<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
In my paper, I wish to raise questions pertinent to the changing position of the composer, ethnomusicologist and musical educationalist Zoltan Kodály in the musical and cultural life of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods of Hungarian state socialism. Owing to his folkloristic and conservative musical style, and also his identity as “an educator of the people,” Kodály established his status as a fellow traveller of statesocialism in the early 1950s. The easiest way in Hungarian composition to satisfy the expectations of the political power, as inspired by Zhdanov’s aesthetics, was to follow the style of Kodály. At the same time, Kodály sustained his reputation as a “genuine” national icon whose music was capable of expressing, even if in riddle form, anti-Stalinist sentiments in the eyes of various political and cultural circles, especially after 1953. In spite of the fact that Kodály did not take any active part in the political struggles in the revolution of 1956, he was named as a candidate for head of state by important revolutionary forces.
Following the suppression of the revolution, the restored state socialist political power revised its practices in the field of art. The fact that the new cultural policy gave up the idea of a unified Hungarian art which is “national in form and socialist in content,” resulted in a temporary weakening of Kodály’s position. Kodály’s status was precarious, subjected to a challenge by avant-garde trends in composition and competing paradigms of musical education. From the early 1960s, however, when both the Western and Eastern political systems proposed strategies for long-term coexistence, Kodály gained a new function from the perspective of the political power. In Western cultural circles Kodály sustained a reputation as one of the great European humanists, and his music educational method generated a strong professional interest globally, and particularly in the <sc>usa</sc>. My paper also examines the cultural political impact of Kodály’s visit to Moscow in 1963. Kodály seems to have functioned as a mediator across the political divide. He had achieved great personal successes during his tours to the political West, and this reinforced his position in Hungary.
</abstract>

National Icon and Cultural Ambassador: Zoltán Kodály in the Musical Life of State Socialist Hungary

Musical Heritage, Alterity, and Transnational Migration: Wanda Landowska’s Musical Lives

Editorial

Polskie kompozytorki baletów. Rekonesans

Kwartety smyczkowe Hanny Kulenty. Pamięć gatunku a współczesne środki ekspresji

Nadia Boulanger and Her Role in Polish Music – in the Light of Zygmunt Mycielski’s Writings1

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Despite the many research perspectives from which Andrzej Krzanowski’s music has been analyzed, so far there is no study that would attempt to interpret this work from the point of view of expression. The aim of the text is to answer the question about expression in Krzanowski’s music and his original compositional style. In the article, I refer primarily to the score (in Mieczysław Tomaszewski’s terms – the phase of musical conception). The starting point is the performing cast, with very often goes beyond the traditionally understood instruments (whistles, sirens). I am trying to find out what are the roots of using such an unusual cast and what significance it has for issue at hand. A separate place in the text is devoted to the expression of the voice as well as the influence of vocal genres (song, aria, chorale) on the instrumental music of this composer. The last issue related to the expression of the piece is the layer of verbal instructions. The number and repetition of many of them indicate how important for Krzanowski was not the recording itself, but its interpretation in performance. The analysis of Krzanowski’s scores in terms of the above-mentioned aspects ultimately leads to the conclusion that the musical choices he made resulted from the author’s autobiographical experiences, which shaped the original language of the author’s musical expression and, consequently, its type of expression.
</abstract>

Expression in the music of Andrzej Krzanowski

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
During the famous 1949 conference in Łagów Lubuski Zofia Lissa called for the creation of music that would be rich in expression. Her argument reveals an interesting affinity between Marxism and the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with his attempt to “historically” (“objectively”) establish the primacy of emotion in art over pure form. At the same time, however, emotions were divided in Łagów into desirable and detrimental, which manifested itself in the most shocking way when three critics – Włodzimierz Sokorski, Józef Chomiński and Zofia Lissa – surprisingly unanimously, or similarly, judged Zbigniew Turski’s Symphony No. 2 “Olympic”.
What is surprising in the context of the Łagów conference is not just the collective, ruthless attack on Turski, but also the fact that very little effort was made to explain the nature of the emotional impact of music. Lissa’s attempt at theoretical analysis did not elicit any response; moreover, as the minutes show, she did not present the entire material she had prepared. How much and for how long this subject had been on her mind is evident from her pre-Łagów paper, published in Myśl Współczesna in 1948, in which she mentioned her lost work from before the Second World War. After the Łagów conference she continued to study the problem and included the results of her investigations in a paper that brought her notoriety, because she invoked the name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in the title. In the present article I take a small step – through an analysis of selected contributions by Lissa – towards reconstructing her way of thinking in order to understand what priorities guided her and what goals she set for herself.
</abstract>

Zofia Lissa’s participation in attempts to define formalism and realism in music in the 1940s and 1950s. Using the category of musical expression to create patterns of division

„Nie podoba mi się to… ”, czyli problematyka społeczna w twórczości Lidii Zielińskiej

Sara Levy i jej muzyczna kolekcja. Koncerty klawiszowe Carla Philippa Emanuela Bacha z Biblioteki Narodowej 1

Zofia Lissa i Włodzimierz Iwannikow — polska muzykolog i radziecki kompozytor we wspólnej walce o nowy, lepszy ład

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The year 1918 found Polish national music in a state of extreme neglect, to which had “contributed” — as far as Warsaw was concerned — the period of partitions as well as the time of the Prussian occupation (1915–1918). Attempts to catch up in the field of production and popularisation of national music made from late 1918 by Warsaw activists associated with the a disruption in the existing structure of the public following the influx into ruling party (National Democracy) came up against obstacles caused by Warsaw of impoverished Poles from the provinces, including Russia, as well as an intensification of conflicts between the Polish and Jewish populations. Programmes for a revival of the national music tradition focused primarily on practical actions aimed at improving the lot of Polish musicians by providing them with support from the state and educating a new Polish audience. The third aspect of these programmes was the organisation of a government campaign promoting Polish music abroad. The paper presents unknown sources from the daily Warsaw press of the first half of the 1920s illustrating Warsaw’s everyday musical life in these aspects.
</abstract>

Projects to Revive National Music in Warsaw in 1919–1926

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The question of racial “purity” or “identity” was part of the fashionable discussion on human races in the 1930s. In 1938 a debate over Chopin’s “racial identity” took place in the Warsaw press, triggered by the publication a book entitled <italic>Polacy- -chrześcijanie pochodzenia żydowskiego</italic> [<italic>Poles – Christians of Jewish Origin</italic>] by Mateusz Mieses, an outstanding Judaist and representative of one of Poland’s Jewish communities. Mieses’ aim was to familiar-ise the Polish reader with the very little- -known scale on which the ethnically Jewish element had penetrated over the many centuries into the families of the Polish landed gentry, intelligentsia and even aristocracy. As a result, Mieses claimed, many eminent Poles known in Polish history had some Jewish blood in their veins. In addition to the more or less convincing examples of such assimilation, Mieses also quotes some rather dubious ones, including the genealogy of Chopin. On the basis of unconfirmed rumours and the composer’s facial features in some unidentified portrait he claims that Chopin was half Jewish through his mother Justyna Krzyżanowska. Mieses’ conclusions — as well as his entire methodology — were sharply criticised by the reviewer of <italic>Wiadomości Literackie</italic> as well as by Zofia Lissa, at that time a young scholar at the threshold of a brilliant musicological career. Lissa pointed out that establishing Chopin’s “racial affiliation” is difficult for a lack of reliable and objective sources. For a long time all images of Chopin available to researchers had been either portraits or sculptures, which — as artistic creations — used to deform his face. However, Lissa argued that most of his portraits point to his Dinaric characteristics, which were also confirmed by the two surviving real-life likenesses of the composer (referred to by the author as “racially un-prejudiced” sources) — namely, his death mask and the only surviving daguerreotype. Taking into account the findings of contemporary (mainly German) anthropology, Lissa concluded that Chopin was a typical Dinaric with some Nordic features, and it was from his mother that Fryderyk inherited his few physical traits characteristic of that type. On the other hand, Lissa denied that there was any connection between Chopin’s music and his “racial identity”.
It seems a paradoxical that Lissa — a scholar of Jewish descent — drew on Nazi theories formulated by German anthropologists to show that Chopin had no demonstrable Jewish ancestors. But if we place this debate in the context of its time, and of one specific period in the ideological and scholarly evolution of Zofia Lissa herself — things do not look so simple any more. Her emphasis on the role of the social environment and her rejection of Eichenauer’s theses concerning the impact of “race” on the character of music testify to Lissa’s intensifying links to the Marxist-Leninist ideology, which she most likely began to absorb in that very period.
</abstract>

Chopin, Polish National Culture and the Question of “Racial Purity”: Zofia Lissa’s Voice in the Debate over Racial Issues in the 1930s

Inklinacje, refleksje, niedopowiedzenia w muzyce Katarzyny Kwiecień-Długosz. Szkic o kompozytorce z Zielonej Góry

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
In 19th-century Poland — under Russian, Prussian and Austrian rule at the time – the main goal of music was to promote revival and to stimulate patriotic feelings. Patriotic Polishness drawing on the country’s glorious past was to be the essence of music; modernity of the composer’s language was of secondary importance. Karol Szymanowski unceremoniously criticised this patriotic music as turned towards the provincial Polish tradition. According to Szymanowski, the criterion of Polish and at the same time “civilised musical art” was met only by Chopin. With the regaining of independence Polish art should free itself from patriotic didacticism and pay attention to aesthetic qualities, which was to eliminate the discrepancy between Polishness and Europeanness, between what was national and what was international, universal and European.
The figure of Karol Szymanowski links our musical present, symbolised by the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, with the first years of independent Poland, for Warsaw Autumn realized Karol Szymanowski’s vision of modern Polish music. In this vision Polish music was a rightful element of European culture.
</abstract>

Karol Szymanowski’s Vision of New Polish Music

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Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny

Polish Musicological Yearbook

Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny (Polish Musicological Yearbook) is a peer-review journal published by the Polish Composers’ Union, Warsaw, Poland (Musicological Section) with the PWM Edition in...

Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny (Polish Musicological Yearbook) is a peer-review journal published by the Polish Composers’ Union, Warsaw, Poland...

Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny

Polish Musicological Yearbook

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