From Kotoński to Duchnowski. Polish electroacoustic music

• Authors: Mieczysław Kominek
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

Founded in November 1957, the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio (SEPR) was the fifth electronic music studio in Europe and the seventh in the world. It was an extraordinary phenomenon in the reality of the People’s Poland of those times, equally exceptional as the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, established around the same time - in 1956. Both these ‘institutions’ would be of fundamental significance for contemporary Polish music, and they would collaborate closely with one another. But the history of Polish electroacoustic music would to a large extent be the history of the Experimental Studio. The first autonomous work for tape in Poland was Włodzimierz Kotoñski’s Etiuda konkretna (na jedno uderzenie w talerz) [Concrete study (for a single strike of a cymbal)], completed in November 1958. It was performed at the Warsaw Autumn in i960, and from then on electroacoustic music was a fixture at the festival, even a marker of the festival’s ‘modernity’, up to 2002 - the year when the last special ‘concert of electroacoustic music’ appeared on the programme. In 2004, the SEPR ceased its activities, but thanks to computers, every composer can now have a studio at home. There are also thriving electroacoustic studios at music academies, with the Wroclaw studio to the fore, founded in 1998 by Stanisław Krupowicz, the leading light of which became Cezary Duchnowski. Also established in Wroclaw, in 2005, was the biennial International Festival of Electroacoustic Music ‘Música Electrónica Nova’.

Keywords

PL

electroacoustic music; electronic music; concrete music; music for tape; generators; experimental Studio of Polish Radio; “Warsaw Autumn” International Festival of Contemporary Music; live electronic; synthesisers; computer music

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
• Year: 2011
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 141-154

Dates

published

2018-10-17

Contributors

author

Mieczysław Kominek

• studied at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and in Warsaw University (musicology), at the Warsaw Music Academy (sound engineering) where he obtained his doctorate (theory of music) and at the Utrecht University (sonology). He has authored a book on the history of recordings Zaczęło sie od fonografu... [At the Beginning Was the Phonograph... ]. He has worked for Polish Radio as music editor and sound engineer. He was editor-in-chief of the monthly “Studio, Recording and Radio Magazine” which he founded in 1992. Since 2001 he has been director of the Polish Music Information Centre POLMIc, and since 2009 president of the “Polskie Nagrania” recording company. Member of the Polish Composers’ Union since 1973 (1999-2003 vicepresident, 2003-2009 secretary general) and a Board member of the International Association of Music Information Centres IAMIC since 2005.