Justyna Kowalska-Lasoń: A Portrait with a Caravan in the Background

The paper presents a survey of the dominant aesthetic and technical qualities of Justyna Kowalska-Lasoń’s output of compositions. The composer’s interests focus on Oriental cultures, depicting nature, correspondences of arts, and on reflecting the sacrum in music. I have discussed her selected works (Sanctus, The Modern Man I Sing; These Phrases… These Songs... These Arias..., IMAGE 1929). On the basis of brief analyses of some of Kowalska-Lasoń’s compositions, I have defined her artistic stance and technique and postmodernist, neo-sonoristic sensualism. The distinguishing features of her music are: an open attitude to musical form, to the canon of narrative continuity, to aleatoricism and strict notation, as well as to the degree of correlation between chromatic and diatonic writing. The artist herself considers the epithet ‘nomadic’ as relevant to the character of her works, which are conceived as having a symbolic function.

My composer portrait has been complemented with a list of Kowalska-Lasoń’s selected works, awards, performances, and her students’ achievements.