And it is probably for this reason that the starting point of all Raczyński’s work is the written word. As he himself emphasises:
When I start working with a text, I read it over and over again, I look at how it resonates within me. I look for non-obvious senses and meanings, for key words, and I define for myself the emotional colouring of the composition. […] It is often at this stage that the first sketches are made. I make notes of themes, colour, rhythmic or harmonic solutions that I plan to use in the score. In this way, a kind of “musical dictionary” characteristic of a given piece is created, which allows me to express the senses I discover in the text and at the same time ensures formal coherence in the case of the larger forms.
As Łukaszewski has rightly pointed out, this dictionary can be specific, and the terms included in it do not necessarily coincide with definitions proposed in other composers’ ‘personal’ lexicons. In his commentaries on his works, Raczyński reveals not only his sources of inspiration, but also the procedures that allow his music to break away from these sources and flow with its own current. Discussing the hymn Sol Ecce Surgit Igneus for mixed choir (2021), for example, he explains:
The ascending motif based on successive notes of the gama, which forms the basis of this composition, is inspired by Arvo Pärt's Solfeggio. However, it differs from the original in several important ways. Firstly, I have used a scale with a raised fourth degree, which generates a different timbral quality. Secondly, the march also undergoes constant modulation, which is why I use the full palette of twelve notes in the first sixteen bars.
These departures from the original material are plentiful in Raczyński’s work. The composer experiments with choral intonation, breaks clear references to Franco-Flemish polyphony with surprising dissonances, plays with colour, light and shadow in his music, and creatively develops the concept of spatial sound.