Henryk Mikołaj Górecki's Scontri per Orchestra Op. 17 (1960) is one of the most prominent symbols of the Polish avant-garde music of the 1950s and 1960s. When it was to be performed at the 1987 Warsaw Autumn Festival - twenty-seven years after the premiere - Krzysztof Droba, a top expert on Górecki's music, wrote in the Warsaw Autumn Festival programme book:
"Finally, one cannot help wondering and marveling at Górecki's composing career when listening to 'Scontri' nowadays: can we recognize the former revolutionary in the Franciscan habit?"
Indeed, Górecki had been a revolutionary back in 1960, and the first performance of Scontri at the Warsaw Autumn arose stirred up extreme emotions, from apologetic to belittling. Here are some reactions quoted by Krzysztof Droba:
"A work whose indisputable huge value becomes obvious when you hear it for the first time" (Bohdan Pociej); "a great talent", "a combination of technical inventiveness with a huge emotional load" (Tadeusz Zieliński); "a very risky experiment" (Ludwik Erhardt); "can it still be called music?" (Józef Kański); "much ado about nothing" (Joachim Olkuśnik); "a heap of disorderly creaks, shrills and noises" (Marian Fuchs); "utter ugliness", "I have never heard on stage anything which would have sounded as horrible" (Jerzy Waldorff).
This is how Krzysztof Droba commented on this student work of music (Górecki wrote Scontri when completing his studies with Bolesław Szabelski at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice):
" 'Scontri' was composed using the then fashionable serial technique utilizing pitch, rhythmic and dynamic series and based on the idea of a 'clash' of horizontal and vertical sound combinations. The composer's individuality, however, defeated all of the technical assumptions, producing violent expressiveness. It is amazing that serialism can be that expressive!"
Prepared by the Polish Music Information Center, Polish Composers' Union, June 2002.