Abstract This article examines the testimony of the Revd Erazm Parys, a nineteenth-century parish priest in Sterdyń, Podlasie, published by Józef Sikorski in Pamiętnik Muzyczny i Teatralny in 1862 under the title ‘Głos jednego z proboszczów’. Particular attention is devoted to Parys’s efforts to establish and maintain a parish instrumental chapel composed mainly of peasant boys, his methods of musical education, the acquisition of repertory, and cooperation with local society. The study also analyses his reflections on musical life in the provinces, social inequalities in access to musical education, amateur music-making, and the circulation of repertory and pedagogical materials. The correspondence is thus presented as a rare ego-document recording the experiences of a rural priest and highly committed amateur musician. Finally, the study places Parys’s account in the changing context of church music in the mid-nineteenth-century Polish lands and considers Sikorski’s reply, especially his harsh criticism of Wacław Raszek’s Kancyonał muzyki kościelnej .
Hildegard Westerkamp (b. 1946) is a German-Canadian electroacoustic composer, researcher, and educator, best known for her work in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies. She is recognised for her vast soundscape composition oeuvre, her contributions to the World Soundscape Project, and for shaping and popularising the theory and praxis of soundwalk. Westerkamp’s musical language is characterised by material derived from the real environment and a strong, ecological message. These traits are embodied in the composer’s 1992 piece Beneath the Forest Floor. Based on an analysis of the composition, the paper shows how music can address environmental issues, through the incorporation of real-world natural and human-made sounds. Furthermore, it describes how the electroacoustic transformation of environmental sounds can address their deeper, symbolic, and mythological levels, thus uncovering their cultural and personal associations. The use of totemic sounds in Beneath the Forest Floor will also be discussed as a means of invoking (native) cultures’ close relationship with nature, thus introducing another social and cultural level to the piece. The paper argues that by incorporating these elements soundscape composition may reacquaint listeners and composers with the environment and their inner selves, renew their relationship with the natural world and prompt their engagement with climatic issues. Finally, a graphic analysis of Beneath the Forest Floor shall be presented, to suggest that multisensory experience may serve educational purposes postulated by the World Soundscape Project, and therefore complete the environmental, social, cultural, political, and educational aims and levels of soundscape composition.
Abstract The climate crisis compels us to rethink the future. It is important to do so with the knowledge that environmental problems are also social problems (social inequality) and mental problems (increase in mental disorders). We can, therefore, broaden the notion of ecology by thinking in terms of ‘three ecological registers’: 1 the environmental, the social, and the mental. Rethinking the future requires a theory capable of working across these three registers. The concept of ‘degrowth’, which is developing into an important paradigm, 2 proposes such a theory. As a means of attaining a post-growth society (rather than as an end in itself), degrowth poses the question of limits. 3 This requires a questioning of the dominant model of the homo economicus in order to promote other values: care, sharing, autonomy, or free time. Art is one of these values. We will deal here with a general introduction to these questions and with two musical examples: the first, taken from orchestral music, is Dmitri Kourliandski; the other, dealing with musical technology, is Agostino Di Scipio.
This paper explores Slovak composers’ perceptions of institutional support, specifically examining grants and subsidies, and how these mechanisms influence creative autonomy. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power and Sapiro’s cultural mediation, the study analyses key indicators of satisfaction, identifies systemic obstacles, and discusses the bureaucratic dimensions of grant systems. Based on original quantitative study involving thirty-three respondents and twenty-nine structured questions, the study analyses key indicators of satisfaction, identifies systemic obstacles, and discusses the symbolic and bureaucratic dimensions of grant systems. The findings reveal a striking discrepancy: While composers report relatively high success rates in obtaining grants, their overall satisfaction remains moderate, hindered in particular by administrative burdens. The article interprets these results using the concepts of institutional autonomy, symbolic power (Bourdieu), and cultural mediation (Sapiro).
