Polish Music Reference Center at the University of Southern California

Polish music seems to attract more and more attention around the world. In January 1997 a whole festival was devoted to the music of Witold Lutoslawski in London, England. Entitled, Lutoslawski: Breaking Chains, it brought together some of the most prestigious British performing groups and the world's foremost experts on Polish music for a week of concerts, lectures and discussions, Three month after this huge, international event, a festival, "New Music From Poland was held at the Dana School of Music, Youngstown State University (April 6-11, 1997). A small town in American Mid-West is not an European metropolis; the Ohio festival was ,therefore, more modest in scope and design. There is no doubt that there are fewer people to staff the ensembles and fill the concert halls, fewer media to publicize the concerts, fewer venues to hold the various events in Youngstown, Ohio, than in London, England. Fewer, but not worse. The Festival, of which I was one of the invited guests, was an entirely enjoyable event, filled with beautiful concerts, interesting discussions, art exhibits, and even--why not--some Polish food...

The Festival began with an enjoyable concert held at the Butler Institute of American Art on Sunday afternoon (followed by a dinner for the members of the Polish Club and their guests). The program included works by Marta Ptaszynska (Marimba Concerto), Witold Lutoslawski (Epitaph), Karol Szymanowski (Third Piano Sonata), and Kazimierz Serocki (Eyes of the Air song cycle). Polish family of musicians, Jacek, Dorota and Wanda Sobieski, and members of the faculty of the YSU Dana School of Music (Shane Carpenter, Douglas Hicks, Ted Perkins, Anthony Ruggiero). Unfortunately, I could not participate in these opening ceremonies since I arrived in Youngstown on Tuesday night. However, the following events, however, amply rewarded me for this loss.

An elegant central hall in the Butler Institute for American Culture, with skylights, stained-glass windows, and beautiful paintings in ornate frames gracing the walls, served as the location for a noon-time concert on Wednesday, 9 April 1997. The program of this concert brought together a children's orchestra from the Davie Middle School of Kent, Ohio and professional musicians from the faculty of the Dana School of Music of the Youngstown State University--one of the co-organizers of this festival. The children performed a selection of orchestral arrangements (Chopin, Wieniawski), a Prelude for String Orchestra by a very young composer, a 17-year old Wanda Sobieska and a charming Maly Koncert (Little Concerto) by Romuald Twardowski. A piacere, by Kazimierz Serocki in a masterly rendition by pianist Jacek Sobieski and Karol Szymanowski's songs to the poetry of James Joyce (op. 54 no. 1-7) completed the pleasant afternoon.

The starkly modernist interior of the McDonough Museum of Art at YSU provided an appropriately avant-garde performance space for the "newest music" concert on Wednesday night. The program included works by Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki , Witold Lutoslawski , Marta Ptaszynska, Krzysztof Penderecki , Andrzej Panufnik, Andrzej Kurylewicz, Tadeusz Szeligowski, and Grazyna Bacewicz. The contributions from Poland, in excellent interpretations by YSU faculty and guest artists, were accompanied by two premieres of Ohio-based composers, Robert Rollin (the artistic director of the festival) and Mirek Kukielka, As I listened to this music facing an enormous steel mobile located at the center of the hall I wondered at the treasures of creativity that were so richly represented at this mammoth concert.

The closing event of the Festival took place in the Ward Beecher Planetarium of the YSU--another fascinating venue for new music. This concert made a full usage of its location and juxtaposed chamber music with projections of contemporary poster art, documentary photographs, and other imagery selected specifically for each of the pieces by Lutoslawski, Ptaszynska, Penderecki, and Robert Rollin. The Copernicus theme of the Planetarium was developed in a lecture by Prof. Jan P. Muczyk from Cleveland State University who discussed the range of unknown Polish achievements in the domains of science, astronomy, math, literature, and music.

The festival included several other concerts, some of which I attended, but instead of continuing to enumerate their programs I would like to discuss briefly my contribution to the proceedings. In the first lecture I talked about National identity and internationality in Polish music of the 20th century. I highlighted the debate associated with the creation of the national style, a difficult issue troubling Polish music throughout the century, from Szymanowski to Gorecki. The question that these artists and their critics were grappling with was the dilemma whether to create accessible music for domestic use, or to try to reach the domain of international concerns, often expressed in an inaccessible, experimental musical language. The conclusion? As Norwid said about Chopin: "he lifted the national to the universal" (a free paraphrase). An artist succeeds as a national artist when what s/he creates is of excellent, internationally-recognized quality.

One such artist was Grazyna Bacewicz. Several of her works have been heard at the Festival, including Caprices for solo viola, given a virtuosic interpretation by Adrienne Elisha (in a concert and a master-class for string students, Friday, 11 April). Another important "national" composer is Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki whose art was the topic of my second lecture. I pointed out that there are many factors in Gorecki's music that make it difficult to comprehend to foreigners without an awareness of its Polish context, its basis in the renaissance traditions, the Catholic mysticism, and the folklore of the Tatra mountains. The subsequent proceedings of the festival included Peter Laki's discussion of the Polish Music of the 1960s, and a series of panel discussions on topics ranging from Polish Music and the Holocaust, to Return of Tonality to Polish Music and Creativity and Polish Music of the 20th Century. Here, for lack of space, I will briefly summarize only the first panel.

The difficult theme of the Holocaust was presented from three points of view, by a deacon of the Catholic Church, a Polish-born musicologist, and an American composer of Polish-Jewish descent, Robert Rollin. Deacon Joseph Rudjak, the Vice-president of the New Music Society, and co-organizer of the Festival as the representative of the Polish Arts Club, outlined the scope of Jewish presence in Poland and the cultural loss suffered through the war. I added many specific examples, from the music of composers who died during the war (Jozef Koffler), survived the concentration camps (Szymon Laks), and were exiled (Aleksander Tansman, who spent the war years in Southern California, returning to his beloved Paris afterwards and continuing to write in the neoclassical style that he championed). I also pointed out that extreme conditions of the death camps precluded any meaningful musical activity; only in less stressful situation of the ghetto did the resistance songs flourish. This point, made by Laks in his book of Auschwitz memoirs, Music from Another World was taken as too extreme by Robert Rollin who emphasized the importance of song, and art in general to edify the human spirit, to express anguish and defiance, and so forth.

This discussion made me think of a need for more information about these composers and this area of music-making: Tansman, for instance, was absent from the program of a recent huge event of Exiles and Emigres: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler held at the L.A. County Museum of Art. Schoenberg was included, but not Tansman. Why is he forgotten? It is worthwhile to remember that Tansman was more famous than Szymanowski during his lifetime....

In conclusion, I would like to state, for the record, that the event was organized jointly by the Polish Arts Club, the New Music Society, and the Dana School of Music of Youngstown State University. The driving forces behind these institutional names were Profs. Gwyneth and Robert Rollin, both on the Faculty of YSU and Deacon Joseph Rudjak, the Vice-president of the Polish Arts Club. A few more words should be said about Prof. Robert Rollin who teaches theory and composition at the Dana School of Music; and is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music,and Cornell Univeristy (D.M.A.), Musik Hochschule of Hamburg; a former student of such well-established artists as Ligeti, Husa, Copland, Carter, Erb, and Ravi Shankar; a composer with over 90 pieces of music to his credit; and an author of a series of scholarly publications. He is also the president of the New Music Society, where he is assisted by the Society's vice-president, Deacon Joseph Rudjak. And, obviously, he loves Polish music.

This celebration of the talents and achievements of Polish composers and musicians was possible thanks to the financial generosity of the Ohio Arts Council, the Polish Arts Club and many individual donors. Even in a "smallish" place, such as Youngstown, a city that once enjoyed performances of artists of world-renown (e.g. Paderewski, Godowski, and Hoffman), Polish music may thrive and flourish. It may, if there are dedicated musicians and other people interested in making it happen.

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