The analytical study of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Evita contains inter alia the description of the libretto, and the analysis of architectural-formal, rhythmical, and melodic features and stylization devices. In architectural terms, Evita shows the infl uences of operetta, heroic opera, and musical drama (e.g. in large integrated blocks of scenes, and characteristic fi nal scenes). In the internal formal relations in the piece, the links with the nineteenth-century heroic opera are observable. Regarding the use of form, the composers utilizes those that appeared in Romantic Italian and French operas, while the stylization devices present in the piece have their reference to the nineteenth-century operatic forms in France and operetta compositions. An important structural element of Evita is reminiscence motifs referring inter alia to grand opera. The conscious use of these motifs on such a large scale that have no equivalents in operetta or in the genres preceding the emergence of musical, and in other musicals, causes Evita to be closer to opera in its motivic concept. Owing to the exceptional musical language combining tradition and the present, Webber’s work is an example that the musical as a form of sublime entertainment can also satisfy the requirements of high art.
Musical pieces composed for a percussion ensemble form a signifi cant portion of Iannis Xenakis’s creative achievements. One of major compositions in this genre is his Persephassa (1969) for six percussionists. The set of instruments used by Xenakis is divided into four sound levels: skins (peaux), pieces of wood (bois), metals (metal), effects (pierre). Each percussionist has a wide acoustic array consisting of over a dozen instruments. The sonoric aspect of the piece is enriched through the positioning of the musicians around the audience. The fi rst part of the paper analyzes the form of the composition: its course, division, structural, rhythmical, textural, agogic, energy-containing, and sound solutions, as well as the kinds of culminations and special effects (rhythmical chaos). The other part of the article describes the use of compositional devices that determine the specifi city of a musical piece, such as complicated rhythmical structuralism, (resulting from the combinations of elements of probability calculus and computer algorithms) or sonoric effects (e.g. “sound clouds”), discussed in close connection with the problems of performing technique.
AbstractThis paper is an attempt to analyze the necessity of defining and extending the protection of the child’s creative process. The starting point for consideration is the key role of artistic instruction in the child’s education and development which justifies providing appropriate framework for that process. The present text defines artistic output as a personal good covered by legal protection and specifies relevant legal regulations underlying the subject. It also reveals the position of the child as a creator with his/her specific characteristics and possible dangers arising from those characteristics. Another issue discussed here is the creative process and its components. In a further part, legal aspects of the child’s situation in the context of creative activity are analyzed with references to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the (Polish) Family and Guardianship Code (1964), the UN Declaration on Rights of the Child (1959) and other legal acts. Finally, the paper addresses objectives of arts education in the light of the discussed issues. Conclusions include an indication of certain similarity between some areas of interest in pedagogy and in law. The main conclusion comes down to a statement that in the education process we should take into consideration so-called creative integrity which constitutes a personal good of both the adult and the child, and which is covered by legal protection.
AbstractThe aim of the studies was to learn the possibility of developing creative activity of first-to-third grade pupils in art. The documents (the core curriculum and integrated teaching syllabuses) examined from the point of view of aims, contents, pupils’ achievements, and description of realization methods show that the curriculum suggestions are really diverse. In the curricula created by people realizing the role which is played by creative activity in the development of a child more room is devoted to it.
AbstractSignificant changes started in the children’s books market from 1989. The market gradually began to be saturated with far less expensive reprints of Western productions. Their artistic form is based on the style of cartoons, thus replacing the diversity of illustrations which is necessary to activate the development of child’s perception. Consequently, a special role is played by measures aimed to popularize the artistic achievements of artist-illustrators and designers of books for children in Poland. After the political system transformation, earlier activities were continued (plein-air workshops for illustrators in the Roztocze region). New undertakings were also initiated (meetings with graphic layout artists, conferences, exhibitions, workshops for children and teenagers in libraries). The article discusses the activities of Gallery [Galeria] 31 at Branch no. 30 of Hieronim Lopaciński City Public Library in Lublin, Poznań Trade Fair Meetings in Poznań, and plein-air workshops for artist-illustrators. These events are an example of local and nation-wide activities. They develop a conscious attitude towards the impact of the book form as a visual communication. The forms of Polish books (including textbooks and reading list books) for the youngest readers cannot be regarded as satisfactory.
AbstractThe article is an attempt to combine reflection on the mystical side of artistic activity with the author’s self-comment on her creative work in graphic art. The discourse shows multi-aspectual thoughts on the secret of the act of creation and the matter itself that serves art, based on the philosophical background of different religious, cultural and worldview traditions; it also touches upon the sphere of self-cognition, symbolism, and transcendence. The author’s narrative is accompanied by the thoughts of inter alia William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, Stanisław Fijałkowski, Hildegard of Bingen, Carl Gustav Jung, Kabir, Wassily Kandynsky, Paul Klee, Czesław Miłosz, Meister Eckhard, Rainer Maria Rilke, Andrzej Strumiłło, St. John of the Cross, and Zhuangzi. These considerations are combined with the analytical explication of the author’s selected works and with an attempt to introspectively look into herself.The author examines the following: understanding of the concept and phenomenon of matter (Materia - proch ziemi i kwantowa pustka [Matter - the Dust of Earth and Quantum Void]); mystical and spiritual aspects of art (Mistyka - ulotność wizji i realność duchowości [Mysticism - Transience of Vision and the Reality of the Spiritual]); the world (identified with the matter of creation) of inner experiences of her own artistic imagination (Materia tworzenia [Matter of Creation]); symbolic-formal features of her own graphic works (W granicach formy [Within the Form]); and the unfathomable problem of cognition and self-cognition through art (Laboratorium sztuki i sztuka przemiany [Laboratory of Art and the Art of Transformation]).
AbstractZygmunt M. Szweykowski (born in 1929 in Kraków), an eminent scholar and doyen of Polish musicology, shares his memories of his postwar studies and first years of university work in Poznan and a long period of teaching and scholarly activity at the Jagiel lonian University in Kraków. He remembers the personages of older musicologists (e.g. Tadeusz Strumiłło), and his masters (inter alia Adolf Chybiński), presents the picture of numerous determinants during the People’s Poland period and during the subsequent political- system transformations, describes the development of the Jagiellonian University’s Institute of Musicology over several decades, discusses in detail the teaching innovations he has introduced, and finally recalls various episodes of university life, occasionally embellished with anecdotes. Professor Z. M. Szweykowski’s autobiographical story is an interesting contribution to the history of Polish musicology in the second half of the twentieth century.
AbstractThe article is a comprehensive presentation of the history of music in the twentieth century, taking into account the main trends and phenomena of this period, inter alia impressionism, expressionism, neoclassicism, dodecaphony, punctualism, and total serialism, then avant-garde solutions and pluralism after World War Two (inter alia electronic music, concrete music (musique concrète), graphic music, aleatoric music, open forms, instrumental theater, minimal music), and finally the most recent trends (e.g. spectral music, new complexity, polystylistics), including a clearly marked return to the Romantic tradition. The chronologically presented discourse includes opinions that concisely explain some compositional solutions, as well as the list of composers and the titles of their works that exemplifi ed the problems discussed. The paper ends with the thoughts on the future of music in the new, twenty-first century.The article is meant as teaching material for the arts and humanities programs.
AbstractWhat is most surprising in the 150-year history of the gramophone (phonograph, record player) is that it has not ended even today. It might appear that progress in phonography which took place in the twentieth century should have made the gramophone a relic of the industrial age. Investigating the reasons why this device is still alive, the author argues that if it survived all through the twentieth century and found is place in the digital age on the eve of the new century, it was only owing to its hidden potential, which allowed creative individuals to rediscover it, find its new uses, attribute new functions and assign it new roles; in short, reinterpret it in diverse ways, the outcome being gramophone music - a new discursive practice with a varied esthetic appearance.In the first part of the study the author refers to the history of those gramophone reinterpretations and successively describes early literary impressions of the gramophone, the phonograph postulates of Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Hindemith’s and Ernst Toch’s Grammophonmusik, John Cage’s Imaginary Landscapes, the art of D.J.’s and turntablists, Christian Marclay “creative gramophony”, and experimental turntablism.The second part of the article analyzes the esthetics of gramophone music. The author distinguishes three trends in it: in the first the gramophone is subordinated to the classical concept of music, in the second it is used to create poly-style sound collages, in the third the gramophone is the tool for the implementations of the principles of conceptual art.In conclusion the author writes that it is chiefly owing to these reinterpretations which made the sound-recording and playback invention a composer’s tool, a musical instrument and finally an object of elaborate artistic experiments that the gramophone was able to carry out a historic, technological and conceptual revolution in the twentieth-century and early twenty-first century culture.
AbstractThe main premise of the presented study is to show the impact of World War Two events on the creative achievements of selected artists who treated these dramatic events as the direct source of inspiration. The primary object of interest are selected musical pieces composed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, analyzed at the same time from the perspective of their correspondence with other domains of art: painting, sculpture, poetry, and partly with film. The article discussed Arthur Honegger’s Second and Third Symphony, compositions: Diffrent Trains by Steve Reich, and Diaries of Hope by Zbigniew Preisner, and in the field of fine art: inter alia the painting works by Izaak Celnikier, Xawery Dunikowski, Bronisław Wojciech Linke, and Andrzej Wróblewski, selected monument sculptures (e.g. in the Majdanek Concentration Camp in Lublin), and with special emphasis on works devoted to the tragedy of the Holocaust.An important aim of the paper is to show the possibility of utilizing the presented content in interdisciplinary teaching provided for in the Ministry of National Education’s core curriculum for general education in art subjects and the subject Knowledge of Culture.
AbstractThe project of a residential building (unit) of a proper size (unité de grandeur conforme) was designed in Le Corbusier’s atelier in Paris from the late 1940s on. Prepared by Jerzy Sołtan and Gerard Hanning, it was a theoretical model and was meant to be an answer to the shortage of housing after World War Two; it would also solve the functional program in an innovative way and at the same time would be based on the principles of the contemporary architecture created by Le Corbusier. For Le Corbusier, a very important part of the project was the spatial solution of the utilitarian roof. Essential elements here were: the landscape of the south of France, its scenic connections, spatial relationships and the silhouette of the City of Marseilles: these were called basic joys (joies essentielles), which should belong to everybody. The paper shows the histories of three buildings embodying the idea of the total housing unit: the prototype - the Marseilles Unit, its late copy - the Berlin Unit, and the Polish realization designed and built in Katowice by Mieczysław Król.
AbstractThe specificity of cultural tradition of the Uniate Church in the Commonwealth [Republic] of Poland was the integration of elements of the Eastern and the Western Church tradition. This process intensified throughout the 18th century and was observable first of all in the church interiors as well as in architecture. The result of assimilation of Latin elements was inter alia similarities in the appearance of Uniate and Catholic churches - more often in the western and northern regions of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Kiev. In the church interior, the iconostasis was replaced by a set of Baroque altars - the main and usually two side ones. Pews, pulpits, confessionals and even pipe organs appeared. In the Eastern-Church architecture the three-part layout (the chancel, nave, and women’s section) was replaced by the two-part layout (the chancel and the large rectangular nave covered by gabled roofs with an ave-bell turret). The richest form of the Latinized Uniate church body was the churches with the two-tower front facade (inter alia Buśno, Kodeniec, Dywin [Dzivin], Hołoby [Goloby], Olble). After the Partitions, new patterns of Orthodox Church architecture were introduced in the Russian partition, in particular after the liquidation of the Uniate Church (in the Russian Empire - 1839, in the Kingdom of Poland - 1875). Uniate churches were replaced by Orthodox churches built in the Russian “national” style. After the devastations caused by the two World Wars, after the practice of demolishing Orthodox churches in the Lublin region in 1938, and after demolishing them under the Soviet Union and People’s Poland, there are very few Uniate churches left. In order to have a complete picture of the Uniate religious tradition, archives have to be searched (records of inspections, and inventories). The inspection records of 1788 describe the Uniate church (built in 1751) in the village of Michale on the Bug as one with “three towers”. The records show a similar description of the no longer extant Uniate church in Wielka Hłusza (Velyka Hlusha) in Volhynia: according to a later description it had two towers with a prominent ave-bell turret. It could be assumed that the Uniate church in Michale had a similar appearance. This church, converted in 1881 in the Russian “national” style”, completely lost its former appearance.
AbstractThe study discusses the problem of irony in the films by Wojciech Jerzy Has. The first part defines the function of irony in the films made by this director prior to The Manuscript Found in Saragossa [Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie] - (Noose [Pętla], 1957; Farewells [Pożegnania, 1958; Shared Room [Wspólny pokój], 1960; Goodbye to the Past [Rozstanie], 1961; Gold [Złoto], 1962; How to Be Loved [Jak być kochana], 1963). The second part of the study compares irony as the principle of artistic creation in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa and the concept of Romantic irony (Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis). This film can be termed as the quintessence of ironic traits of Has’s creative work.In the earlier works by this director irony manifests itself as the attitude of the film characters towards the reality, as their attitude to historical problems, and as an esthetic effect or Has’s game with the audience in the artistic and philosophical dimension. Intertextualism, verbal and situational humor, repeated motifs and stylistic devices are a way of expressing the double meaning of the work, i.e. a manifestation of the author’s irony. It combines seriousness and comedy, emotionality and intellectual distance, and finally, a critical and a creative attitude.All these traits gain special significance in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1965). The poetics and form of the work resemble the Romantic concept of poetry (creative work) as an arabesque. The irony of Has’s film is similar to Romantic irony because its result is the narrative experience of the Self which can transcend its experiences. Irony also manifests itself in the author’s attitude towards his work which (attitude) consists in exposing the fictional nature of the presented world. In Has’s films, irony allows one to break free from the burden of actual existence and the problems of history, time, and memory in order to make them a subject of art.
AbstractThe theme of death in contemporary Polish documentary cinema is increasingly present, which is distinctly evidenced by the creative works of Marcin Koszałka, who debunks one more social taboo. The author of the paper is interested in the intimate presentation of death, which, on the one hand, has a provocative dimension, and, on the other, it stems from the personal need to confess, which is carried out by the film alter egos of Koszałka, for example by his sister in Ucieknijmy od niej [Let’s run away from her] or by Piotr Korczak in Deklaracja nieśmiertelności [Declaration of Independence]. The films made by Koszałka - the author of Istnienie [The Existence] are based on baroque concepts which, by shocking the audience with their form, are meant to ask fundamental existential questions. Koszałka’s creative output is viewed by scholars first of all from the standpoint of self-treatment, which seems insuficient: when analyzing Koszałka’s films, it is impossible to avoid an ethical or existentialist perspective Another interesting and separate example of intimate presentation of the death theme is the film by Adam Sikora Paweł [Paul], which presents the Mikołów Institute director suffering from cancer: the camera accompanies Paweł Targiel’s “confession”, which reveals the stream of consciousness of the departing man. These extremely different presentations: baroque pieces by Koszałka and ascetic ones by Sikora essentially ask the same questions about the limits of documentary cinema.
AbstractOut of all Polish residences that represent the historical trend, the palace in Jablón built in 1904-1909 at the behest of Count Tomasz Zamoyski borrowed most fully from English architecture. Conscious of his expectations, the investor founded a magnificent country house, the builders of which drew liberally on the wealth of English historical styles.
Technological progress in the last three decades has considerably changed the creative process in many fields of art. Computer technologies of the 1980s became available to large numbers of users owing to the appearance of personal computers on the market. These computers enabled artists to manipulate the sound and picture to a far greater extent. Through interaction they also made it possible for the spectator to interfere in a work of art, thereby introducing a multitude of interpretations and direct infl uence on works of art. The idea of the spectator’s participation in jointly creating a work of art was utilized long before a personal computer was constructed. Such artists as Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Allan Kaprow, or Nam June Paik, to name only a few, were pioneers of interaction and the audience’s involvement in the creative process. The article discusses the term “interaction in art” and, which is the main subject of discourse, selected theoretical and practical aspects of the concepts utilizing the interaction phenomenon that are represented by Roy Ascott, Ryszard Kluszczyński, Ron Burnett, Filipp Tommas Marinetti, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Allan Kaprow, and Nam Jun Paik.
The article shows selected problems of contemporary narrative studies. They are a special type of qualitative analyses characteristic of many humanistic disciplines: e.g. sociology, psychology, or pedagogy. They may also apply to musical issues, inter alia biographical studies in the broad sense. In Polish literature on the subject there are many publications concerning different aspects of the life, creative work, and artistic and pedagogical activities of persons connected with art, culture, and music education. The article stresses that the specificity of the facts and phenomena learned in that way is the subjective character of their transmission. The experiences and reflection contained in the collected utterances and descriptions show an inner dialogue – the world of unspecifi ed, immeasurable and variable phenomena dependent not only on external conditions but also on inner, personal standards. This makes it possible to analyze musical biographies in a new way. In light of the theoretical and methodological discussion presented in the article, biography and narrative appear to be a special type of methodological approach that uses different kinds of relationships and covers many areas associated with the study of musicians, their activities, development, and career. The narrative approach is a valuable source of unique information on the biographies of musicians. It is also a worthwhile way of learning about socio-cultural changes concerning awareness of and thinking about the profession of musician and music education.
The present article looks at the music of Mieczysław Karłowicz from the perspective of Bolesław Leśmian’s philosophical poetry. The aim of the discussion, however, is not to seek parallel themes or musical transpositions but to capture certain traits of ideological attitude, which is founded on the question about the meaning of human existence. Leśmian’s poetry is characterized by profound meditation on the mystery of existence, by the search for truth about man, and by familiarization with death through discovering its diverse manifestations in art, nature, and in life. His poems show a strong presence of mystical experience, the so-called “oceanic feeling” or “pantheistic experience of unity”, which was one of the leading motifs of Young Poland poetry. It was readily utilized by Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Jan Kasprowicz, or Antoni Lange. In the symphonic music of Mieczysław Karłowicz we can recognize a similar type of sensitivity and emotional mood that perfectly harmonizes with the spiritual and artistic atmosphere of the period. His works reflect the tendency, characteristic of modernism, to cross boundaries and penetrate the mystery of being. Listening to this “song without words” is at the same time an encouragement to enter the world of values and human experiences, which is usually omitted by scholars in musicological analyses.
Orangery structures were built in the whole Polish Commonwealth already from the 18th century. These structures were constructed both in large complexes of landed estates owned by aristocracy and in smaller manor-house/park complexes owned by the gentry. The popularity of these glasshouses (greenhouses) stemmed from their utilitarian functions and from the fashion for exotic plants which were often used and placed in the open as decoration for the gardens surrounding palaces and manors. Greenhouse buildings were divided into cool greenhouses, so-called orangeries, and heated greenhouses, called hothouses. The former type, often called orangeries, prevailed in the Lublin province. The models of ready-made orangery structures could be found in various guides. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the publications by Edmund Jankowski and Józef Strumiłło were highly popular. The books presented the basic principles of developing greenhouse buildings and adapting the already existing old orangeries, and described plant species suitable for different types of hothouses and cool greenhouses, taking their requirements and ways of growing into account. The article presents the basic assumptions of constructing these types of buildings. The author characterizes the still extant orangeries in the Lublin province as compared with the available design patterns. Apart from orangeries, the study also presents winter gardens accompanying palaces and manors, which functionally complemented the residences. The article also discusses the rules of designing these types of interiors and the basic plant species used in those facilities.
One of the noteworthy Polish sacred musical works in the last decade is the Missa Pro Peccatis Mundi by Grzegorz Duchnowski (b. 1971). The composition has its own, extremely interesting formal traits, an intriguing stylistic and expressive character, and meaningful symbolism. The Mass was composed in 2004 for The General Józef Wybicki Representative Band of the Polish Armed Forces, with the performing collaboration of the Band with a mixed choir in mind. The work, a series of Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, was written for a large force. The vocal parts consist of a mixed choir ((sopranos, altos, tenors, basses) a mezzo-soprano solo; the instrumental parts consist of wood wind instruments (flute I and II, oboe I and II, bassoon I and II, clarinet I, II and III, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone I and II, tenor saxophone I and II, and baritone saxophone), brass instruments (horn I, II, III and IV, trumpet I, II, III and IV, tenor saxhorn I and II, baritone saxhorn, tuba I and II), and, additionally, the piano and rich percussion instruments. Duchnowski’s work combines the contemporary language of music with many composing solutions from the earlier epochs. The achievements of the musical art of 20th century and of the present period include inter alia minimal music, motorism, orphism style, the method of tonal centers, and modern harmonic language. From the older tradition – medieval music, Renaissance, Baroque, and partly classicism – the principle of strict diatonicism, modality, chorale melody, and archaisms at the tonal-harmonic level are derived. In many sections the vocal parts and instruments are led in parallel fifths in the form of a parallel organum. There are also chorale and song reminiscences, polyphonic parts a cappella with a Renaissance-Baroque tone and fairly elaborate fugues. These phenomena are matched by a transparent segmentation of form. The level of expression is suggestively shaped. For the joyful, laudable segments of the texts the composer selects a fast tempo, motoric rhythm, the ostinato, and lively rhythm: he refers to the esthetics of vitalism in these parts. The other parts show different faces of expression: they are stern, ascetic, meditative, contemplative, hymnic, and sometimes gloomy or mysterious. Worth noting is the fact that – according to inspirations dating back to older epochs – the following categories do not appear: the lyrical, the sentimental, the emotional, or the poetic, which shows an evident distance towards the musical legacy of the 19th century. All these characteristics make the Missa Pro Peccatis Mundi fall into the neoclassicist trend. The work is distinguished by its material cohesion and formal integration. Among the many ways of achieving this integration the fundamental role is played by the thematic use of the first four tones of the Bogurodzica [Mother of God] song and by the figure (derived from these tones) of imaginatio crucis. These structures that are present in many segments integrate the work. Owing to this, the composition is characterized by the unity of substance and by internal thematic coherence. At the same time, the imaginatio crucis reveals the symbolic message of the Mass. The whole composition by Duchnowski is imbued with this figuration, which is a very clear sign in light of the title of the piece: Mass for the Sins of the World; the sins, which Christ redeemed by dying on the cross.
