Welcome to The World and Music of Krzysztof Penderecki. I?m Christopher Coleman from the Department of Music and Fine Arts of Hong Kong Baptist University. In this four part series we will be listening to the works of this most interesting Polish composer, discussing the ideas, materials, and constructions involved, and following the development of his musical style. Penderecki is truly a composer of extremes--he has written music ranging from the most avant-garde to music that sounds as though it were written in the Baroque period; music from solo tuba to grand opera; music about the hells of Hiroshima and Auschwitz and about the love of God. Such a composer is indeed a paradigm of the post-modern age. He will be bringing this music to Hong Kong with the Hong Kong Philharmonic on the 17th and 18th of this month, in a program featuring his Third Symphony, the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, and the Concerto #2 for Violin and Orchestra, and RTHK will be presenting a workshop with Maestro Penderecki in conversation with Hong Kong composers on Wednesday, November 15th at 6:30 p.m.

That Penderecki is a living composer and rather well known for his Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, an uncompromising and challenging work which takes nuclear devastation as its subject matter will undoubtedly give some people pause to consider before attending the concert. But this is only a single aspect of his work, and not by far the aspect that the concert will most focus on. Instead, the majority of the music the Hong Kong Philharmonic will present is accessible, tonal, thematic, rather Romantic in nature--some critics have dubbed it, rather unfairly, "Mahler-ecki". Certainly the spirits of Mahler, Bruckner, and Wagner infuse much of this work; but the point is the emotional expression thus achieved. For emotional expression is the key to Penderecki?s work--the tools of the avant-garde or the Baroque merely a means to an end.

Let?s begin with a little-known work for string orchestra, the Three Pieces in Antique Style. This short work, written in 1963 for a film, could not contrast more completely with the Threnody, which it follows by only 4 years in time, but which it precedes by hundreds of years in musical style.

The Amadeus Chamber Orchestra performing Penderecki?s Three Pieces in Antique Style. Clearly this music, so well written, so elegant, gives the lie to those ill-informed critics who often ignorantly claim that modern composers write the dissonant music they do because they can?t write anything else. Penderecki is a master at his craft, as comfortable in the counterpoint of J.S. Bach as in the aleatory of the modern age. Indeed, this variety is part of the key to his success. Had Penderecki chosen a single style or technique, the likelihood is strong that his contribution would have at best been incidental. No composer has made an artistic or aesthetic success solely imitating the work of the past masters; and the avant-garde has moved on since Penderecki?s thunderous debut in the late 50?s. In this fast-paced century artists in any media must continually re-invent themselves if they are to have any prolonged public exposure, and Penderecki?s time in the public eye (or perhaps I should say the public ear) has been longer and more accomplished than many--moving from the tumult of the Threnody to the acclaim of the St. Luke Passion and the Third Symphony, the controversy of the opera Paradise Lost to the praiseworthy Seventh Symphony of more recent times. Let?s move a bit forward in time, both chronologically and stylistically from our first work. Here is the first movement of Penderecki?s Third Symphony, in a Naxos recording. Listen for the emotionally expressive lines unwinding gradually over the bass ostinato. The effect of this combination, at this slow tempo and with the deliberate increase in volume, is to create a mournful elegy, a gathering sorrow that culminates and quickly recedes.

That Penderecki is working with the basic materials of music--pitch, rhythm, dynamics, texture, and tone color--to an expressive purpose is clear in this rather traditional first movement of his Third Symphony. But that this is not so very far from the methods he used in those early avant-garde works may not be so immediately obvious. These methods, the tools of composition itself, which can cause dismay and confusion among some of the most well intentioned listeners to the extent that they would rather stay away than confront these sounds, are really common to almost all music. And when one realises what the composer is trying to achieve in creating a certain sound world, the questions that seem to have no easy answers become less problematic; questions like: How does the listener deal with music that has no melody--why would a composer even want to write such a thing? What are these unpleasant sounds, why are they stuck together like this, and when will this piece ever end? Without a context, many people find this kind of music absolutely impenetrable.

Let?s turn to the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima and deal with these very issues. First, a bit of background--Penderecki wrote this work for 52 strings in 1959 and it received its premiere in Poland the following year, winning a local composition contest. It?s original title was 8?37", and Penderecki freely admits that he originally conceived of it as an intellectual exercise, giving it the title Threnody (meaning a lament or song for the dead) only after hearing it; and adding the subtitle "To the Victims of Hiroshima" even later. That Penderecki, a young composer at 26 years old, did not initially conceive this work as a lament is understandable--what is important is that he recognised its emotional qualities in retrospect, learned from that experience and gave himself new compositional tools, and assisted the audience in its understanding of those emotional qualities with the change of name. The piece is clearly, then, not originally programmatic--Penderecki was not thinking specifically of nuclear annihilation at the time of its composition, and although some critics have claimed that the final chord represents the bomb exploding, this is not the case. But music is an abstract art, in which meaning is conveyed through evoking any of a whole complex of connotations--whether one thinks of death, of fire (personally I hear the crackling of flames), of darkness, horror, fear, or Hiroshima specifically is not the point. Instead, music conveys to each of us individually one or another of these feelings, and it is this whole complex of meanings that we share when we understand a piece of music. There is no single concrete meaning that is correct--the right way to listen to music; but there are definitely wrong interpretations. Anyone listening to the Threnody who is given to thinking of birds chirping in the sunshine, I would suggest, has missed the point entirely. Let?s listen to an excerpt from the piece before discussing how Penderecki creates this complex of meanings. Here is a bit of the beginning:

That?s not easy listening--Penderecki does not give us the formal grief so prevalent in the west, but the torment of death and loss and the heart wrenching keening of anguish more prevalent in Eastern Europe. And how so, if he is not working with melody? What pitches Penderecki does use in that excerpt are not as notable for what they are as for what they are not--there is nothing melodic and extended. Instead, the sounds are fragmented--each instrument plays only two or three notes at a time--this is a technique long known to composers, from the Renaissance where it occurred as the "breathless style " in vocal music, simulating our choked efforts to speak when in sobbing in extreme grief. It can also be found in Italian opera. Notably, Beethoven abstracts this technique into the realm of instrumental music in the Cavatina of his String Quartet in Bb major, op. 130, where he calls for the first violinist to play "Beklemmt" or "choked", a fragmented melodic line consisting of pairs of notes. Penderecki develops the idea further--this is not a single person keening, but an entire mob; not a lone death, but an annihilation. Furthermore, the fragmentation is extended to the individual figures themselves--the notes within a group are often widely separated from one another by register or by tone-color. The consequence is that no individual part is important, but that the overall effect of the combination of lines is the point--this is a technique known as a micropolyphonic texture.

There are simpler techniques, too--the very fact that the piece starts loud, high, and dissonant is unsettling and immediately establishes this mood--the similarity to a human scream is immediate. Penderecki gradually adds an entire congregation of strings, a group at a time and at irregular intervals, so that the accumulation adds to the unsettled feeling. These are the most basic and universal of compositional ideas--that tension is created by extremes: loud dynamics, by extreme ranges and registers, particularly the extreme high range, by accumulation, by irregular events and rhythms, by dissonant intervals and by fragmentation of the melodic line. Relaxation is created by moderation: softer dynamics, slower tempi, normal registers, consonant pitches, regularity of the melodic line and the rhythmic structure, and composers have known this at least since the end of the Renaissance. As an example, let me play a very short excerpt from Tchaikovsky?s Sixth Symphony-- concentrate not on the melodic line, but on the other parameters of music--the volume, the tempo, the tone colors and the rhythmic character, and the changes in these to see how the composer creates states of tension and relaxation.

Every composer, then, if they are at all concerned with the emotional aspect of music, is in some sense a psychologist of sound. What is true of Penderecki is equally true of Tchaikovsky or Beethoven, of Berlioz and Josquin. That one of the major goals of music has been to create an emotional response, whether that be a heavenly one for worship or a more physical one to dance, is unquestionable; and composers have long sought ways to create that response. What is new in Penderecki is the detail of the sounds and the horrific subject matter--both brought to him by the developments in the twentieth century. Now let?s listen to the entire Threnody--it?s a little less than nine minutes long, so I know you can make it!--and be aware of how Penderecki creates this incredible unrelenting tension through those techniques of extremes.

Penderecki?s harrowing Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, in a performance by the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antoni Wit.

Now let?s close with a later work, the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, from 1983. This work has an elegiac quality rendered in a more accessible language than the Threnody, but deeply intense with an acute sense of drama nonetheless. As you listen to this, ask yourself if this can be the same composer. Having peered into the abyss in the Threnody, this work can be heard as a reflection on what he saw there. In particular note the way Penderecki uses fragmentation of the melodic line rather consistently.

The Concerto for Viola and Orchestra by Krzysztof Penderecki, beautifully performed by Tabea Zimmermann, viola, and the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. I hope that you?ve enjoyed this introduction to the World and Music of one of the most interesting composers of our times. Join me next week when we continue our journey into Penderecki's music, examining his music of emotions.