Polish Music since Szymanowski

Looks at Polish music since 1937 and its interaction with political and cultural turmoil.

Adrian Thomas (Author)

9780521054720, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 February 2008

412 pages, 1 table 93 music examples
24 x 17 x 2 cm, 0.657 kg

'This book is amply documented, while Thomas's deep knowledge of this music radiates from every page.' Journal of Twentieth-Century Music

This book looks at Polish music since 1937 and its interaction with political and cultural turmoil. In Part I musical developments are placed in the context of the socio-political upheavals of inter-war Poland, Nazi occupation, and the rise and fall of the Stalinist policy of socialist realism (1948–54). Part II investigates the nature of the 'thaw' between 1954 and 1959, focusing on the role of the 'Warsaw Autumn' Festival. Part III discusses how composers reacted to the onset of serialism by establishing increasingly individual voices in the 1960s. In addition to a discussion of 'sonorism' (from Penderecki to Szalonek), it considers how different generations responded to the modernist aesthetic (Bacewicz and Lutoslawski, Baird and Serocki, Górecki and Krauze). Part IV views Polish music since the 1970s, including the issue of national identity and the arrival of a talented generation and its ironic, postmodern slant on the past.

List of musical examples
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Part I. The Captive Muse: 1. Szymanowski and his legacy
2. The Second World War
3. Post-war reconstruction
4. Socialist realism I: its onset and genres
5. Socialist realism II: concert music
Part II. Facing West: 6. The 'Warsaw Autumn'
7. Engaging with the avant-garde
Part III. The Search for Individual Identity: 8. The pull of tradition
9. Sonorism and experimentalism
10. A significant hinterland
Part IV. Modernisms and National Iconographies: 11. Pursuing the abstract
12. Music and symbolism I: sacred and patriotic sentiment
13. Music and symbolism II: vernacular and classical icons
14. Emigré composers
15. Young Poland
Part V. Postscript: 16. After Lutoslawski
Appendices
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6]