Service, Legitimate Power, and Deep Novelty: Grażyna Bacewicz’s Instrumental Chamber Music

I    do not agree with a statement that I hear quite often that if a composer discovered his own musical language he should adhere to this language and write [only] in his own style. Such an approach to this matter is completely foreign to me, it is identical with the resignation from progress, from development. Each work completed today instantly becomes the past. A progressive composer would not agree to repeat even himself/herself. He/she has to not only deepen and perfect the achievements, but also broaden them.”
  —  Grażyna Bacewicz.

I    n terms of Polish music history, Bacewicz succeeded Szymanowski in the leadership role in her country, before relinquishing that position to Lutosławski and Penderecki. Her relative obscurity in the U.S. may be due to the conservative language of her music, reflecting her choice to conform to the political pressures of her times. Bacewicz’s music most often receives the adjectives ‘neoclassical’, ‘conservative’, and ‘influenced by Polish folk music’. Perhaps her apparent passivity was [in years past] of less interest to Americans than the rebelliousness and modernism of Lutosławski.”
  —  Ann McNamee, in MTO.

T here are rich textures and nuances that members of the Penderecki Quartet (PS4) are capable of. I was delighted to hear them perform recently and lucky to have a front-row seat, near enough that none of the delicacy was lost.

The Pendereckis’ repertoire covers the gamut from Baroque to new music and jazz but, founded as they were in Poland, they are particularly noteworthy for their accounts of Polish composers’ works. After the performance I went home and listened to their recording of Bacewicz’s String Quartet No. 3. Precise, disciplined: achieving a style that very much resembles the remarks that Grażyna Bacewicz herself made about her writing.

F    or me, composing is like sculpting in stone, not like transmitting the sounds of imagination or fleeting inspiration. The majority of contemporary composers work as systematically as bureaucrats. If there is no inspiration, one produces at best ‘workmanly’ pieces; if there is inspiration, the creative process prevails. Discipline—strict discipline in composition—is essential to for me... I walk quite alone, because I mainly care about ‘form’ in my compositions. It is because I believe that, if you place things randomly or throw rocks on a pile, that pile will always collapse. So in music there must be rules of construction that will allow the work to stand on its feet. Naturally, the ‘laws’ or rules need not be old, God forbid. The music may be either simple in design or highly constructed—that’s unimportant; it depends on the language of a particular composer and the expressive task at hand—but [the music] must be well constructed.”
  —  Grażyna Bacewicz.

    [50-sec clip, Penderecki Quartet, Bacewicz String Quartet No. 3, ‘Andante’, 1.6MB MP3]

    [50-sec clip, Penderecki Quartet, Bacewicz String Quartet No. 3, ‘Vivo’, 1.0MB MP3]

Some people have said the compositions of Bacewicz are ‘neoclassical’ and non-innovative. I wonder if such people ought not to sit in the front row and think again—or pick up the music and try to play it or analyze it, if they’re able. To deem someone’s work to be ‘non-innovative’ is an awfully serious charge, one that requires far more evidence than is usually offered. Anyhow, the chamber music of Grażyna Bacewicz does foster real experiences and deserves, I think, more frequent performance, especially in North America.

Returning home from the PS4 event, I listen to their account of Bacewicz—and the depth and surprise in this music make me wonder about the casual neglect that Bacewicz’s compositions have experienced in the U.S. Could it be that, ethnomusicologically, there has simply been a cultural ‘impedance mismatch’, in the sense that Bruno Nettl has discussed for 25+ years?

S    peaking cross-culturally, what may be heard as ‘new’ composition in one culture might be regarded as simple variation of something already extant in another.”
  —  Bruno Nettl.

W hy is unprecedented ‘novelty’ a card that should trump all others, anyway? Particularly in the present time of economic upheaval, Grażyna Bacewicz’s music pleases and intrigues the ear in somewhat the way that ‘comfort food’ pleases and intrigues a stressed and anxious tummy; in somewhat the way that a well-crafted novel pleases and intrigues and nourishes us. ‘Rich, warm and widely voiced, and graceful,’ as the New York Times’s Allan Kozinn wrote some 18 years ago. Maybe it was just so at the time that Bacewicz composed these pieces…

I    t is vital that the result has something transcendent. It is the ‘inner meaning’ [that matters]. While we [composers] may not aim [obsessively, compulsively] at inventing ‘original’ combinations of sounds, we are never complacent at having discovered a new sound effect. Our intention is, in any case, to create at least what would provide some kind of real experience for the listener—not just for ourselves.”
  —  Grażyna Bacewicz.

M aybe her results are primarily what we would call ‘neo-Classical’ or ‘neo-Romantic’; maybe her compositional methods are ‘conventional’. But to hear them honestly is to grasp that these are the works that she had in her; that she would have written, no matter what; that she needed to write.

It seems likely to me, in other words, that she was not always conforming herself to the norms set forth by state officials. ‘There is no spoon!’ That is to say, it seems likely that Grażyna stoically denied the external totalitarian, Matrix-oid dystopian spoonocracy that was incongenial to her expressive purposes, spawned a musical world of her own—complete, ab initio—and inhabited that flexible, rich, warm and widely voiced, graceful not-a-spoon world instead.

Yes, we’ve heard that in those days all Polish composers were ‘implicated’ in the actions of the government. We don’t doubt it. As Adrian Thomas has written, in 2000 and earlier, “There were no ‘exceptions’, no ‘saints’,” at least none among those who wanted to eat. In his first book and his journal articles Thomas provides extensive evidence as to how Bacewicz and her contemporaries bent their aesthetics to the requirements of then-prevailing socialist realism and the will of the state. Thomas carefully portrayed this state influence as pervasive—at least in his writings from 2000 and before—maintaining that all composers were hemmed in, all the time. I am in no position to dispute what has been well-argued and defended. I am not a revisionist.

But what if Bacewicz did not need to bend in order to have her works performed, in order to eat? What if her truths were just deep enough to keep her beyond the understanding of censors? What if Bacewicz’s complexities were far deeper than the available evidence and extant documents enable us to know. I will get a copy of Thomas’ new book (link below) to see what may be new in there. But—Think about it!—if one lives in dangerous times, there are certain things that one simply does not write down. One’s life story will, in such cases, necessarily be incomplete. But would you rather live your life fully-but-cryptically, or live less-fully-but-leaving-a-breadcrumbs-trail? It’s a pretty easy question to answer...

So it is possible. I think it is possible (but maybe unprovable) that Bacewicz’s preference for classical techniques and understated forms was a way she found to honor foundational personal and Polish values—the value placed in durability and centuries-long endurance, for example: finding the Dignity that inheres in the quotidian; finding the Ineffable in motherhood; finding the Transcendent through patience and a longer time-horizon than tomorrow—the necessity of doing so. The implications of her enigmatic and philosophical remarks in interviews and some of her correspondence (at USC library) do lead us to imagine Bacewicz to have had a spiritual view and esoteric motives that did not bow to any secular authority.

T    here she was in that darkened hospital ward [in October, 1954], fighting for her life—and, though she had difficulty talking, she spent the time [of our visit in the hospital] joking and refusing to discuss the accident or the seriousness of her condition with us. Her thoughts were of a future far removed from the present.”
  —  Stefan Kisielewski, ‘Grażyna Bacewicz i jej czasy’ [Bacewicz’s Times / Biography], p. 34.

I    was having a great time, but I kept feeling there was a conceptual poverty in the society I moved within… More and more I find I want to be living in a ‘Big Here’ and a ‘Long Now’ [with a time-horizon of dozens of generations, or millennia].”
  —  Brian Eno, quoted in Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now: Time & Responsibility, p. 28.

The textures and harmonies in Bacewicz’s chamber music are … like … those of sacred choral music. We expect—and composers demand of themselves—originality and innovation in writing sacred music, sure. But the standards for innovation are different in that realm. And the time-scale is the time-scale of myth and ritual, not the flash snap-scale of new-new and fashion. Bacewicz—at least in her instrumental chamber music and vocal chamber music, which have formed the scope of my own attention—seems to have embodied an ethic of ‘service’, much like the ‘servant ethic’ that attends to sacred compositional practice in general.


This String Quartet No. 3 is not a self-referential piece by a self-absorbed ‘neo-classical’ composer—it is an artifact of private ritual, consecrated and holy? This String Quartet No. 3 is not a quartetly ‘dialogue’ among four virtuosic adult musicians—it is instead a 38 year-old mother’s essay on togetherness and concerted activity long forestalled and now finally arrived? And other of her later string quartets—are these not informed by a mother’s meditation on the transcendent experience of giving birth and raising her family? of loss and long recovery from illness? of her close encounter with mortality? on the nature of duty and devotion? on waiting for what may never, ever come?

To answer such questions/speculations, you will probably have to ask Grażyna’s daughter, the artist and poet Alina Biernacka, or her sister Wanda, the poet and journalist, who is this year 95. Probably the answer will not be found in Thomas’s or Shafer’s cautious scholarship. Judith Rosen’s writing on Bacewicz does, however, pursue more expansive and personal dimensions.

W    szędzie dobrze, ale w domu najlepiej.
Everywhere’s fine, but it’s best at home.

Piękna miska jeść nie daje.
An elaborately decorated plate won’t feed anyone.

Nie wszystko się godzi, co wolno.
Not everything that’s allowed is agreeable.

Kto szybko daje, dwa razy daje.
She who gives quickly gives twice.

Czekaj, Matka, latka.
Wait for years, Mommy. Wait till the cows come home [if ever].”
  —  Polish aphorisms.

Born in 1909 in Łódź, Grażyna studied first with her father, Wincenty Bacewicz (Lithuanian: Vincas Bacevičius), who gave Grażyna her first piano and violin lessons. She attended Warsaw Conservatory, graduating in 1932 with degrees in violin performance and composition. She continued her education in Paris, with a Paderewski grant to attend the École Normale de Musique, studying there under Nadia Boulanger and Henri Touret. Later she studied with Hungarian violinist Carl Flesch. After WWII, she became a professor at the State Conservatory of Music in Łódź. She progressively shifted from concertizing towards composing, a transition that was partly propelled by prodigious awards and commissions. After she was seriously injured in a car accident in 1954 (fractured pelvis, plus head and neck injuries; age 45, when Alina was 12), Grażyna gave up her concert career and devoted herself entirely to composing. She died 15 years later in Warsaw at age 59, in 1969.

• Quintet, for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn - 1932
  
• Theme with Variations, for piano and violin - 1934
  
• Trio, for oboe, violin and cello - 1935
  
• String Quartet No.1 - 1938
  
• String Quartet No. 2 - 1943
  
• Suite, for 2 violins - 1943
  
• Concertino, for violin and piano - 1945
  
• Sonata da Camera, for violin and piano - 1945
  
• Easy Pieces, for violin and piano - 1946
  
• Capriccio, for violin and piano - 1946
  
• String Quartet No.3 - 1947
  
• Sonata No.1, for violin and piano - 1946
  
• Polish Dance, for violin and Piano - 1948
  
• Quartet, for 4 violins - 1949
  
• Sonata No.3, for violin and piano - 1948
  
• Sonata No.4, for violin and piano - 1949
  
• Sonata No.5, for violin and piano - 1951
  
• Oberek No.1, for violin and piano - 1949
  
• Oberek No.2, for violin and piano -1951
  
• Melody and Capriccio, for violin and piano - 1949
  
• String Quartet No.4 - 1951
  
• Mazovian Dance, for piano and violin - 1951
  
• Piano Quintet No.1 - 1952
  
• Lullaby, for piano and violin - 1952
  
• Slavonic Dance, for piano and violin - 1952
  
• Humoresque, for piano and violin - 1953
  
• Polish Capriccio, for piano and clarinet - 1954
  
• Partita, for piano and violin - 1955
  
• String Quartet No.5 - 1955
  
• Sonatina - for oboe and piano 1955
  
• Sonata No.2, for violin and piano - 1958
  
• String Quartet No.6 - 1960
  
• Quartet, 4 for cellos - 1964
  
• Incrustations, for horn and chamber ensemble - 1965
  
• Trio, for oboe, harp and perciusion - 1965
  
• Piano Quintet No.2 - 1965
  
• String Quartet No.7 - 1965

The Penderecki String Quartet was formed in Poland in 1986 and has become one of the most celebrated chamber ensembles of their generation. Their recent schedule has included concerts in New York, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Paris, Los Angeles, Atlanta, as well as appearances at international festivals in Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Venezuela, and China. PS4 performs repertoire ranging from Haydn to Zappa to more than 100 new works to date. They are now in their 16th year as Quartet-in-Residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. PS4 appears extensively throughout Canada, regularly performing at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Festival of the Sound, Festival Vancouver, and Music Toronto. PS4 collaborates regularly with un-‘neo-Classical’ artists such as Martin Beaver, Atar Arad, Antonio Lysy, Luba Dubinsky, Jeremy Menuhin, James Campbell, radical jazz saxophonist Jane Bunnett, the ‘un-tame’ pipa artist Ching Wong, choreographer David Earle, New York ‘illbient’ hip-hop artist DJ Spooky, and actor Colin Fox. The PSQ members clearly find depth in Grażyna Bacewicz’s string quartets. Maybe you do, too.

• Jeremy Bell, violin
  
• Simon Fryer, cello
  
• Jerzy Kaplanek, violin
  
• Christine Vlajk, viola

• Grażyna Bacewicz page at USC Polish Music
  
• Penderecki String Quartet website
  
• The Long Now Foundation website
  
• PWM Polish Music publisher website
  
• Wilfrid Laurier University, Music Dept
  
• Bacewicz G. A Distinguishing Mark. Krzys Chmiel, 2004.
  
• Brand S. The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility. Basic, 1999.
  
• Frick D, Spears L, eds. On Becoming a Servant Leader: The Private Writings of Robert K. Greenleaf. Jossey-Bass, 1996.
  
• Gasiorowska M. Bacewicz: Kompozytorzy polscy XX wieku. PWM, 1999.
  
• Greenleaf R. (Spears L, ed.) Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Paulist, 2002.
  
• Nettl B. The Study of Ethnomusicology: 31 Issues and Concepts. Univ Illinois, 2005. (see esp. Ch. 11 Insiders/Outsiders; Ch. 28 Women)
  
• Rosen J. Grażyna Bacewicz: Her Life and Works. Polish Music J 2002; 5:11-8.
  
• Rosen J. Grażyna Bacewicz: Her Life and Works. FPM, 1984.
  
• Shafer S. The Contribution of Grazyna Bacewicz to Polish Music. Mellen, 1992.
  
• Thomas A. Polish Music since Szymanowski. Cambridge Univ, 2008.
  
• Thomas A. Squaring the Triangle: Traditions and Tyrannies in Twentieth-century Polish Music. UCL, 2000.
  
• Thomas A. Grażyna Bacewicz: Chamber and Orchestral Music. FPM, 1985.
  
• Trochimczyk M. Bacewicz and Polish Music Secrets. Polish Music J 2002; 5:1-4.
  
• Poltran online Polish translation portal