Maciej Golab – författare

This book offers a fresh discussion of the methodology of music historiography. So far historiographical methodology has always depended on other fields within humanities (especially on history) to a degree where it moved the focus of its thought away from the musical work’s structure and away from the musical work itself. Musical Modernism in the Twentieth Century looks at musical structures in its cultural context, using different methodological models for the interpretation of the subsequent phases of the twentieth-century musical modernism.

The studies collected in this book fall into four chief thematic areas of research on Fryderyk Chopin’s life, stylistic changes, creative output, and musical reception. The first one is devoted to the origins of the composer’s artistic formation in the context of his connections with the Main School of Music at the Royal University of Warsaw. The second thematic area is tied to the problem of Chopin’s musical language and transformation of his individual style. The third group of studies concentrates on issues in Chopin’s musical aesthetics, while the fourth and final one is devoted to the questions of composer’s reception in the 19th-century musical culture in light of the practice of musical transcriptions at the time.

On the Music Front. Socialist-Realist Discourse on Music in Poland, 1948–1955 is a monograph on one of the key aspects of Poland’s musical culture during the Stalinist period. Among the many texts analysed in this book are addresses given by leading party officials, minutes of musical meetings and conferences, talks before informal ‘get-to-know-the-music’ concerts, and papers on aesthetics and music history. Detailed discussion is devoted to the musicological works of Zofia Lissa, to productions of Stanisław Moniuszko’s operas directed by Leon Schiller, to museum exhibitions on music history, and to the mega-production of the Polish Socialist-Realist film, Chopin’s Youth, directed by Aleksander Ford.

This book studies the Jesuit culture in Silesia and Kłodzko (Glatz) County by focusing on its musical works and traditions. The strategies adopted by the Jesuits achieved notable results in the artistic traditions they cultivated, first of all a creative redefinition of musical culture itself, at various levels of its organization. While allowing music to exert influence on human activity, the Jesuits had to accept that its impact would depend on the peculiarities of local possibilities and conditions. This is why they analysed the qualities of music and its culture-forming potential in such detail and precisely defined its norms and modes of functioning. The impact of music can be observed in the transformations that the cultivation of musical culture brought about in the model of the Order itself, as well as in individuals, communities, and the time and space that defined them.