Polish Female Film Composers

elzbieta_sikora.jpg, default, Elisabeth Sikora in Le Muse en Circuit studio, 1980s, photo: P. J. Arkell

From Grażyna Bacewicz to Teoniki Rożynek – who are Polish female composers of music for the cinema? And why are there so few?

The first female composer and poet in the history of the world (at the time these were inseparable things – poetry did not exist without music) known by name was the Akkadian princess Enheduanna, daughter of King Sargon the Great. Her name in Sumerian meant ‘Priestess fit for the heavens’. We are talking about the 24th–23rd centuries BCE; unfortunately, civilisations emerging later in various parts of the world often forbade or restricted women’s ability to create and perform music.

Decisions made in the past have an impact on the present day – the profession of composer remains a masculinised profession. This is most evident in film music. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been awarding the prize for best soundtrack since 1934. In 87 years, female composers have been nominated eight times. Only three of them have won the gold-covered statuette – Rachel Portman (1996), Anne Dudley (1997) and Hildur Guðnadóttir (2019).

Let us take a look at the Polish film award scene. No female composer has yet won an Eagle – the Polish Film Award given by the Polish Film Academy. Although the award has existed since 1999 – 22 years – only one female composer has been nominated in that time. This was Hania Rani, who in 2020 became the first woman to receive the award for music at the Polish Feature Film Festival. This prize has been awarded since 1974, i.e. for almost half a century. The situation is slowly changing – one year later, Teoniki Rożynek also won a prize at the Gdynia Festival.

The world changes at a slow pace. In the meantime, let’s take a look at the herstory of Polish film music.

Grażyna Bacewicz

We can get an indication of how masculinised the musical environment was not so long ago from the way that Grażyna Bacewicz (1909–1969) often received correspondence beginning with the phrase ‘Dear Mister Bacewicz’ or ‘Cher Monsieur Grażyna Bacewicz’. We associate the outstanding violinist-composer with her great string quartets and magnificent musical scores – violin, cello, viola and piano concertos as well as symphonies. Few remember that as a teenager Grażyna Bacewicz played the piano during silent film screenings.

As a mature composer, she composed music for four films: Wycieczki (Excursions, 1957), directed by Teresa Badzian; W dżungli (In the Jungle, 1957), Wiosenne przygody krasnala Hałabały (The Spring Adventures of the Gnome Halabala, 1959), both films were created by Witold Giersz; and Marysia i krasnoludki (Marysia and the Dwarves, 1960) by Jerzy Szeski and Konrad Paradowski. The first three were animated shorts. Szeski and Paradowski’s work is an interesting case – it is a combination of live-action, nature and puppet film. The music composed for the hybrid film, based on fairy tales written by Maria Konopnicka, was performed by Wanda Wiłkomirska.

Bacewicz also composed for the theatre: her music could be heard at the Jaracz Theatre in Łódź, the Dramatyczny Theatre in Warsaw, the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków and on the radio – she also wrote for the Polish Radio Theatre (unfortunately, neither the recordings nor the scores of the radio plays have survived).

Lucia Dlugoszewski

Thumbnail — Lucia Dlugoszewski, mat. Sacrum Profanum

This New York–based artist of Polish origin is primarily associated with music composed for choreography. Her husband was Erick Hawkins (1909–1994), a famous dancer and choreographer inspired by, among other things, the dance culture of the early Americans, Zen aesthetics and kinesiology. Dlugoszewski (1925–2000) ran the Erick Hawkins Dance Company after her husband’s death and made her own choreographic debut a year before his death.

The Polish American composer’s collaboration with the world of film was not a very long one, but it was a very interesting one. Dlugoszewski is one of the figures who functioned on the fringes of the official music world, and her output is worth cherishing – even if it seems modest. In 1945, she composed the music for the short film Visual Variations on Noguchi. This was the directorial debut of Marie Menken (1909–1970), a figure of exceptional importance to the development of the American film avant-garde; her work was inspired by Kennerth Anger, Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas, among others. Visual Variations on Noguchi explores the relationship between the dynamic eye of the camera and perpetually unmoving sculptures; music ushers a lot of life into an otherwise cool and intellectual gesture typical of the avant-garde, especially because it sounds exceptionally contemporary considering the time period. The film lasts less than four minutes, but it is difficult to summarise what is taking place in the musical layer: percussive sounds produced not by instruments but by everyday objects are accompanied by fast-paced scales played on the piano, rapid keystrokes and a very unpleasant sound reminiscent of a human scream or an animal whimper. Some of the sounds resonate as if they were produced in the electronic music studios that were emerging at the time, although they were all recorded acoustically. If someone were to ask me when this music was made and what it actually is, I would say it’s a recording from the mid-1960s, maybe early 1970s, probably by a group exploring the possibilities of free improvisation – the British AMM or Music Workshop

Menken was originally from Lithuania, just like another key artist in the post-war American avant-garde with whom Dlugoszewski collaborated – Jonas Mekas (1922–2019). Dlugoszewski wrote the music for Guns of the Trees (1961), one of the few feature films shot by Mekas, who developed a highly personal style blurring the boundaries between documentary and art cinema, a kind of diary written on film. In Guns of the Trees, music does not play as big a role as it does in Menken’s film, appearing relatively infrequently – silence is an important part of the aesthetic of Mekas’s films. Sometimes it is absolute silence, involving the removal of all voices; at other times it is a silence that emphasises all the surrounding noises and murmurs. Written by Dlugoszewski, the soundtrack consists of long, drawn-out sounds played on a variety of wind instruments, ranging from high notes probably played on a flute to a low, bass sound reminiscent of a saxophone; we also hear individual string sounds, sometimes rubbed or struck. In one scene we see a man playing the drums – but we don’t hear a single sound corresponding to what we see on the screen. The very sight of the movement of the sticks makes us feel a rhythm that we are unable to hear. This creates a particularly disturbing cognitive dissonance.

Lucia Dlugoszewski also composed the music for the documentary film Zen in Ryoko-in (1971), the only film made by the American poet Ruth Stephan (1910–1974).

Joanna Bruzdowicz

Born in 1943, the composer completed Kazimierz Sikorski’s composition class and Irena Protasewicz’s and Wanda Łosakiewicz’s piano classes at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. She continued her education in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, Oliver Messiaen and Pierre Schaeffer, in the meantime studying musicology under Jacques Chailley at the Sorbonne – she defended her doctoral thesis titled Matematyka i logika w muzyce współczesnej (Mathematics and Logic in Contemporary Music). In Paris, she joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, a pioneering electronic music studio run by Schaeffer.

Bruzdowicz has composed several dozen works, including symphonic ones; operas occupy an important place in her oeuvre. That is not all – she has devoted herself to pedagogical work, worked as a music publicist, promoted Polish music on radio stations in many countries (from France to the USA), and was active in several music organisations, many of which she founded herself. In addition, she devoted time to her family and children. When did she find time to compose film music? In an interview she gave in 1991, she said:

In the past month I have written two and a half hours of film music. I composed for 11 films at the same time. That was already a bit too much! […] Fortunately, I have set deadlines. I’m sure even Bach and Mozart had the same problem as contemporary composers. Without a set concert date, they would be too lazy to write.

Bruzdowicz’s career as a film music composer began in 1985, when Agnès Varda (1928–2019), a legend of the French New Wave, invited her to compose the soundtrack for the film Sans toit ni loi (With Neither Shelter nor Law, 1985). In fact, Varda knew exactly what she wanted to hear – while working on the film, she listened to 35 albums of string quartets, the one she liked best was the String Quartet no. 1 composed by the Polish artist two years earlier. The director asked her to create a 15-minute variation on the quartet’s theme, which she could freely use in the film’s soundtrack. It was the beginning of a long artistic friendship. She recalled of Varda:

We don’t often hear the directors’ voice in their films. It was something very new in cinema. In ‘Les glaneurs et la glaneuse’ [The Gleaners and I], you can hear Varda’s voice – her words and her intonation enter into a dialogue with my music.

Bruzdowicz believes that composing film music is a ‘technical’ occupation, much easier than writing stand-alone works.

The composer has also worked with directors such as Gilles Katz, Yves Angelo and Laurent Vinas-Raymond.

Elżbieta Sikora

She is a contemporary of Joanna Bruzdowicz – they were both on scholarship in Paris around the same time. Sikora returned to Warsaw, where she was active in the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio. She began by writing music for television productions, making her debut with the soundtrack to Papierowy ptak (Paper Bird, 1972), directed by Sławomir Idziak, one of the Polish cinematographers who went on to make a great career in world cinema. She later composed music for eight films by Krzysztof Rogulski – two of which were made in France, where Sikora emigrated in 1981.

The composer has not sought further film commissions but admits that she is interested in the way music and sound interact with the film viewer. ‘Some effects are quasi-cinematic, such as the effects of war,’ she said of her opera Madame Curie.

She has also worked with André Waksman and Agnieszka Holland.

Danuta Zankowska

She is the author of the music for more than 30 films and was sometimes responsible for the sound recording on set; she would sometimes also conduct the pieces she composed. Danuta Zankowska (1949–2000) graduated from the Faculty of Sound Direction at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.

Her output primarily consists of music created for documentaries, often short films or television. She worked with Marcel Łoziński on the films Moje miejsce (My Place, 1986), Świadkowie (Witnesses, 1986) and Siedmiu Żydów z mojej klasy (Seven Jews from My Class, 1991), among others.

Probably the best-known film in which she was responsible for the sound is Przesłuchanie (Interrogation, 1982), directed by Ryszard Bugajski – she was responsible for the sound design there and also wrote the music for some of the songs that we can hear in the film. The film was withdrawn due to censorship in the 1980s and did not officially premiere until 1990. The feature received many awards, including at festivals in Cannes and Gdynia.

Urszula Dudziak

Not only is she a singer and composer of the music she performs, but she’s also written music for several films. Her first work with filmmakers was writing, together with her then-husband Michał Urbaniak, the music for the film about them, Papaya (1980).

After splitting up with Michał Urbaniak, she was involved with Jerzy Kosiński, to whom the film Malowany chłopiec (The Painted Boy, 1995) is dedicated – Dudziak appears in it not only as a character but also as the author of the musical score. Two years later, she recorded the album Malowany Ptak (Painted Bird) dedicated to the writer’s memory – the artist considers it the most successful of her career. It is worth mentioning that Dudziak and Kosiński, in collaboration with the artist Miroslaw Rogala, co-created the 14-act video-opera Nature Is Leaving Us.

One of the first Polish jazz singers, she also composed the score for films by Stefan Szlachtycz, Alina Skiba and Tomasz Saliński.

Hanna Kulenty

The music of one of the most interesting female composers can be heard not only in concert halls and festivals but also in movie theatres – she is Łukasz Barczyk’s regular collaborator. The director said:

Hanna’s music is a rare combination of madness and precision, chaos and order, passion and composure, pain and consolation. It reminds me of no other music.

In Nieruchomy poruszyciel (The Unmoved Mover, 2008), she reached for ready-made compositions; in the film, we can hear fragments of Flute Concerto no. 1, Ensemble, De Ereprijs, and Violin Concerto no. 2, Hoffmanniana. Kulenty hand-crafted sound collages that were inspired by the visual aspect of Barczyk’s film. She described her work on the film as follows:

I watched ‘The Unmoved Mover’ for the first time in draft form, and I perceived the film with my senses, as if I were listening to a piece of music. I watched and at the same time tried, in a sensory way, to compose the whole. The film made a big impression on me, but to be honest it was not a surprise to me because I was expecting exactly this type of emotional cinema.

In 2014, she wrote the original score for Hiszpanka [lit. Spanish Girl, but refers to the influenza, ed.].

Marzena Majcher

She is a composer of contemporary, electro-acoustic, film and theatre music who has created musical scores for more than 40 films. Notable among them are Kim Hee-Jung’s A French Woman, Iwona Siekierzyńska’s Amator (Amateurs) and Kasia Klimkiewicz’s Hanoi-Warszawa. In her compositions for cinema, she combines acoustic instrument parts with preparation sounds and virtual instrument effects. She tries to maintain the greatest possible synergy between the soundtrack and the film image.

In 2021, she won the Grand Prix Komeda statuette awarded to composers of Polish film music.

Natalia Fiedorczuk-Cieślak

She is a writer, singer, instrumentalist but also a composer of film music. Her music can be heard in the short film Powrót (Return, 2013), the comedy Dżej Dżej (2014) by Maciej Pisarek, the documentary Mów mi Marianna (Call Me Marianne, 2015) by Karolina Bielawska and the feature film 53 wojny (53 Wars, 2018) by Ewa Bukowska. This director, who most often collaborates with Fiedorczuk, tells us:

Natalia is my support on all creative levels. We worked together on ‘The Return’. It was a very successful collaboration, and now [in ‘53 Wars’, ed.], it went great too! Extraordinary sensitivity, power and fragility at the same time. Music from the depths of the underground and melodic melancholic minimalism. Sometimes she is mystical shamanic and surreal […] She creates room for different spaces, closes them or opens them. And then these spaces become wild. This is what happens to Anka when she confronts the world or herself. And Natalia draws this out of the picture and pulls the viewer in like a river whirlpool. When it comes to work, we understand each other without words.

This is not the writer-composer’s only contact with cinema. She is a literary consultant at Munka Studio and works with budding directors on their scripts.

Her collaboration with theatre director Anna Smolar is also worth mentioning. She wrote the music for Dybbuk (Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz), Henrietta Lacks (Nowy Theatre in Warsaw) and Kopciuszek (Cinderella, Stary Theatre in Krakow).

Hania Rani

Some know her because of her minimalist piano miniatures inspired by Iceland, others because of the band tęskno, others still because of her contract with the legendary Deutsche Grammophon label. I don’t know what Hania Rani’s musical future will be, but she will certainly go down in history as the first woman to win the award for film music in the Main Competition of the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia.

In 2020, her music could be heard in three films: xABo. Ksiądz Boniecki (xABo: Father Boniecki) by Aleksandra Potoczek, Odmienne stany świadomości (Altered States of Mind) by Piotr Stasik and Jak najdalej stąd (Leave This Place Behind) by Piotr Domalewski – it was this soundtrack that won an award in 2020 in Gdynia.

She tells us about composing film scores:

It’s a very different kind of work for me than writing for my own projects. For one thing, I need to collaborate with someone who looks at the world through the lens of their own art and craft. That’s why these kinds of meetings can be so exciting – they hold the promise of creating something completely new as a result of the creative work of so many people from different backgrounds. Second, I feel that the music in a film is an invisible character, a missing emotion that creates a unique atmosphere and sensation. It doesn’t illustrate, it complements the artwork. I think it’s an extremely delicate thing that rejects banal associations and easy solutions. I feel that composing for a film acts as an exercise for my imagination.

Teoniki Rożynek

In an interview with Glissando magazine, the composer recounted that she used to look through film magazines to find the names of female composers specialising in film music – she couldn't find any. She said:

Personally, I haven’t met any female film composers. I’m sure there are some, but I don’t know any, even though I’ve been around that world a bit.

Rożynek’s adventure with the world of film began by composing music for student films and short features shot by friends. She surfaced into the wider waters of festivals and studio cinemas in 2017, when Jagoda Szelc asked permission to use one of the composer’s pieces in her film. The experimental Wieża. Jasny dzień (Tower: Bright Day, 2017) turned out to be one of the most interesting films in terms of the music and sound design in years. In 2021, Rożynek wrote the music for Prime Time, directed by Jakub Piątek – it was the second music award in the history of the Gdynia Competition to be given to a female composer.

In the Audycja kulturalna (Cultural Broadcast), the composer told us:

Film music is less intense in terms of driving the narrative than stand-alone music. It has slightly fewer attention-grabbing events […] I avoid situations where the music provides an emotional backdrop for a scene instead of leading its own parallel counterpoint aiming to convey its own narrative to support the image.

Written in Polish by Filip Lech, 22 October 2021, updated 17 May 2023

Translated by Michał Niedzielski, 28 January 2024

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