Paweł Strzelecki

Composer, music theoretician, doctor of humanities, pedagogue. He has authored more than 100 works.

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Paweł Strzelecki, photo: soundcloud.com

Strzelecki was born 27th November 1975 in Zielona Góra. He completed his studies in music theory (2000) and composition with Marian Borkowski (1999) and Zbigniew Bagiński (2002) at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. During his studies at the university, he studied organ with Jerzy Dziubiński and piano improvisation with Szabolcs Esztényi. He has taken part in composition classes conducted by, amongst others, Anders Hilborg, Luca Francesconi, Lidia Zielińska, Zbigniew Bargielski, Martin O'Leary, Kevin O’Connell, Kevin Volans, John McLachlan, Ian Brabazon, John Metcalf, Gareth Churchill, Elliot Sharp and Christopher Austin.

Neo-Romanticism: scientific and pedagogical activity

His PhD dissertation written under the supervision of Zbigniew Skowron, devoted to the current of ‘neo-Romanticism’ in the works of Polish composers after 1975 (2001-2005), was published in 2006 by the Musica Iagellonica publishing house. ‘Neo-Romanticism’ was present in the music of artists from the ‘1933 generation’ (Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Wojciech Kilar), the ‘Stalowa Wola generation’ (Eugeniusz Knapik, Aleksander Lasoń, Andrzej Krzanowski) and many other Polish composers (including Tadeusz Baird, Włodzimierz Kotoński and Zygmunt Krauze).

The aesthetic and ideological markers of ‘neo-Romanticism’ include emotional culminations, ‘new lyricism’ (a return to cantilena), ‘new tonality’ (the use of modal scales and chromatics), euphony, slowed musical time, opening to the sacrum, inspiration by folklore and nature, restoration of the category of beauty and affirmation of tradition. Apart from analysing over a hundred compositions connected with the ‘neo-Romanticism’ movement (including Penderecki’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 or Kilar’s Kościelec 1909, the author included in his book interviews with composers, critics and researchers.

Paweł Strzelecki is the author of eight entries in the Almanac of Composers of the F. Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw (ed. Alicja Gronau-Osińska) and 10 biographical entries in the dictionary Polish Composers 1918-2000 (ed. Marek Podhajski). He has published in Ruch Muzyczny and Heksis.

From 2003 to 2014, he was associated with his alma mater, where he was an assistant professor starting in 2006. Between 2019 and 2020, he taught harmony at the Conservatorio Pollini in Padua. He has also worked in music schools in Poland (Frederic Chopin Secondary School in Sochaczew) and in Italy (schools in the provinces of Padua and Venice). Paweł Strzelecki is a member of the Society for Music Theory and the Union of Polish Composers.

Compositions

Paweł Strzelecki is one of the most prolific composers in contemporary Polish music, with an output of over 100 works, most of which consist of multiple movements. He emphasises the special place that nine symphonies (2017-2021), solo concertos with orchestra (an organ concerto from 2002 and a piano concerto from 2012), nine string quartets (2001-2020) and a series of 15 sonatas for various instruments (2000-2019) occupy in his oeuvre.

Strzelecki’s music is emotionally very expressive and romantic. The composer often refers to classical forms – from sonatas to symphonies. As we can read on his website, his one-movement works are constructed in a more free manner; the individual sections are contrasted in terms of material, texture or mood. His musical language has moved from centralising chromatic material and freely treated dodecaphony to diatonic and euphonic. Melodics is an essential element of his compositions. Driven by a passion for history, he often references other compositions in his work. The Polishness of Strzelecki’s music is expressed in references to Polish folklore.

Paweł Strzelecki is the author of a reconstruction of the accompaniment to a song melody by Kazimierz Twardowski – an eminent philosopher, logician and psychologist, founder of the Lviv-Warsaw School. His lesser-known field of interest was music. He dealt with the theory, history and aesthetics of music. He was also a keen music lover, pianist and composer of several compositions. The song Jesienią (In Autumn) to words by Lucjan Rydel was composed around 1907; its reconstruction was created in 1998.

The composer’s side passion is rock music. Sketches, mainly referring to the aesthetics of progressive rock, can be found on Paweł Strzelecki’s website.

Prizes, awards, performances

In 2002, Paweł Strzelecki won Second Prize in the International Composition Competition held to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the construction of the organ at St. Adalbert Church in Mikołów for his Concerto for Organ, Timpani and String Orchestra. A year later he was awarded 1st prize in the Tadeusz Baird Competition for Young Composers for Piano Quintet.

In 2008, Strzelecki’s Interrogation of an Angel for baritone and piano won Third Prize in the National Competition for Composers held on the occasion of the Herbert Year. In 2009, the jury of the Tadeusz Baird Competition for Young Composers singled out Summer Dreams, written by Strzelecki for 14 performers and tape (the highest of the three distinctions awarded at the time).

His works have been performed at national and international festivals. In Poland, Paweł Strzelecki’s works could be heard during the following festivals: Warsaw Autumn (2004, 2006), Warsaw Music Meetings (2006, 2010, 2011), Music Days in Mikołow (2003), Świętokrzyskie Music Days in Kielce (2003) and Probaltica in Toruń (2008). Abroad, they were performed at the 1st International Festival – Forum Past and Future in Odessa, Ukraine (2000), Uckermärkische Musikwochen in Crieven, Germany (2005) and at the Aberystwyth MusicFest International Festival and Summer School in Wales (2011). Strzelecki’s works have also been performed at numerous concerts in Poland and abroad (United States, Ireland, France, Italy, Belarus).

Selected works:

Nocturne for piano (1990)
Piano trio (1998)
String Quartet (2001)
Concerto for organ, timpani and string orchestra (2002)
9 Etudes for clarinet solo (2003)
Piano sonata (2007)
‘Interrogation of an Angel’ for baritone and piano to words by Zbigniew Herbert (2008)
Summer Dreams for 14 performers and tape (2008)
Ballad-Lullaby for piano (2009)
Vagabond Music for guitar quintet (2010)
Smoleńsk 2010 on tape (2010)
Elegy ‘Katyń’. In memory of September 17th, 1939 for brass band (2010, revised. 2012)
Voices from Old Poland for chamber orchestra (2011)
Concerto for piano and orchestra (2012)
String Quartet No. 2 (2012)
Sonata for alto saxophone and piano (2013)
Sonata for trumpet and piano (2017)
Symphony
Symphony No 1 ‘The Serious’ for orchestra (2017)
Symphony No. 2 ‘The 4 Places in Time & Space’ for orchestra (2018)
Symphony No. 3 ‘The Summer’ for orchestra (2019)
String Quartet No. 3 (2019)
Symphony No. 4 ‘Choral’ for orchestra (2020)
String Quartet No. 4 (2020)
Three madrigals to words by Giovanni Battista Guarinini (2020)
Symphony No. 5 ‘Surprise’ for orchestra (2020)
Symphony No. 6 ‘The Sea’ for orchestra (2020)
String Quartet No. 5 (2020)
Symphony No. 7 ‘The Four Landscapes’ for orchestra (2020)
String Quartet No. 6 (2020)
String Quartet No. 7 (2021)
Symphony No. 8 ‘American’ for orchestra (2020)
VIII String Quartet (2021)
String Quartet No. 9 (2021)
String Trio (2021)
Symphony No. 9 ‘Victory’ (2021)

The full list of works composed by Paweł Strzelecki can be found on his website.

Written by Filip Lech, translated by PG March 2022, edited by AZ

paweł strzelecki

classical contemporary music

polish composers of the 21st century

classical music