Contemporary Classics April 7, 2020 Krzysztof Penderecki: In Memoriam

In 1969 at the age of 18, as a member of the symphony orchestra of the University of California at Irvine after years of playing Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and other music from the baroque, classical and romantic periods,  I discovered contemporary classical music, and I always joke that Krzysztof Penderecki was my gateway drug.  That year we performed his Die Irae and I was “woke” to a new kind of sonic exploration with music.  For that I will always be indebted to the late Peter Odegard, conductor of the UCI Symphony and to Krzysztof Penderecki, who passed away on March 29^th.  Tonight on Contemporary Classics we devote the whole program to the music of Krzysztof Penderecki.

In 1960, the 27 year old Krzysztof Penderecki wrote a piece for 52 string instruments that he called 8’37” (a nod towards John Cage’s 4’33”) which was part of the sonic explorations that he was creating.  This work exemplifies the dense tonal structures, tone clusters, that his early works are so known for. Works like this incorporated extended techniques for the instrumental players, which required players to explore terrain that pushed beyond the conventions of their instrument. The piece made an immediate impression and when Penderecki, struck by the emotional turmoil of the apocalyptic sounds he had unleashed, retitled it Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, he found himself with an unexpected hit.

And now for my gateway drug into my love of contemporary classical music – Penderecki’s Dies Irae.  Krzysztof Penderecki composed Dies Irae for the international inauguration ceremony of the memorial to the murdered victims in Auschwitz- Birkenau on 16 April 1967. He chose Bible texts, with the first movement Lamentatio  and the second movement Apocalypsis text from Psalm 114 and the third movement Apotheosis taken from first Corinthians 15.  Additionally there are quotations from the ‘Eumenides’ by Aischylos as well as contemporary Polish and French poems, which he had translated into Latin (except for a few Greek quotations) to provide them with a timelessness.

Musically, this three-part work is structured like a large crescendo-decrescendo. It gradually builds up from the first soft melismas of the choir basses in the introductory ‘Lamentatio’ to tremendous outbursts in the ‘Apocalypsis’ and finishes with the triple pianissimo of the double basses in the third part ‘Apotheosis’.

In the 1970s Penderecki moved away from the avant garde toward a more post-romantic style, but elements of his early works can be seen in these later works.  He largely leaves behind the dense tone clusters with which he had been associated, and instead focuses on two melodic intervals: the semitone and the tritone.

De Natura Sonoris I and De Natura Sonoris II are two works that speak to the beginning of transition. 

De Natura Sonoris I, from 1966, frequently calls upon the orchestra to use non-standard playing techniques to produce original sounds and colours.  The sequel, De Natura Sonoris II, was composed in 1971: with its more limited orchestra, it incorporates more elements of post-Romanticism than its predecessor. This foreshadowed Penderecki's renunciation of the avant-garde in the mid-1970s, although both pieces feature dramatic glissandos, dense clusters, use of harmonics, and unusual instruments, including a musical saw features in Natura Sonoris II.

This transition accelerated in the late 1970s and into the 1980s.  Penderecki explained his shift to the more post-romantic composition that he had come to feel that the experimentation of the avant-garde had gone too far from the expressive, non-formal qualities of Western music: "The avant-garde gave one an illusion of universalism. The musical world of Stockhausen, Nono, Boulez and Cage was for us, the young – hemmed in by the aesthetics of socialist realism, then the official canon in our country – a liberation...I was quick to realize however, that this novelty, this experimentation, and formal speculation, is more destructive than constructive”.   Penderecki concluded that he was "saved from the avant-garde snare of formalism by a return to tradition".

A good example of this transition is his Violin Concerto #1 written for Isaac Stern in 1977. This is written as a lament, perhaps toward his father who had passed away right before the composition of this work. Bruckner is often cited as the influence behind its intense if slow-moving musical themes. There are also overtones of Beethoven and perhaps even a bit of Brahms in this work as well.  As Tim Ashley writes in the Guardian, there is a “dramatic conflict between orchestral anguish and the soloist's infinite powers of consolation”.  At the time of its premiere, there was a lot of debate whether this was a good direction for Penderecki to be moving.    

Penderecki did not write much chamber music, but this transition from more avant garde  to the post-romantic style is reflected in his chamber music as well.  First lets listen to his first string quartet written in 1960.  This by the way was used in the movie The Exorcist as was his work Kanon for Orchestra.           

The last work from the late 1970s is a contrast the 4th movement “Larghetto” from his Quartet for Clarinet & String Trio: IV. Larghetto