Maciej Goląb – författare

The history of Gdańsk carillons begins in 1561. It was that year that fourteen automatic bells were installed in the Main Town Hall. Later, a "striking mechanism" appeared in St Catherine’s Church. This magnificent instrument, consisting of thirty-five bells, has been in use since 1738. The third carillon was built in 1939 in the youth hostel at Biskupia Górka. The play of Gdańsk carillons was interrupted by the Second World War.The book discusses the history and music of Gdańsk carillons. It contains valuable information on bells, carillon mechanisms, bell founders, carillonists, and bell setters, inviting the reader to study the Protestant repertoire, the unique notation of preserved manuscripts, and the remarkable soundscape of Gdańsk, which for centuries has been marked by the sound of carillons.

This book concerns the ways in which many different types of nationalism, chauvinism and racism penetrated into musical thought in the interwar period, and how the leading artistic personalities of that period reacted to these ideologies. The concept of "nationalism" is understood broadly in this book and covers the entire spectrum of its positive and negative aspects. The topics listed in the book’s title have been discussed on the example of selected four countries, significant with respect to population and territory and representing different social-political systems: Germany (mostly after 1933), Italy, Poland (after 1926) and Great Britain. This selection is also representative of the main ethnic groups in Europe: Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Latin-Romance and Slavic.

From Aristotle to Heidegger, philosophers distinguished two orders of time, before, after and past, present, future, presenting them in a wide range of interpretations. It was only around the turn of the 1970s that two theories of time which deliberately went beyond that tradition, enhancing our notional apparatus, were produced independently of one another. The nature philosopher Julius T. Fraser, founder of the interdisciplinary International Society for the Study of Time, distinguished temporal levels in the evolution of the Cosmos and the structure of the human mind: atemporality, prototemporality, eotemporality, biotemporality and nootemporality. The author of the book distinguishes two ‘dimensions’ in time: the dimension of the sequence of time (syntagmatic) and the dimension of the sizes of duration or frequency (systemic). On the systemic scale, the author distinguishes, in human ways of existing and acting, a visual zone, zone of the psychological present, zone of works and performances, zone of the natural and cultural environment, zone of individual and social life and zone of history, myth and tradition. In this book, the author provides a synthesis of these theories.

This book is the first monographic study of nineteenth-century transcriptions of Chopin's music. The work is based on the quantitatively and qualitatively rich source material, which formed the basis for considerations from the perspective of social history, music analysis and aesthetics. Thanks to these multiple perspectives, as well as the time range and the source base, this study may contribute to the history of the reception of Chopin’s work in nineteenth-century culture; it may also prove significant in overcoming the attitude that aesthetically deprecates transcriptions and in adopting a different stance, regarding such adaptations as valuable texts of musical culture.

This book is the first monographic study of Tadeusz Baird – one of the greatest Polish composers of the second half of the 20th century, a connoisseur of music tradition and a prophet of the future of music (postmodernity), a composer of worldwide renown, an erudite. Baird was deeply engaged in art, aware of the threats and problems of contemporary world, and endowed with a sense of a mission. His personality was shaped by traumatic experiences during World War II and during the late 1940s and early 1950s. He was very demanding of himself and others. As signaled in the title, the book is an extensive, monographic representation of the composer's work and concepts in their stylistic, cultural, and esthetic contexts.

The book presents the history of the only strictly scientific Polish musicological periodical Kwartalnik Muzyczny. It shows how the editorial board of the periodi-cal met with true approval and harsh criticism. The subject allows the author to present the beginnings of Polish musicology and its evolution through three epochs: the late partitioning period, the interwar period of Poland’s independ-ence, and the early years after the Second World War

This book is an attempt at a new interpretation of Stravinsky’s thoughts about music and art, an interpretation made in dialogue with the philosophy of new music and 19th-century artistic ideas. It is also a proposal for a new method of analysing the construction of his musical masterpieces (for example a proposal of new formal sound-units: partons with perceptual invariance), a method in-spired by research into cognitive psychology. Furthermore, in the analysis of Stravinsky’s music, the author emphasises its connection with the Eastern and Western traditions of European culture and links with Plato’s triad of values.

Polish queen Marie Casimire Sobieska, French by birth, left the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after the death of her husband king John III and settled in Rome in 1699. Supported by her son, Prince Aleksander Sobieski, the queen dowager created at her Roman residence in Palazzo Zuccari one of Rome’s most important opera theatres. She used music and drama to uphold her social status and political plans, satisfy her aesthetic needs, and provide entertainment for the granddaughter under her care, along with her ever more ailing son. This is the first monograph about Sobieska’s music patronage. The book describes works by such eminent artists as Carlo S. Capece, Filippo Juvarra, and Domenico Scarlatti, along with the atmosphere of Rome of that time, the sociopolitical role of the festa, and the music theatre genres it employed.

This book is interdisciplinary in nature and examines the debate over beauty in twentieth-century art. It synthesizes artistic phenomena and composers’ aesthetic attitudes considering the ideological and social contexts of music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The proposed historiographical structure is based on the premise that diverse artistic phenomena and aesthetic attitudes can be interpreted in relation to the concept of beauty, which was largely “banished” in the twentieth century. Jarzębska addresses the debates over models of musical culture in the interwar period, inspired by the ideas of national and progressive music. She also explores issues related to musical life, which in the postwar period was influenced by the Iron Curtain and , at the turn of the second millennium by postmodern philosophy and the rise of rock culture.

The monograph concerns one of the most important trends in contemporary classical Polish music. The ‟new romanticism” represented the reaction to the crisis of the avant-garde in the 70s. It appeared in works by the ‟1933 generation” (Penderecki, Górecki, Kilar), ‟the Stalowa Wola generation” (Knapik, Lasoń, Krzanowski), and others. This music matched tradition with contemporary techniques and strong emotionalism. Its romantic dimension and seriousness were in sheer contrast to the ‟double-coding” of Postmodernism. It stemmed from the political situation in Poland during the ‟Iron Curtain” times. The book also focuses on the topic’s American (Schonberg, Rochberg) and European contexts. The author also analyzes 104 compositions and 30 interviews (incl. with Penderecki) to present an even fuller picture.

Antonín Dvořák was a clever and highly communicative humorist and musical dramatist. His masterful compositional strategies underscore, heighten, and construct sonic humor in his six (!!) comic operas. He crafts musical slapstick, satire, parody, and merriment using sudden breaks in rhythmic patterns, explosive harmonic shifts, excessive repetition, and startling pauses, as well as incongruous tempi, dynamics, range, and instrumentation. Dvořák also gives the orchestra its own "voice," breaking the metaphorical "fourth wall" to reveal humor outside of the characters' awareness. Narrative description and comprehensive music examples guide the reader through all six of Dvořák's works in this genre, revealing a significantly under-appreciated side of the composer's immense creative skills.

This investigation of Polish, Jewish, and German sources demonstrates the roles of music in occupied Poland. Its former citizens had their access to music controlled by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. It was rationed as other goods, depending on racial (i.e. also legal) status. Official music performances served as a propagandistic tool to further divide the Nazi-segregated population. Music played clandestinely embodied resistance. It restored the sense of community and helped save musicians persecuted as Jews, like Władysław Szpilman. The documents analyzed in the monograph confirm the dehumanization of prospective victims, mixed with a narcissistic self-righteous view of Nazi songs and propaganda ultimately led to the organized presence of music in the Holocaust sites.

The author outlines how memory is treated by contemporary artists, philosophers,musicians, sociologists, musicologists, as well as victims of the Holocaust…She paints a rich landscape of how her subject features in the work ofcomposers and their collaborators, many of whom were motivated by memoriesof the Occupation.With such a subject, the discussion inevitably comes round to the uneasy relationshipbetween aesthetics and ethics. The author quotes Adorno: “Is poetrypossible after Auschwitz?”. The work is an answer to that question, and an affirmativeone. It must be possible: to restore hope, and to invoke and sustainMemory, at least symbolically – by artistic means. Art, even when it disturbs,brings catharsis and preserves memory.The author impresses with her erudition, wealth of materials cited, musicalcompetence and critical insights.Krzysztof Szwajgier, The Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music, Cracow,Poland.