Education in the history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music in Poland is provided by various types of institutions: by musicology departments/institutes within universities; by academies of music (former conservatories), which educate musicians, composers, and music theorists; and by arts departments of academic in-stitutions specialising in teacher education. However, the overview presented below will only be concerned with universities continuing the tradition of musicological research and instruction. They are: the Institute of Musicology, University of War-saw; the Institute of Musicology, Jagiellonian University (Kraków); the Institute of Musicology, Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań; the Institute of Musicol-ogy, University of Wrocław; and the Institute of MusicolMusicol-ogy, Faculty of TheolMusicol-ogy, Catholic University of Lublin.
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century music is in each case a subject included in the basic and mandatory history of music courses at the undergraduate level. It usually encompasses successive periods from antiquity to the contemporary in chronological order. Thus, in most cases, twentieth- and twenty-first-century music constitutes one-sixth of the entire history of music courses. The delivery of such classes is usu-ally divided into lectures and discussions. These discussions are to complement and expand the scope of problems tackled during the course lectures, and actively engage the students. The vast majority of the lectures are cross-sectional; there are some monographic lectures devoted to selected, self-contained topics from the history of music in the period in question, and are usually linked to the personal research inter-ests and preferences of the person conducting the lecture.
History of music syllabuses usually encompass the main tendencies in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music in a chronological and systematic order. In addition to the perspective of specific movements, styles and techniques (e.g. transformations of the tonal system, the phenomenon of modernism, and avant-garde techniques), schools of composition, and main new music centres, the syllabuses also take into account the in-dividual perspectives – the oeuvres of the most important composers, with emphasis on the greatest musical innovators of the modern era (e.g. Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoen-berg, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, to mention only a few).
Only in few cases do general music syllabuses feature topics relating to Polish mu-sic. Usually, topics from the history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music in Poland are addressed in separate cycles of classes. Their structure is in most cases
analogous to that of courses in Western European music. Consequently, they deal with topics in chronological order, from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of the century, and the beginning of the twenty-first century. The key to the exploration of the history of Polish music can be found in various modernist ‘isms’
and figures of leading composers. Thus, a typical course syllabus includes such artis-tic phenomena as neoclassicism, folklorism, serialism, aleatoricism, and sonorisartis-tics/
sonorism,1 as well as the names of Karol Szymanowski, Witold Lutosławski, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, and Krzysztof Penderecki.
The literature recommended to students as part of the basic courses is largely a collection of ‘classics’ of Polish musicological writing. The structure and content of these works determines the thematic scope of the course in most cases. The manda-tory reading lists feature books devoted to selected historical and aesthetic problems in twentieth-century music2 as well as monographs on the life and work of vari-ous composers written by Polish authors3. Recommended books still include those which, from some points of view, are outdated, but have made a considerable impact on the perception and systematisation of twentieth-century music e.g. the concept of vitalism coined by Tadeusz A. Zieliński, or the concept of bruitism preferred by Bogusław Schaeffer.4 In addition, lists of recommended literature include references
1 The original concept of sonoristics was created by the Polish music theorist Józef M. Chomiński dur-ing the mid 1950s ( Józef M. Chomiński: “Z zagadnień techniki kompozytorskiej XX wieku” (‘Prob-lems of compositional technique in the twentieth century’), in: Muzyka 20/3 (1956), pp. 23–48). The notion of sonorism, in turn, was coined by music critics in response to Chomiński’s writings.
2 E.g. Zbigniew Skowron: Teoria i estetyka awangardy muzycznej (‘Theory and aesthetics of the musical avant-garde’). Warsaw: Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1989; Zbigniew Skowron: Nowa muzyka amerykańska (‘New American music’). Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 1995; Tomasz Baranowski:
Estetyka ekspresjonizmu w muzyce XX wieku. (‘The aesthetics of expressionism in twentieth-century music’). Białystok: Elan, 2006; Alicja Jarzębska: Spór o piękno muzyki. Wprowadzenie do kultury muzycznej XX wieku (‘A dispute over the beauty of music. An introduction to musical culture’).
Wrocław: FnRNP, 2004.
3 E.g. Stefan Jarociński: Debussy a impresjonizm i symbolism (‘Debussy, and impressionism and expressionism’). Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1996; Alicja Jarzębska: Strawiński.
Myśli i muzyka (‘Stravinsky. Thoughts and music’). Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 2002; Krzysztof Meyer: Szostakowicz i jego czasy (‘Shostakovich and his times’). Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1999.
4 Bogusław Schaeffer: Nowa muzyka. Problemy współczesnej techniki kompozytorskiej (‘New music.
Problems of the modern compositional technique’). Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1958; and Tadeusz A. Zieliński: Style, kierunki i twórcy muzyki XX wieku (‘Styles, movements and composers of twentieth-century music’). Kraków: Centralny Ośrodek Metodyki i Upowszechniania Kultury, 1972. According to Zieliński, the characteristic features of vitalism are, above all, heavily accented rhythmic style, dissonant harmony, the use of bright instrumental colors, and emphasising of the hardness and roughness of the sound. Schaefferian bruitism, in turn, means extending the stock of sounds of traditional instruments with noises, and extracting new form-building energy
to source texts (e.g. composers’ manifestos), and fundamental studies translated into Polish. Among them, those most often used are: Luigi Rognoni’s The Second Vienna School: Expressionism and Dodecaphony,5 the anthology Audio Culture: Readings in Mod-ern Music edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner,6 as well as books by Elliott Antokoletz (Twentieth-Century Music),7 and Alex Ross (The Rest Is Noise).8 Additional reading lists include well-known books by Erik Salzman,9 Paul Griffiths,10 and Rich-ard Taruskin,11 as well as highly-regarded collections by multiple authors.12 Sylla-buses feature very few items written originally in languages other than English.13 An interesting exception in the basic courses in the history of twentieth-century music in Poland is provided by an original vision of this history by Maciej Gołąb, used since 2011 at the Institute of Musicology, University of Wrocław, and constituting the sole basis of a lecture cycle conducted by the author. It is based on the ‘wav-ing of modernism’ model and focuses on the categories of melosphere, sonosphere and phonosphere as qualities defining the composers’ attitudes to the sound material:
The melosphere is a way of organising the entirety of pitch phenomena in a musical work, sonosphere represents the area of timbral organisation, and the phonosphere is characterised by using the soundscape elements. According to Gołąb, these categories supplemented by the chronosphere (organisation of musical time) constitute a set of four fields of creative expression in twentieth-century music.14
from this material. Although both these terms have linkages with sonorism, they are still in use in Polish musicological writing.
5 Polish translation by H. Krzeczkowski: Wiedeńska szkoła muzyczna. Ekspresjonizm i dodekafonia.
Kraków: Polskie Wydaw. Muzyczne, 1978.
6 In Polish translation: Kultura dźwięku. Testy o muzyce nowoczesnej. Gdańsk: Słowo/Obraz Terytoria, 2010.
7 Muzyka XX wieku, trans. Justyna Chęsy-Parda, Jacek Lesiński et al. Inowrocław: Wydawnictwo POZKAL, 2009.
8 Polish translation by A. Laskowski: Reszta jest hałasem. Słuchając XX wieku. Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2011.
9 Eric Salzman: Twentieth-Century Music: An Introduction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967.
10 Paul Griffiths: Modern Music and After. Directions Since 1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
11 Richard Taruskin: The Oxford History of Western Music. Vol. 4: The Early Twentieth-Century Music.
Vol. 5: The Late Twentieth-Century Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
12 Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople (eds.): The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Martin Cooper (ed.): The New Oxford History of Music. Vol. 10: The Modern Age 1890–1960. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
13 The only reference to the non-English language literature concerns Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (ed.):
Terminologie der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1995.
14 Maciej Gołąb: Muzyczna moderna w XX wieku. Między kontynuacją, nowością̨ a zmianą fonosystemu, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2011. Published also in English translation by Wojciech Bońkowski as Musical Modernism in the Twentieth Century. Between Continuation, Innovation and Change of Phonosystem in the series Eastern European Studies in Musicology. Vol. 6. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015.
What has become an increasingly important part of academic courses devoted to twentieth- and twenty-first-century music over the last three years in Poland are courses in popular music. Their share in the curricula has been growing steadily.
They are offered by all Polish centres of musicological education with the exception of the Institute of Musicology, Catholic University of Lublin, where the educational and research profile focuses on church music.
As an example, the popular music course at the University of Warsaw is com-prised of two basic blocks: history of jazz, and history of rock. The former presents the history of jazz from the perspective of the most important styles, genres and personalities, taking into account turning points in the history of jazz as well as the most important works. The objective of the history of rock classes is analogous – to present key moments in the stylistic development of rock music. There are also op-tional monographic classes, e.g. “History of American film musical in the twentieth century” – a lecture cycle from the academic year 2016/17 – which encompasses comparative analyses of stage and film musicals with regard to form and orchestration as well as stylistic transformations.
For three years the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, has been offering a course entitled “Jazz styles”, exploring the historical changes of these styles, from the beginnings until their marriages with rock and pop. These are optional classes for first-year undergraduate students. Poznań also offers optional courses in popular music (tutorial), and music in popular culture (seminar). The main objective of the latter is to present the impact of technological development on the changes in the production, dissemination, and consumption of popular music. The Institute of Mu-sicology, Jagiellonian University (Kraków), too, has been offering classes over the last three years in twentieth-century popular music (e.g. “Popular music: from blues to techno” or “Jazz-pop-rock music”). The new musicological curriculum at the Uni-versity of Wrocław also features classes devoted to popular music (“Popular music”,
“Genres of popular music” and “Research problems in popular music”).
An analysis of the content of the available syllabuses of obligatory classes in twen-tieth- and twenty-first-century music suggests that they generally explore phenomena characteristic of the first three quarters of the period in question, while the last quarter and issues concerning the twenty-first century are not well represented. Suffice it to say that it was only this year (2017/18) that the relevant course in the history of music at the University of Wrocław changed its name from the “History of twentieth-century music” to “History of music of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century”.
It should be noted, however, that the musicological curricula in Poland have been evolv-ing steadily in recent years to meet the challenges of contemporary musicology as a scholarly discipline as well as the expectations and preferences of potential students. In other words, seeking to capture the latest phenomena in music is becoming a necessity.
This is why, for example, major changes in the curriculum have been introduced in recent years at the Institute of Musicology, University of Warsaw. They include modules, introduced in the 2016/2017 academic year, that are to complement the basic courses in the history of music with regard to successive periods. When it comes to the music of the previous century, we will find among them classes devoted to the problems of sound and timbre explorations (from the futurists’ experiments to spec-tral works), secrets of compositional techniques, or “New music laboratory” ques-tions dealing with the current problems of composition and musical life. The classes feature discussions about e.g. Harry Lehman’s philosophy of music as well as meet-ings with composers of contemporary Polish music, especially those from younger generations who have just achieved international recognition, e.g. Artur Zagajewski whose Brut for cello and ensemble has been named the “selected” work at the 64th International Rostrum of Composers (IRC) held in Palermo, Italy (2017).
The history of twentieth-century music is also addressed in a course entitled “Mu-sic and politics”, which is concerned with the situation of mu“Mu-sic in totalitarian sys-tems (e.g. political pressure brought to bear on musicians, and the role of censorship), entanglement of musicians in ideologies, use of music for political purposes, and the role of music as an expression of protest against various forms of political op-pression. In addition, important changes have been introduced into the musicology curriculum at the University of Wrocław, where the basic course in history of mu-sic of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries now includes a subject entitled
“Contemporary styles and compositional techniques”, as well as a specialist tutorial:
“Minimalism and post-minimalism in music” (for postgraduate students).
Over the last three years classes complementing the panorama of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music have included a monographic lecture cycle “Serialism in twentieth-century music” (Adam Mickiewicz University), a lecture cycle “The style and aesthetics of Witold Lutosławski’s chamber oeuvre” (University of Warsaw, a continuation of lectures from previous years devoted to other aspects of the com-poser’s oeuvre), or a tutorial devoted to the origins and main assumptions of Olivier Messiaen’s theory of rhythm. Poznań and Wrocław also explore operatic themes (e.g.
classes entitled “Opera within the sphere of symbolism and expressionism” as part of the opera specialisation at the Adam Mickiewicz University, or “Opera and multi-media shows in the twentieth century” at the University of Wrocław). The Wrocław Institute of Musicology highlights cultural contexts of twentieth-century music (classes entitled “Music in culture”, an important part of which is concerned with the questions of musical culture of the previous century), while the syllabuses in Kraków stress the aesthetics and reception of new music.
As already suggested, the last three years have been a period of important changes in the musicological curricula at Polish universities. Those changes are also
applica-ble to courses dealing with the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, although we should be fully aware of the fact that music of our time still needs to be better reflected in syllabuses and recommended reading lists, and that it requires us to go beyond purely academic reflection towards active participation in contemporary musical life.
Heekyung Lee