Composer and pedagogue
Schaeffer concentrated on composition beginning in 1957, while continuing his other activities. Beginning in 1963, he was a lecturer in composition at the Academy of Music in Kraków, and taught courses in contemporary composition in Salzburg, York and Middelburg. He began cooperating with the Experimental Studio (Studio Eksperymentalne) of Polish Radio in Warsaw in 1965, during which period he wrote his electronic compositions. He was the editor-in-chief of the periodical Forum Musicum from 1967 to 1973 (sixteen issues appeared). He received his doctorate at the University of Warsaw in 1970. He has been a professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mozarteum in Salzburg since 1985. He belonged to the artistic association known as the Kraków Group.
Bogusław Schaeffer has been active as a playwright since 1955. By 1994, he had written 29 plays, which were translated into 16 languages. There have been approximately 60 concerts devoted exclusively to his works since 1969, including concerts in Oslo, Amsterdam, Princeton, Mexico City, Salzburg, Istanbul, Berlin and Vienna. He has received many awards at composition competitions: He won prizes at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Competition in 1959 for his Monosonata for six violin quartets (1959) and Quattro Movimenti for piano and orchestra (1957), at the Artur Malawski Competition in 1962 for his Musica Ipsa for orchestra of Low-pitched Instruments (1962) and Four Pieces for String Trio (1962), and at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Competition in 1964 for Little Symphony (Scultura) (1960) and Collage and Form for Eight Jazzmen and Orchestra (1963). He was awarded a prize from the Minister of Culture and Art in 1971, received an award from the Union of Polish Composers and of the city of Kraków in 1977 and one from the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation in New York in 1998. He received an award at the Festival of Contemporary Art in Wrocław in 1987 for his dramatic works. He was made an honorary member of the Polish Association of Contemporary Music (the Polish section of the ISCM/SIMC) in 1995. The International Academic Symposium was held at the Jagiellonian University in 1999, which was dedicated to his work as composer, playwright and graphic artist, in conjunction with a concert of his works and performances of his plays.
In 2008, the premiere of Maciej Pisarek’s documentary about Schaeffer, Solo, took place. It was awarded at the Documentary Film Festival in Prague (Grand Prix, 2008) and Montreal (Grand Prix, 2009), as well as at the Docupolis festival in Barcelona, where it received the Best Experimental Documentary Award.
Since 2008, Aurea Porta Foundation of Friends of Art has regularly organised the international Schaeffer’s Era Festival to honour his musical and dramatic achievements. Although the festival is permanently linked to Warsaw, it is also accompanied by events taking place abroad, for example in Edinburgh and Madrid. During subsequent editions, artists representing such fields of art as music, theatre, film, and performance rediscover the works of Bogusław Schaeffer, aiming to bring them closer to a wider audience.