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Józef Michal Chominski's postulate of investigating the 'real sound' of a composition is the most essential aspect of the theory of musical sonology; yet the existing analytical literature regards it primarily as a metaphor. In Chominski's approach, the 'auditive shape of sound' provides the true basis for investigation, whilst its music notation records the projection of the composer's creative intention...
In the 1960s, an interest in Jo zef Chominski's sonology theory was a lonely experience within European musicology. Its significance has been growing over the course of time, as has been the case with other investigative or artistic enterprises in the history of culture which were too radically avant-garde for their time. Today, it is the 'flagship' theory of Polish musicology, having caused a significant...
Jozef Chominski's writings from the 1950s and 1960s reveal that sonoristics was conceived as a theory that attempted to rationalize the musical language of the mid-century avant-garde and focused on the issues of timbre and texture. One of the most innovative aspects of this theory was the ability to explain the novel sound qualities of twentieth-century music as transformations of traditional musical...
Polish avant-garde music after 1956 has often been described by the term 'sonoristic', introduced into Polish musicology by the musicologist Józef Chominski. This trend, characterized by an emphasis on texture and timbre and often coupled with non-traditional instrumental and vocal techniques, became known as 'sonorism' [sonorystyka] and associated with the term 'Polish School'. While this paper touches...
The article sets out to prove the hypothesis that the sonoristic aspect of Serocki's music is one of the main indicators of his mature and late style. The tendency to compose polychromatic sound structures is already marked in the works dating from the 1950s, and continues until the final years of his creative development. The composer combines sonoristic and dodecaphonic techniques with aleatoric...
The article focuses on the concept of sonorism and related terms as musicological and critical tools used in in the description of Polish music after 1956. The author demonstrates that this termonology has constituted a valuable component in musicological thinking in Poland, and he considers various advantages as well as stylistic and chronological limitations of sonoristic concepts for music composed...
Polish sonorism in general, and its specific form as developed by Szalonek, pose some unusual challenges for musical analysis and interpretative musicology, owing to the fact that they give prominence to aspects of music such as timbre and texture whose sensuously immediate character is sufficiently complex to mean that they are, or at least would seem to be, highly resistant to straightforward functional...
Reception of Mahler's First Symphony has often concluded that it undermines the teleological premise of its symphonic principles. The aurhoress proposes that Mahler's 'failure' to achieve a clear syntactic process shows instead a proactive engagement with the potential of sonorities to create a meaningful, multi-dimensional space. This quality in his music can be framed as a type of early sonoristic...
Penderecki's 'St Luke Passion' is not usually considered a sonoristic work. In the United Kingdom, however, firsthand experience of truly sonoristic pieces was limited and St Luke was the first notable experience of the style for many British audiences. After two performances in 1967 London's critical community divided, a pattern that would mirror international opinion in the following decades. The...
The development of sound-recording technology, as well as various avant-garde artistic manifestos promoting timbral experiments, led to increased interest in the problem of sound quality by twentieth-century composers and music theorists. Sound quality was regarded as being concerned with the experience of performed music (characterised through the metaphor of power or colour) and, in the second half...
Musical myths are relevant to both music history and cultural anthropology. They typify a culture not simply through their contents, but through their very existence. Interpretations of music as material culture prevail, but there are also anthropomorphic myths. Considered as a world-wide phenomenon, is 'Music' one thing or many different things? The relative continuity of the term itself encourages,...
In 1611 and 1620 the Silesian Estates and the city of Wroclaw welcomed their newly elected overlords (Matthias II and Frederick V) with traditional celebrations. Although the outward forms of the celebrations (processions, liturgies, triumphal arches, and polychoral music) were displays of fealty by the royal subjects, the communication was not one-sided - Wroclaw and the Estates had messages to deliver...
This article comprises three brief footnotes to research into early Polish music. Although they are based on sources which are familiar and already largely investigated and described, they can still reveal some new aspects in the history of the art of music in old Poland. The first footnote 'I. Jaki ksztalt miala piesn 'Boga w swietych jego chwalmy'? Do problemu lacinsko-polskich kontrafaktur' (What...
In Janiewicz's biography, the years before his departure for England (1792) are quite obscure, especially the periods he spent in Italy. Newly found archival sources demonstrate that in 1786 he was in Naples, where he performed twice (January 17 and March 6) at a musical academy, the 'Conversazione degli Amici'; in particular, in the second concert he not only played the violin but also the clarinet,...
Among the musicians active in the main Protestant churches of Breslau in the latter half of the 17th century, only a handful have left behind any surviving musical works. One of them is Tobias Zeutschner (1621-1675), the organist at St. Bernardine's and St. Mary Magdalene's. The only existing monographic paper on his life and work was published in 1900. Zeutschner's extant legacy includes about 60...
Johann Valentin Rathgeber was born in Southern Germany at Oberelsbach (north of Würzburg) on 3 April 1682. The environment in which Rathgeber spent his childhood and early youth allowed him to become familiar with the needs of smaller ensembles, which were active in small localities. Johann Valentin Rathgeber was a very prolific composer. Moreover, he was skilled in attracting influential sponsors,...
The authoress throws new light on the photographic portraits of Frederic Chopin: the famous portrait by Louis-August Bisson, the less well-known, anonymous portrait in profile, and the daguerreotype of the portrait drawing by George Sand. The three items, bought by the Polish government in 1936, are regarded as being missing, and their fate and origin remain unclear. The authoress traces the fortunes...
The article sets out to demonstrate that the use of music in therapy is inherently connected with the manipulation of the organisation of the patient's 'self'. Therefore, it is crucial to consider how the form and structure of music is organised. Five kinds of musical structures were distinguished on the basis of musicological analysis which makes use of Lerdahl's theory of generative music. The structures...
This study attempts to elucidate the musical, poetical and scenic dramaturgy of a central structural feature of 'Parsifal' by tracing the trajectory of the subject of the fool from its annunciation in Act I ('Durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Tor, harre sein, den ich erkor') to the moment of redemption in Act III ('Erlösung dem Erlöser'). In Act I, the matter is presented as an enigma. In Act II, through...
The name of the famous Polish singer, Adela Bolska, the primadonna of the St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre as well as the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, who was the favourite of the Romanov imperial family and sang with the greatest male singers of her time, who dazzled audiences in Warsaw, London, Paris, Barcelona and Milan, began to be forgotten almost immediately after her death. The surname 'Bolska'...
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