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SONORISM: POSITIVIST AND COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO THE PROBLEM OF SOUND

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Jarzebska A.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
65-79
EN
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 of the twentieth century, also as being concerned with the electronic recording of sound (objets musicaux, sound object) and the visual result of its analysis (sonogram), described using the terminology of acoustics. In the modern theory and aesthetics of music, the problem of timbre has been discussed from the point of view of positivist or idealistic philosophy, and the end of the twentieth century saw the arrival of the cognitive approach, developed within cognitive psychology (Sloboda, Serafine, Bregman). The French language developed the concept of 'corp sonore' (J.-Ph. Rameau), English employs the term 'the power of sound' (E. Gurney), while German has the term 'Klangfarbe' (H.von Helmholtz). The term 'Klangfarbe', widely used by composers and music theorists, has been variously understood as the auditive experience of 'Tonsatz' associated with the means of performance and the metaphor of colour (Riemann, Erpf, Kurth, Schönberg), as a particular type of experimental sound (Lachenmann) and, in the theory of music developed by F. Blum, as the abstract aspect of the 'sound materia' (Tonstoff). Józef Michal Chominski's sonology theory has, on the one hand, a positivist character (it concerns a new technology for generating and transforming sound) but, on the other hand, it stresses the psychological-cognitive aspect of experiencing sound (differentiations: homogenous-polygenous, monochronic - polychronic sound). The term 'sonorism' refers generally to the auditive experience of avant-garde compositions and the new signs of music notation associated with them, but it also includes the 'colouring' effect of the traditional 'Tonsatz' mentioned above. The theory of music inspired by cognitive psychology proposes the term 'parton', which takes into account the concepts of 'gestalt' and of the 'invariant' (Jarzebska). In the article, the concept of 'sonoristic parton' is illustrated using the example of compositions by Lutoslawski (Venetian Games) and Stravinsky (The Flood).
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BOUNDARIES AND DEFINITIONS: THE COMPOSITIONAL REALITIES OF POLISH SONORISM

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Thomas A.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
7-15
EN
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 beyond the 1960s
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POLONICA IN THE MUSICAL COLLECTION OF PIARIST MONASTERY AT PODOLINIEC

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Smolarek D.
Muzyka
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2007
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vol. 52
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issue 1(204)
71-116
EN
The State Archive in Modra near Bratislava holds a Piarist musical collection which consists of 1037 archive units. Among other things, it contains manuscripts and prints from the Piarist monastery at Podoliniec, where one can discover works of many composers, both named and anonymous. They include works by composers who worked within the sphere of Polish cultural influence, among them a group of musicians with links to Podoliniec, Piarist composers, and those whose work is documented in other Polish musical centres. The article introduces these composers and their works, divided into two groups. The first includes those whose careers are documented only in Podoliniec, while in the second are grouped those composers whose works were known outside the Piarist monastery. Within each group, the individual composers are divided into generations, and provided with short biographies. Underneath those follows a description of each composer's work, presented according to the principles of RISM. Some of the above composers who created their work at the Podoliniec monastery have so far not been heard of in the history of Polish music. Research into the musical collection from Podoliniec has also brought to light new information about the work of composers whose careers are recorded at other centres in Poland, including some Piarist musicians. The monastery itself, as well as the school at Podoliniec, can be counted among the centres of Old Polish musical culture, which not only cultivated the local talent of the monks, but also maintained contact with other musical centres of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania.
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THE LIFE AND WORKS OF DAMIAN STACHOWICZ IN THE LIGHT OF NEWLY DISCOVERED DOCUMENTATION

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Jochymczyk M.
Muzyka
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2006
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vol. 51
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issue 3(202)
67-83
EN
The article presents the results of research conducted at the Roman 'Archivio Generale delle Scuole Pie', as well as Polish, Slovak and Hungarian State and Piarist archives. This research has made it possible to establish with relative accuracy the details of the biography of Damian Stachowicz, one of the most prominent Polish composers of the second half of the seventeenth century. At the age of 17, Stachowicz entered the Piarist monastery in Rzeszów, taking the name of Damian of Holy Trinity. He was educated at the local Piarist school. From 1678 he lived at the monastery in Prievidza, where he was educated in the areas of philosophy and theology, taught a grammar class, and most probably continued to be involved in music as well, since a large number of his compositions is mentioned in the musical inventory of that monastery. During 1681-1690 he was active in Warsaw, where he was ordained into priesthood. From 1691 until his death he lived in Lowicz, fulfilling the duties of choirmaster, teacher of rhetoric and theology, prefect of the school (from at least 1696), and finally vice-rector of the collegium (from 1698). He died on 27 November 1699. Stachowicz's known legacy includes genres of church music for liturgical and non-liturgical texts: psalms (8), a litany (1), a requiem (1), motets (2) and concerti (2). Out of fourteen compositions, three are preserved in incomplete form, and further two only in fragments.
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THE CONCEPT OF TRANSFORMATION AS A SONORISTIC PARADIGM

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Granat Z.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
31-45
EN
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 elements, such as melody or harmony, into 'sonoristic values' - self-sufficient qualities of the musical work of a purely sonic character. This approach allowed for a positive evaluation of many non-traditional compositional means frequently found in twentieth-century music, such as clusters, sound effects generated by conventional instruments (e.g., violin as percussive instrument), or noise acquiring the status of musical material. This article examines a variety of transformational processes, both evolutionary and 'metabolic', that constituted the main objects of sonoristic analyses, and scrutinizes how the concept of transformation informs the analytical language itself. The article further demonstrates how the idea of transformation instigates a methodological shift from 'ideal' structures of tonal music (themes, harmonic progressions, or contrapuntal relationships) to 'real' sound objects given in aural perception. In effect, sonoritics is defined as an analytical theory that replaces the interest in structure deducible from the score with an emphasis on texture as an experiential phenomenon; and transformation is shown to represent the chief methodological paradigm of this theory grounded in the sounding manifestation of a composition.
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THE ST LUKE PASSION AS BRITAIN'S FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH SONORISM

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Rutherford-Johnson T.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
131-139
EN
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 work's detractors labelled it an unthinking collection of sound effects. Its defenders attempted to negate these accusations by distancing the work from the Polish school and stressing its conventional methods of construction, passing over its extravagant soundworld to focus on recognisable models such as serialism, strict counterpoint, organic development and underlying tonalities. Negatively or positively, sonorism was regarded in the work as a colouristic device, a means by which modernistic means were domesticated to word-painting or dramatic embellishment. Both instances, this paper will argue, did a disservice to the work as an example of Polish political defiance, which was suppressed by either the criticism of its sonoristic technique as mere sound effects or its reduction to familiar Western European designs. Through a combination of reception history and score analysis, this article examines the impact of St Luke in the formation of a British interpretation of sonorism, and compares this to a new reading of the work that draws attention to its use of sonoristic means in support of a political-theological programme, restoring its forgotten political power and arriving at a richer understanding of Penderecki's sonoristic method.
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RELATIONSHIPS OF KAZIMIERZ SEROCKI'S MUSIC WITH SONORISM

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Paja-Stach J.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
107-118
EN
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 methods of shaping the work, as well as - in a few compositions - with elements of traditional techniques.
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THE EVOLUTION OF JÓZEF M. CHOMINSKI'S THEORY OF SONOLOGY: AN ASSESMENT

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Golab M.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
17-29
EN
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 degree of resonance not only within the 'Chominski school', but also beyond it. An important premise within this tendency is the adoption of sonoristics as the so-called 'structural dominant' of a musical composition, in view of the loss of this function by the older, purely sound-based systems (major-minor, modal, 12-note etc.). Among the main operational categories (norms) of Chominski's sonological theory, the author regards as crucial the concept of the functional transformation of musical elements. Broadly understood, functional transformation refers to reshaping one musical element into another or, more precisely - changing the expressive values of a particular, relatively autonomous, musical element, into, in Chominski's words, complex expressive values. Writing about the new harmonics, Chominski said: 'the character of consonances, their interal dynamics, are a relative phenomenon, dependent on a number of co-factors, among them the manner of rationalising time, the treatment of the dynamic and articulatory techniques. There are no longer any chords, but 'vertical structures', in which the 'colouristic factor' plays a part. There are no melodics, but 'horizontal structures', co-created by sounds and agogic and purely motive moments. A sonological analysis thus offers individual investigation of the structure of compositions, where each of them separately is the result of its own norm-setting'. The article focuses on the systematisation of subjects for investigation by musical sonology (elements of musical sonoristics) from the point of view of the criteria of psychophysiological cognitive theory. In the final part the author discusses various works which have made a significant contribution to the development of Chominski's research, pointing to their open character which stimulates further research.
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HOW TO ANALYZE SONORISTIC MUSIC: PERSPECTIVES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF JOZEF M. CHOMINSKI'S THEORY OF SONOLOGY

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Lindstedt I.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
47-63
EN
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. However, the sonoristic re-definition of the functions of particular elements of music is carried out exclusively on the basis of the score. Its results are thus not fully satisfactory, because of the gap which exists between the etymology of the concept of 'real sound' (a physical-acoustic fact) and the nature of the source - the written text of a work which is being analysed (a symbolic-sign code). If the theory of sonology is to develop, it seems necessary to relocate the point of gravity, from an interpretation of the sound phenomena encoded graphically in the score to the issues of their acoustic shape and their psychologically conditioned perception. As a condition of adopting such an approach, one has to enter the area of empirical musicology and to identify the 'real sound' using the methods and tools appropriate to it. The model of a sonoristic analysis of a musical composition presented in the first part of the article is based on three kinds of sources: the score (the music notation of a composition), a recording (the acoustic text of a music composition) and a sonogram (a mathematical-information text), which is a form of making the real sound of a composition, taken from its phonographic recording, 'permanent' by means of a visual time-frequency representation. In the later part of the article the authoress presents an analytical study of 'Threnody to the victims of Hiroshima' by Krzysztof Penderecki. This work is one of the most representative examples of the avant-garde style of the 1960s 'Polish school of composition', which the composer himself strongly associated with the idea of music sonoristics/sonology. An analysis of those aspects of sonoristic regulation of 'Threnody' which are given above allows one to observe that the score notation and the spectral image of the work - what might be regarded as a visualisation of auditive perception - provide a very convergent picture, confirming the composer's belief that the 'graphic logic' is reflected in the 'sound logic'. Moreover, the construction of 'Threnody' has certain features of symmetry already apparent on the diagram of the shape and amplitude of the sound wave, which are confirmed on the basis of theoretical-musical criteria associated with the distribution of states of density and dilution of sound and the movement of sound events.
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SONORISM AND SONORISTICS IN THE MUSIC OF WITOLD SZALONEK: PROBLEMS OF ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

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Humphries C.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
93-105
EN
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 categorisation. Yet both musical analysis and the interpretation of music as a cultural sign-system presuppose a grasp of the internal functional organisation of the music they are concerned with. One possible solution to this problem is proposed by those who adopt a structuralist approach to timbre and texture as compositional variables. This article considers whether such an approach - as exemplified by Danuta Mirka's analysis of Penderecki's sonoristic works - can also be applied to sonoristic music in general, and to Szalonek's music in particular. It argues that such an approach possesses serious limitations, even though these do not show up in an analysis of the kind of sonoristic music that focuses largely on sound-mass effects, as Penderecki's compositions do. A consideration of Szalonek's more soloistic exploitation of sonoristic compositional techniques highlights both phenomenological deficiencies within the structuralist model and the extent to which it retains a formalistic conception of the ingredients of music - one that seems to run counter to the anti-formalist aesthetic that is a feature of sonorism. The author then considers what might be involved in seeking to develop an alternative strategy for analysing such works.
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CATO - MIELCZEWSKI - ZEBROWSKI. THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO RESEARCH INTO OLD POLISH MUSIC (Cato - Mielczewski - Zebrowski. Trzy przyczynki do badan nad muzyka staropolska)

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Jasinski T.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 2(209)
41-67
EN
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 was the shape of the song 'Let us Praise the Lord in His Saints'? Concerning the problem of Latin-Polish Contrafactures) concerns the issue of establishing the correct transmission of a music composition. Using a song by the polonised Italian composer, Diomedes Caton (before 1570 - after 1607), as an example, the author finds that sometimes a transmission of a vocal work, which apparently does not raise any doubts, and which is published in a contemporary source edition, has to undergo certain corrections. These corrections, by being compared to another, much later historical source, i.e., Józef Elsner's (1764-1854) 'Sumariusz moich utworów muzycznych' (Summary of my musical works), may be made optimally objective, and as a consequence may lead to a reliable recreation of the accurate shape of the work. The second part of the article 'II. Plankty z monogramem M. M.' (Dirges with the monogram M.M.) takes up the issue of identifying works signed with the monogram M.M. as those by a leading Polish composer from the early Baroque period, Marcin Mielczewski (d. 1651). The arguments and comparisons presented there lead to the conclusion that the two vocal-instrumental Polish dirges signed with the monogram M.M., 'Ach, ciezka zalosc' (Oh heavy sorrow) and 'Zemdlony Jezus' (The fainting Jesus), for two vocal parts, two violins and basso continuo, preserved in the source dated to 1714, may be identified as the work of Mielczewski. The third part of the text 'III. Autocytaty-transkrypcje' (Self-quotations - transcriptions) deals with the music of an outstanding Polish composer active during the second half of the eighteenth century in Jasna Góra, Marcin Józef Zebrowski (c. 1710- after 1780). Comparative analyses of three works by Zebrowski, the psalm 'Dixit Dominus' from the Vesperae cycle, 'Missa Pastoritia ex D and Missa Pastoralis', reveal interesting examples of relationships within the musical material. In 'Missa Pastoralis' the composer uses fragments of fugued passages from 'Missa Pastoritia' ('Cum Sancto Spiritui in gloria Dei Patris. Amen' from Gloria) and the psalm 'Dixit Dominus' (the final 'Amen'), transcribing them to a different performance apparatus while making only minimal changes. Such techniques found in the work of Zebrowski expand the set of known examples of the practice of using their own musical compositions by the Old Polish masters.
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SONORISM: FOOTPRINTS AND FINGERPRINTS

88%
Maslowiec A.
Muzyka
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2008
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vol. 53
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issue 1(208)
81-92
EN
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 on problematic issues such as the time-frame, definition and periodisation of the movement, its main focus is on the sonoristic repertoire and two complementary aspects which the authoress refers to, metaphorically, as footprints and fingerprints. The footprints are shared sonoristic features and characteristics such as texture and timbre used as primary structural elements, sharp textural contrasts, fast rate of change, and particular aspects of articulation and notation, all of which join to constitute criteria that enable one to distinguish virtually all sonoristic works from contemporary 'textural' pieces by composers such as Xenakis and Ligeti. The present discussion of fingerprints, which highlights highly diverse personalities within the general sonoristic trend, concentrates on three works: Schaeffer's 'Scultura' (1960), Serocki's 'Symphonic frescos' (1963-1964), Szalonek's 'Les sons' (1965). These works provide a useful supplement to more familiar instances of sonoristic fingerprints in the early works of, for instance, Penderecki and Górecki. Both aspects of such works are equally important for the understanding of the nature of sonorism. The paper concludes that, despite its problematic aspects, the notion of sonorism is not only justly imprinted as a term and concept in Polish musicology but is finally crossing the language barrier. The term 'sonorism' has come to usefully represent both the footprints and the fingerprints of the movement.
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