A Festival of Art and Ideas

The Warsaw Autumn: the Origin and the Beginnings

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The present paper surveys the history of the Warsaw Autumn festival focusing on changes in the Festival programming. I discuss the circumstances of organising a cyclic contemporary music festival of international status in Poland. I point out the relations between programming policies and the current political situation, which in the early years of the Festival forced organisers to maintain balance between Western and Soviet music as well as the music from the so-called “people’s democracies” (i.e. the Soviet bloc). Initial strong emphasis on the presentation of 20th-century classics was gradually replaced by an attempt to reflect different tendencies and new phenomena, also those combining music with other arts. Despite changes and adjustments in the programming policy, the central aim of the Festival’s founders – that of presenting contemporary music in all its diversity, without overdue emphasis on any particular trend – has consistently been pursued. The idea of introducing leitmotifs, different for each Festival edition (such as: music involving human voice, mainly electronic, etc.) – is not inconsistent with this general aim since the selected works represent different aesthetics, and the “main theme” is not the only topic of any given edition of the Warsaw Autumn.</abstract>

The Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music Transformations of Programming Policies

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Although we usually treat writing and speaking about music as a secondary activity in relation to creation and performance, discourse about the latest compositional output is now gaining considerable independence. The need for creative artists to work together with institutions and with a whole network of mediators means that in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, verbal discourse has played even a key role, and the search for a nuanced and original language that might attract potential listeners to new repertoire is proving a serious challenge.For contemporary music, festivals remain the most important – and at times almost the only – forum enabling works to exist in the social awareness. Hence an important area in which discourse linked to contemporary music is shaped consists of festival books and composers’ comments on their works. The latter help composers to forge their own image, at the same time helping or hindering the creation of an additional plane of understanding with potential listeners.This text represents an attempt to distinguish the main thematic areas to appear in composers’ self-reflection on the pages of the programme books of the “Warsaw Autumn” International Festival of Contemporary Music from 1999 to 2016, when Tadeusz Wielecki was appointed director of the festival. We will find here remarks on inspiration, creative process and musical language, as well as technology, nature and modes of listening. Notions taken from physics, chemistry and biology also frequently enter descriptions of music, and art becomes a sort of commentary to modern science. Finally, a separate strand consists of notes in which composers not so much shed light on the techniques they use or build contexts for their works, but rather seek to create plays on words as an alternative to musical compositions.From a broader perspective, analysis of composers’ comments may help us to answer the question as to how such comments shape the plane of communication with potential listeners, what they tell us about discourse on the subject of new music, and the extent to which they expand the categories of its interpretation.</abstract>

“It is my world, to which you are invited…”. Composers’ self-reflection in the programme books of the Warsaw Autumn (1999–2016)

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">As the managing and artistic director of Warsaw Philharmonic in 1955-58, Bohdan Wodiczko introduced an innovative programming policy which re-oriented the Philharmonic’s repertoire toward 20th-century classics and focused on the links between new music and that of other historical periods. The aim was to create a vast sonosphere of a “musical inter-age” (S. Kisielewski after M. Wańkowicz) encompassing radically different styles and genres and significantly transforming the axiology of the musical art. Wodiczko’s novel programming, though largely concentrating on the already waning neo-Classicism, laid the foundations for the phenomenon of the Warsaw Autumn and was a harbinger of the political-cultural thaw that would come after October 1956. This paper examines Wodiczko’s programming revolution in its political context, as well as the critical reception of Warsaw Philharmonic concerts, with particular emphasis on the aesthetic disputes arising around those composers whose works provoked the greatest controversies: Igor Stravinsky and Carl Orff.</abstract>

Bohdan Wodiczko’s Programming Policies at Warsaw Philharmonic (1955-1958). Toward the Warsaw Autumn.

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The posters that accompany the successive Warsaw Autumn Festival editions are a unique collection of works, mostly of outstanding quality. One might venture the thesis that their artistic value – living up to the high demands of the topic – exceeds the typical standards of representation characteristic of popular art. Formally speaking, they abandon the conventions of egalitarian iconographic art in favour of a more elite-oriented visual formula, addressed to a competent audience knowledgeable about contemporary music and its qualities. The authors of these WA posters include many artists associated with the Polish school, such as Jan Lenica, Jan Młodożeniec, Julian Pałka, Waldemar Świerzy, Henryk Tomaszewski, and Wojciech Zamecznik. Their graphic representations of the achievements of the musical avant-garde do not, however, situate this poster series within the well-sanctioned canon of the “Polish poster school”, mostly associated with the film and theatre – generally considered as more “democratic” and entertainment-oriented disciplines of art.The WA posters point to an evident polarisation of visual culture, corresponding to the division between high and low culture and between two types of audiences, differing in expectations. These posters form a largely autonomous collection and may be viewed as supplementary to the music they refer to, which determined the choice of expressive means appropriate to this topic. The whole collection is a display of its authors’ evident skills and their ability to live up to the high demands placed on these works.The task of translating one medium into another (in this case – a visual one) requires intellectual discipline. Some kind of (at least formal) similarity between the two media needs to be discovered, and shared semantic elements ought to be traced. On the verbal level, such similarities are presented in terms of related distinctive features, ways of describing phenomena, and intuitions. The 19th-century Romantic concept of the <italic>correspondance des arts</italic> was based on similar assumptions. The Romantics attempted to systematise the emotions accompanying the experience of different arts, looking for affinities and similar form-building strategies.</abstract>

Between Connotation and Denotation. Posters Announcing the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music in 1956-2015

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This article aims to offer a broader understanding of the Lithuanian reception of the Warsaw Autumn festival in relation to the modernisation of national music in Lithuania since the late 1950s – early 1960s. Based on a micro-historical and comparative approach to the network of individuals and events, it is intended to explore the shifts of reception through analysis of musical criticism, composers’ work and discourse, and artistic exchange between the Lithuanian and Polish new music scenes. The author discusses the cultural and political factors which affected the changing role of the Warsaw Autumn festival and its impact on the modernisation processes in Lithuanian music. In addition, the asymmetries of mutual understanding and interests between the Polish and Lithuanian music cultures have been highlighted both during the Cold War and the post-communist transformation periods.</abstract>

Reception of the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Lithuania: Cultural Discourse and Political Context

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The genesis of the Warsaw Autumn Festival was fraught with both potential and real complications. Musical life in Poland at the end of the first postwar decade was in a state of flux, if not turmoil, as ideological disagreements and material complications contributed to an atmosphere of dismay and distrust among musicians and authorities. This paper provides insight into the context in which the Festival’s organizers were operating, particularly the shortcomings of musical life in mid-decade that threatened to derail the Festival before it even began.</abstract>

From Restrictions to Freedom The Perilous Path to the First Warsaw Autumn Festival

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 20 (2023): Issue 1 (December 2023)

Volume 19 (2022): Issue 1 (December 2022)

Volume 18 (2021): Issue 1 (December 2021) Pasticcio. Ways of arranging attractive operas

Volume 17 (2020): Issue 1 (December 2020)

Volume 16 (2019): Issue 1 (December 2019) Women-Composers in Poland

Volume 15 (2018): Issue 1 (December 2018) Deconstructing the Myth of Polishness in Music

Volume 14 (2017): Issue 1 (December 2017) ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music

Volume 13 (2016): Issue 1 (December 2016) [Polish] Musicology Today

Volume 12 (2015): Issue 1 (December 2015) The Musical Languages of Contemporary Polish Composers: Self-Reflections

Volume 11 (2014): Issue 1 (December 2014) Oskar Kolberg

Volume 10 (2013): Issue 1 (December 2013) Musical Historiography in Poland. New Sources – New Methodologies

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Volume 14 (2017): Issue 1 (December 2017) - ‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music

Musicology Today

Volume 14 (2017): Issue 1 (December 2017)

‘Warsaw Autumn’ International Festival of Contemporary Music