Could the young call any composer of the older generation a 'cult' figure? In particular, a composer who has not been seized by a romantic narrative of martyrdom, who does not cause either laugher nor embarrassment, whose works were circulated as taped copies, at whose concerts the audience feel thrilled at the sole sight of the artist, and whose works stimulated discussions? It is because of his 'cult' image (jeans, leather jacket, bushy beard) and without doubt his music - intelligent, humorous and fascinating - that Paweł Szymański can be considered a real cult figure. Many composers, Paweł Mykietyn or Sławomir Kupczak among others, were influenced by these aesthetics for quite some time. For many critics, including Andrzej Chłopecki or Elżbieta Szczepańska-Lange, Szymański made a point of reference in the unquiet times of postmodernism.
At the same time, Szymański became the most frequently-quoted embodiment of postmodernism. To be precise, of one of the varieties of postmodernism: the allusive, ironic, and nostalgic one which played with former conventions and audience's erudition. As the composer himself says:
I am searching for a key to tradition. Tradition, understood as music from the past, based on constant, well-functioning conventions, is material. But what becomes material is already dead. What I take from the material are pieces is what I can take apart, dismantle and assemble again to create a new whole. At the same time, I do not tend towards destruction. On the contrary - it is a sort of nostalgia for something well-known, close, something unreachable, and yet very clear.
The Baroque was the main area of the artist's exploration and canon became his favourite form - the base for 'deep structure' for many works from the '80s. Undoubtedly, quasi una sinfonietta for chamber orchestra (1990) is a piece in which the postmodern Szymański expressed himself fully. Its title emphasises a distance, similarly to his later pieces Recalling a Serenade (1996), Une Suite de Pièces de Clavecin par Mr. Szymański (2001), or Ceci n'est pas une ouverture (2007). The piece begins with 'a' note by violin and an extended diminishing chord by grand piano that resolves into an octave. At the beginning, these two gestures are unable to develop, they stutter, and repeat helplessly. When they finally hit their stride and reach fulfilment, this game of hide and seek unexpectedly finds its peak in a one-minute sequence, which becomes a real mix of classical music with the tom-tom sound on every other, or third beat, working like film cuts.
After all, Szymański is, as he puts it,
interested in a situation when a structure, already complex to some extent, becomes a starting point. Then, the composition takes place through a transformation of such a structure. It runs as if parallel to the piece, but takes the form of an overtone, never appearing in its original version. In order to avoid a clear speculation, it needs to be done in a manner that enables the audience to distinguish between what belongs to the primary structure, what is its transformation, and what comes from the outside. In other words, a potential listener should be allowed to catch the overtone (...) In order to achieve it, I need tonality - not a 'new' tonality, but actually a completely conventional one (...) A side effect of using a conventional structure as an object of transformation is its stylistic connotations (...) which provoke the introduction of collage elements.
And yet, what is most intriguing in the piece entitled quasi una sinfonietta is its middle part taking more than half of the duration and only12 pages. It begins with sudden clusters of a resonating grand piano and themes of wind instruments slowly unrolling in the background. It creates a dreamy and frozen landscape. Subsequent clusters seem to be flashes of energy, and melody of sound colours - its emanation. We move from the sensual and ironic world of extremes into the land of spirituality and significance. The instruments - mostly woodwind - permeate one another, melody descends in constant glissandos. Simultaneously, heterophony, the artist's favourite, spins again meticulously, a melody is born, again bringing up reminiscences of romanticism through the violins. Finally, the gallop begins again, but not quite as carefree as at the beginning.
Author: Jan Topolski, 2010.
Translated by: Katarzyna Różańska, August 2010.