During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Hitler's forces razed the major concert halls and conservatories, burned most of the existing scores, and imprisoned or murdered numerous musicians. The period immediately following the devastation of World War II was characterized by a new intensity of governmental support for the arts. Musical education was revived with a new vigor, as concert halls and conservatories were quickly built to replace the rubble left behind. However, along with the regrowth came the restrictive censorship of Stalinist communism which commanded that artistic works embody social realism and praise of the proletariat. Few works of any lasting merit were produced during this time, and those that were often met with cultural banishment, as was the case with Lutoslawski's First Symphony (1947). All of this changed in 1956 with the overthrow of the Stalinist regime in Poland. Out of the Stalinist demise was born a new spirit of adventure, individualism, and freedom. Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933) is of the generation that benefited most from these changing currents.
Penderecki's compositionsPolymorphiafor strings (1961) andFluorescencesfor large orchestra (1962) are often considered jointly as the culmination of sonic and technical experimentation which characterize Penderecki's first acknowledged style period. These two works are virtual reference catalogs of Penderecki's accumulated effects and gestures which populate the sound fabric of many of his later, more "traditional" works and which have subsequently become standardized notational and technical practices in the second half of the twentieth century. While both compositions embody Penderecki's early principle of exploring "noise as sound as music, "Fluorescences goes one step further than Polymorphia in the use of much larger and more varied instrumentation and the inclusion of additional nontraditional performance practices. These works and their scores are not only significant as markers of Penderecki's stylistic development, but also as the embodiment of many of the distinguishing characteristics of the early so-called "Polish school."1 Moreover, they represent the more general midcentury tendency toward sonic experimentation apparent in the works of other internationally recognized composers such as Boulez, Lutosławski, Stockhausen, Varèse, and Xenakis.
penderecki threnody score pdf 12
The manuscript sketches for both Polymorphia (thirty-three pages) and Fluorescences (eighty pages) are ordered and numbered in reverse chronology, with the completed drafts in full score appearing first. These sketches are quite impressive visually, both for the aggressive use of color and for the dominating presence of Penderecki's innovative graphic notation. The completed scores are followed by incomplete sketches which grow progressively more fragmented and graphically abstract. Both sets of sketches are notated primarily in multicolored ink, with some brief passages in felt-tip markers and pencil. Performance directions and other text written in Penderecki's hand are in either Polish or German.
Polymorphia is scored for forty-eight strings: twenty-four violins and eight each of violas, cellos, and basses. It was composed in 1961 in fulfillment of a commission from North German Radio Hamburg and premiered on April 6, 1962, in a Hamburg performance conducted by Andrzej Markowski. Other works by Penderecki premiered in 1962 were String Quartet No. 1, Canon for strings and tape, and Fluorescences. 1962 was also the year in which Penderecki completed the composition of his Stabat Mater, a work which would later gain greater significance as a movement of his highly acclaimed St. Luke Passion.2
The complete score in this set of sketches for Polymorphia is probably the final draft, as there are no significant discrepancies between this version and the edition published in 1963 by Moeck, Celle. It is notated in red, green, blue, and black ballpoint ink, with some musical segments, numbering, and most corrections in lead pencil. Blue and black felt markers were used to draw in the solid bands of sustained clusters and "encephalographic" pitch notation, one of the most visually distinctive aspects of this work. This notation, used to signify a sound mass of unbroken sliding pitches, is based on actual electroencephalograms (i.e., representations of brain waves) recorded at the Krakow Medical Center, where Penderecki was working as a volunteer. Penderecki was inspired by the electroencephalograms recorded as patients listened to a recording of his earlier and best-known composition, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.
Penderecki described Fluorescences as the "terminal balance sheet"6 of his experimental period and as "a culminating point from which it was difficult to progress."7 Works composed in the time period immediately following Fluorescences are characterized by a turn toward the past for inspiration from more traditional styles and forms and a more light-handed use of the experimental sonorities common to his works from the late 1950s to early 1960s. Wolfram Schwinger describes Fluorescences as "the direct continuation" of Polymorphia: "what he had achieved there, on strings only, must now be braved with the full complement of the symphony orchestra."8 Penderecki's first work to include winds (in quadruple forces, no less: four each of flutes, clarinets, oboes, and bassoons), Fluorescences is also scored for a full complement of strings, pianoforte, and six differing percussion sections. The score, published by Moeck in 1962, contains a more extensive list of symbols and abbreviations for special effects than any of Penderecki's works, before or since. The most distinctive timbres contributing to the sonic fabric of this work are the eerie voices of the flexaton, siren, sega, and a typewriter, included as members of the sixth percussion battery. The aural effects heard in Fluorescences go well beyond the percussive and glissandolike gestures of Polymorphia; performers are instructed to hum while they play, to saw wood or iron with a hand saw, to rub percussion instruments vigorously with a metal file, and to rub the soundboard of the string instruments with an open hand. For each of these new gestures, Penderecki created graphic symbols, all of which are derived from the initial conceptual graphic outline for the composition.
The additional material for Fluorescences includes a draft of the complete score, two pages of performance instructions written out in German, and forty-eight pages of sketches which grow progressively more fragmented and notationally abstract. Recorded upon these pages are two different dates and locations: "Wien, 7.VI.61" on page 59 and "Stockholm 27.XI.61" on page 41.10 Other points of interest include a careful mapping out of the specific instrumentation for the six differing percussion batteries and a full-page graphic outline for another composition, drawn in five colors and labeled Penetrazioni.
These sketches, substantially more so than those of Polymorphia, reveal a composition which greatly challenged its composer and his ability to give voice and logical form to his sonic abstractions. The complete manuscript score, unlike that of Polymorphia, reflects a work in progress and not the final version found in the published edition.11 2ff7e9595c