice. It was then, in August 1980, that
the quartet acquired his actual name. It was the voice of Krzysztof Droba, who at that time, due to the political
pressure, was about to close down the time of programming his festival in Stalowa Wola (very soon though
he would come back to the same Tarnobrzeg-Sandomierz’s region…): KWARTET ŚLĄSKI! The members of
the ensemble objected at the beginning – perhaps the English name of SILESIAN would have sounded more
internationally…? No – said Droba, who was in charge of printing the program sheets of the upcoming festival
at Lusławice, and realizing that the performance in Łódź would take place a few days before. There is supposed