Showing posts with label poland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poland. Show all posts

Friday, February 4, 2011

Morten Riis: Composition of/from/to Compositions

Silesian String Quartet, photo (c) Krzystztof Lisiak
I   nvention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void(), but out of chaos. The objects and materials must, in the first place, be afforded. The constructor method is inevitably more complex than the destructor method.”
  —  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1831.
T he pieces on this Silesian String Quartet recording are fascinating, all of them. But I am especially intrigued by the Morten Riis compositions entitled getString(), fromString(), useString(), toString(), and quitString().

R eviews published to-date have focused on the merits of the conventional string quartets. The attention that has been given to Morten Riis’s contribution to the recording has been backhanded—relegating it to the status of sonic ‘glue’ or filler between the larger pieces, or describing it as an ‘electronic remix’ of segments of the other tracks, as if Riis were functioning with no more or less forethought and composerly skill than a DJ in a club.

I t is true, the series of short pieces by Morten Riis do leverage sonic materials from the other tracks, and it is true that Riis’s pieces are a ‘mash-up’ or collocation of those materials.

M oreover, it is true that the pieces do function as an effective ‘glue’ adhering the adjacent string quartets to each other—believably, memorably—forming graceful bridges between them, smoothing textural and timbral differences, and so on.

S till further, it is true that Riis’s pieces may be ideally situated here, intercalated as they are between these other string quartets. If you heard two of the other string quartets performed back-to-back in a live concert, you would be grateful if the corresponding Riis piece were interposed seamlessly between the quartets. It just feels right.

B ut when I cue-up these 5 pieces on their own, I realize how much I like them in their own right, just by themselves. Riis’s digital processing augments the scope of color, contrast, tonal effects and varying dynamics—the four instruments producing a homogeneous timbre, even with their use of ‘extended’ techniques—these are now commented upon by what amounts to an omniscient narrator.

I   n a jam cake or a cheesecake, a single bite gives us the entire essence of the cake. You’ve got to get some icing on the fork too, though, with the former, and some crust for the latter), whereas I’d have to spend time with Bach or Led Zeppelin—to the extent of a movement, in the case of a suite or concerto (arguably) or the whole of the Goldbergs; I can’t stand Pandora or other streaming playlist media that randomly jump from Minor Threat, to Death Cab for Cutie, to Haydn with inadequate value/stylistic judgement and inadequate recognition of higher-level semantics—between movements in a sonata, for example, or between adjacent tracks in a playlist. The MIR representations are flawed, no matter whether you dress them up in ‘Music Genome’ or other marketese. How can you listen to just the third movement of Brahms’s quintet, Op. 111, and not feel a void from not hearing the first and second movements and the fourth? It just isn’t done. The third movement isn’t an encore bon bon, for Pete’s sake.”
  — Robert Kirzinger, Boston Symphony Orchestra, 2007.
D o L-system algorithms and cellular automata underlie what Riis has done here? Recursive application of a set of substitution rules to an initial string, interpreting the resulting rewritten string as structural elements of an ‘organism’; substitution rules determining how each symbol in the current generation should be replaced—is that why he chose these titles for these pieces? (Gary Lee Nelson ‘Summer Song for solo flute’ used L-system algorithms as a compositional tool.)

T hese are not mere ‘bridges’ or ‘interludes’ between the quartets. They are not ‘refrains’ or quasi-reprises or recapitulations or filler.

T he series of Riis pieces builds inexorably, and the quitString() coda arrives with great drama and power. The human-textured denouement resolves finally to a homophonic sinewave inert carrier-signal and cosmic stillness.

A t the end, the feeling is that Riis has conceived the whole entertainment—this whole assemblage of quartets and interstitial C++ like digitally-processed material—in one breath.

E ach quartet exhibits well-nigh perfect balance of momentum and heft. Each is trenchant but has playful elements that make the music work.

S ome conductors seem to regard the spaces between larger works as a perfunctory sort of ‘whitespace’—an interlude. Not Riis. He lavishes the same attention on the interstices that he lavishes on everything else. He doesn’t need to relax too much in order to give us a measure of respite. In some of the insterstitial pieces we get also an air of irony, a feeling we are being given the other side of one coin.

I n summary, this is one of the most extraordinary and innovative assemblies of new music to come down the pike, one that will amply reward your listening.

I n my day-job I am a software developer. I love designing things and seeing them work. I love the tools I use to design and build things. I love designing tools to design and build things. All of my friends accept this about me. So, with that preamble, I can say that the other thing I like about Riis’s pieces are their titles—their explicit homage to C++ object-oriented programming constructors as sources of inspiration and/or explanation for the (meta-)composing process. In a mass-culture that feels progressively more and more dumbed-down and hostile toward knowledge and people who devote their lives to knowing things, here is a work that bears cheerfully geekish titles and enthusiastically brings forth techno compositions that are amenable to techno enjoyment and algorithmic music theoretic analysis. It is as though Riis were speaking to me and to others of my ilk and saying Babbitt-esquely, “I care if you listen! I care if you listen!”

Riis, photo (c) Krzystztof Lisiak
M orten Riis (born 1980) often employs a kind deconstruction of the musical material, aiming to create an expression where diverse genre typical elements are combined and contrasted in an organic ‘liquid’ expression. Riis often collaborates with classical musicians, in order to achieve music a more live, extemporaneous expression. Conversely, he also works a lot with ambient, digitally-recorded sounds processed as little as possible, which he says imparts a natural non-human spontaneity to the musical expression. An expression which, in spite of the through-composed structures reflects organic and flowing gestures, inanimate or otherwise.

getString CD

    [50-sec clip, Silesian String Quartet, Morten Riis, ‘toString()’; (track 8), 2011, 1.6MB MP3]

T    he unprecedented divergence between contemporary serious music and its listeners, on the one hand, and traditional music and its following, on the other, is not accidental and—most probably—not transitory. Rather, it is a result of a half-century of revolution in musical thought, a revolution whose nature and consequences can be compared only with, and in many respects are closely analogous to, those of the mid-nineteenth-century evolution in theoretical physics... Why refuse to recognize the possibility that contemporary music has reached a stage long since attained by other forms of activity? The time has long since passed when the normally well-educated person without special preparation could understand the most advanced work in, for example, mathematics, philosophy, and physics. Advanced music, to the extent that it reflects the knowledge and originality of the informed composer, scarcely can be expected to appear more intelligible than these arts and sciences to the person whose musical education usually has been even less extensive than his background in other fields... Granting to music the position accorded other arts and sciences promises the sole substantial means of survival for the music I have been describing. Admittedly, if this music is not supported, the whistling repertory of the man in the street will be little affected, the concert-going activity of the conspicuous consumer of musical culture will be little disturbed.”
  — Milton Babbitt (1916-2011), ‘Who Cares if You Listen?’, High Fidelity, FEB-1958.
Analysis analysis
SmartEnum



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Saturday, April 10, 2010

Kevin Kenner: Contract between Human Virtuoso and Virtuosic Instrument

Kevin Kenner
T    here is an urbane, worldly aspect to Chopin’s style that partly accounts for his immense popularity. It has also given him a bad name among amateurs who take their music earnestly. Chopin’s urbanity has two strongly contrasting facets: (1) a virtuoso ‘glitter’—above all, the use of fast, brilliant passage work in the upper reaches of the piano; and (2) a fashionable sentimentality, employed directly and openly, without humor—there is, in fact, irony and wit but no trace of humor in Chopin’s music; neither the diabolical humor of Liszt, nor the ambiguous poetic humor of Schumann.”
  —  Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation, p. 383.
P ianist Kevin Kenner’s performance last night was dramatic and graceful.

  • Chopin: Andante spianato, Op. 22
  • Chopin: Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, Op. 20
  • Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31
  • Chopin: Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp minor, Op. 39
  • Chopin: Scherzo No. 4 in E major, Op. 54
  • Schumann: Carnaval, Op. 9
  • Chopin: Variations in A major ‘Souvenir de Paganini’, B. 37 (encore)
K enner ardently addresses himself to the piano, much like we imagine Chopin might have done: his poetic disposition is not ‘contemplative’ so much as ‘speculative’ or ‘fanciful’; not ‘tender’ so much as ‘intimate’; not ‘impulsive’ so much as resolvedly ‘intent’ upon eliciting a specific response.

I n other words, not ‘sentimental’ but ‘romantic’.

H    ow often do I tell my piano all that I should like to impart to you! ... How much more will my piano have to weep?”
  —  Frederick Chopin, 1829, letter to lover (quoted in Niecks).
T hese pieces, I think, reveal the capabilities of the new Steinway instrument that Friends of Chamber Music has recently acquired, as much as they reveal the powers of the executant (Kenner). The program in fact offered an extended opportunity to reflect on romantic piano idioms, and on the nature of a performer’s rapport with genre and instrument.

J ust as Kallberg (link below) some years ago noted that there is an implied ‘contract’ between the performer and the listener, there (inevitably?) is an implied ‘contract’ between the performer/composer and the instrument: the performer agrees to use certain conventions, patterns, and gestures, and the instrument consents to render them under an agreed set of terms and conditions—generously accomodating some aspects of them; withholding others—in a way that is consistent with the genre and aesthetic intent of the performer.

B oth Kenner and the instrument admirably fulfilled their bargain* with each other last night. Bravo!

(*The ‘agreement’ is, of course, not just one agreement, nor is it executed in advance. In fact, it is a chain of ongoing, inter-related agreements and renewals and codasils, negotiated and renegotiated on a tens-of-milliseconds time-scale.)


    [50-sec clip, Kevin Kenner, Frederick Chopin, ‘Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp minor, Op. 39’, 1.6MB MP3]

I n Kenner’s passages of prodigious Chopinian speed, you can hear the piano ‘speak’. In the case of Chopin Scherzos, the piano doubtless speaks Polish, admonishing the performer of more dangerous ‘curves’ ahead.

Kevin Kenner
C    hopin’s sadism is usually more subtle than that of his contemporaries, and in most of his work actual pain is associated with emotional violence... the moment of greatest emotional tension is generally the one that stretches the hand most painfully, so that the muscular sensation becomes—even without the piano’s sound—a mimesis of passion.”
  —  Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation, p. 382.




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Sunday, March 29, 2009

Relational Semantics: Lutosławski’s Beauty of Indeterminacy, Surprise of Proportion

Ariadne and Miri, Leitheim, 2001
A    fter 1961 Lutosławski worked largely independently of the fashions of the European avant-garde, refining and extending a compositional technique that produced, to use Bogusław Schäffer’s phrase, ‘stylistically the most independent works of modern European music’ ... Bohdan Pociej once described Lutosławski’s mature works in terms of four tendences: (1) the constant endeavour to achieve a ‘system’, to implement it, and to find one’s own personality [and social destiny] through it; (2) the harmonic, colouristic tendency—borne of a ‘Debussyan’ fascination with pure sound, grounded in a comprehensive [Cernerian] architecture of inter-related chords; (3) the poly-chronic tendency, reflected in a constant and intense inclination to organize ‘parallel plots’ and to split the composition into many interpenetrating levels and planes—to fill the musical space with multi-directional and multi-tiered motions; and (4) the dramatic tendency expressing itself in conflict, confrontation, struggle—in the various vicissitudes of form.”
  —  Steven Stucky, p. 107.
T he new recording of Lutosławski’s works for violin and piano, by Ariadne Daskalakis and Miri Yampolsky, has captured my imagination these past several days—and it may well capture yours as well.

  • Recitative e arioso (1951)
  • Partita (1984) [commissioned by Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and premiered by Pinchas Zucherman and Marc Neikrug in January 1985 in Minnesota]
  • Subito (1992) [his final completed composition, before his death in 1994 at age 81; written for the International Violin Competition in Indianapolis]
T hese are pieces of tremendous clarity, alignment, and focus. They are, in fact, astonishing for a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) sort of ‘urgent, combative hyperclarity’.


    [50-sec clip, Daskalakis & Yampolsky, Lutosławksi, ‘Recitative e arioso’, 1.6MB MP3]


    [50-sec clip, Daskalakis & Yampolsky, Lutosławksi, ‘Partita’, 1.6MB MP3]


    [50-sec clip, Daskalakis & Yampolsky, Lutosławksi, ‘Subito’, 1.6MB MP3]

L utosławski destabilizes the chromaticism in the violin part characteristic. Opposing this, the piano has vertically symmetrical chords and seems to offer respite and restore stability. Lutosławski’s early love of mathematics and the aesthetics of symmetrical are evident here—when the distances between adjacent tones in the chords are measured, one gets a numerical pattern of pitches that is invertible ... the same whether measured from the top to bottom or bottom to top.

T he developments and the transitions are beautiful, and their beauty and coherence leads us to imagine that there can be success and a happy conclusion, if only we can be sufficiently mindful and ‘good enough’. But the best and most diligent efforts can be for nought, and our grip on success can slip away. Passages that initially sound complete and self-contained turn out to be erodable or transitory ... stuff happens.

T he violin part struggles existentially. Life and its accumulated burdens take their toll, and the violin ends up (in ‘Subito’) chromatically down a half-step from where it started.

T he motoric chromaticism of the violin and the contrast provided by the piano are beautifully rendered in the Subito and the Partita.

H ear these three pieces together, one after the other on this disc. You will be impressed by Lutosławski’s skill in constructing relational algebraic expressions (Verhaltniss). Which part is the operator and which is the operand? Is the violin-piano matrix singular? Is the operation that they just played ‘commutative’?

T he size and prominence of a part are context-dependent and comparative qualities—you form an impression of them only in relation to other parts, or to the overall whole. Size and prominence are indeterminate—indefinite qualities that empower the performer/listener. They can increase or diminish without limit; there is interpretive latitude—so much latitude, in fact, that it may lead to PTSD-like anxiety, agoraphobia.

O ur judgment about the relation of parts arises both from the evidence that’s provided in a particular piece (or performance) and from custom. These make us used to specific proportions, such that wide deviations from them strike us as novel or exaggerated or contradictory. If we hear something that’s common or familiar, our expectations are already pre-conditioned and we tend to hear what we are expecting to hear. But if we hear something that’s unusual, or if a familiar pattern or relationship has a part that is relatively larger or smaller proportioned than what’s customary, then it awakens ideas about uncertainty and disparity.

A nd it’s not just the scope or extent or prominence of a part where we are awakened by relational contrasts. There can be semantic misrelations as well. Paradoxically little stimulation evokes impressions of despair, depression. Unexpectedly abundant stimulation evokes impressions of mania, agitation. The Recitative e arioso is dark, dark, dark. The year 1951 must have afforded Lutoslawski lots of dark moments to propel this piece—and Daskalakis plays as though she understands this from the inside-out. The bowing technic admits alternately of great energy [“This is how I was mistreated, and here is what I did to oppose them.”] and then of great vulnerability [“At last there was nothing more we could do, and we had to wait and see what the outcome would be.”]. The consonance of performance and writing is wonderful, an embodiment of good relations between the semantics of the composer and the gestures of the performers—Daskalakis and Yampolsky alike.

T he so-called ‘poly-agogics’ that Lutosławski uses are tastefully handled. Polyagogics are simultaneous accelerandos in one part and slight ritardandos in the other part. These microrhythms amount to a kind of polymeter—a transient complexity that confers extra tension on the piece. The Subito and the Partita have poly-agogic features, often associated with veiled or pensive, waiting, uncertain passages. I will need to get a copy of the score, to see how many of the poly-agogic rhythms are notated ones and how many of them are extemporized by Daskalakis and Yampolsky. Either way, their skill and faithfulness to what Lutosławski meant are to be commended—a fantastic Naxos CD.

A riadne is the new Dean of Strings for the Hochschule für Musik Cologne. She is also leader of the Berlin-based Ensemble Oriol and of the Manon Quartet.

Lutosławski 1993, photo (c) Freeman




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Sunday, December 7, 2008

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

Penderecki String Quartet
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.
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 Long Now Foundation clock prototype
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.

Bacewicz composition cover
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.

Grażyna and Allina, 1950
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

Thomas book


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