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Orchestral Works

Krzysztof Penderecki

℗ 2001 EMI Records 7243 5 74302

℗ 2013 barin99.livejournal.com 0888 584

Krzysztof Penderecki • 2001 • Orchestral Works

Anaklasis: Penderecki's orchestral color study 'Anaklasis', of approximately 6 minutes duration, was commissioned by Baden-Baden Radio and completed in 1960. It is scored for the unusual orchestral ensemble of 42 strings, celesta, harp, piano, claves, and six percussionists. It is similar to the compositions 'De Natura Sonoris' Nos. 1 & 2 in being an open structure essay in new sounds. The first of the work's three sections opens with a extremely quiet drone and sharp stabs in the strings. Then eerie tremolo strings with slow slides is sustained for about a half minute, until high icy string harmonic form a new drone and a dense harmonic field is built up. Loud and vigorous drums, wood blocks, and cymbals seque into fast repeated notes on bells, piano, xylophone and vibraphone. The music then quietly drifts on a slowly undulating thin surface of strings. Trilling clusters amass and float away in frightened tremolos join by small percussive sounds. The final sounds we hear are objects (a pencil or something similar) are dropped on the piano strings, which are then crossed with a wire brush (producing an airy sound), struck in the lowest range with a soft tympani stick, and then plucked in a small interval with the fingers. The sounds just fade away.

Threnody: Threnody was completed in 1960, and remains one of Penderecki's best-known works. Composed at a time when serial technique dominated avant-garde music, Threnody is instead a deeply personal work, disturbing in its evocations of human misery and terror. Though it is dedicated to the victims of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War, Penderecki drew on his own experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland in composing this work. He noted that Nazi war crimes, especially 'the great Apocalypse' of Auschwitz, have been in his 'subconscious mind since the war.' As a result, this work, like much of Penderecki's music, is emotionally powerful and in large part autobiographical, but at the same time expresses a universal mourning for the victims of war. Threnody is scored for 52 strings, and features a number of spectacular instrumental effects - most significantly microtonal glissandi. Threnody is also a work of limited or 'controlled' aleatoric elements: musical gestures are represented graphically on the score, but the performers are at times allowed some freedom in the realization of musical elements like pitch and duration. The work is divided roughly into three sections, with the outermost sections allowing the greatest freedom for the performers. At certain points in the score, performers may simply play their instruments' highest notes, or, when pitch is specified, performers may move from pitch to pitch by quarter tones. Penderecki also demands unconventional bowing for effect, including bowing between the bridge and the tailpiece, and bowing the bridge or tailpiece. He also calls for striking the soundboard with the fingers. Instruments were divided into groups and assigned a particular range of pitches, within which they move by glissando. In terms of rhythm, Threnody is very nearly an arrhythmic piece, as there is no regular pulse to be found; instead, individual sections are measured by clock time, in minutes and seconds. The result of Penderecki's controlled aleatoricism is a work of considerable expressive force - a musical representation of human suffering that, despite its considerable technical difficulties, strikes home with surprising sincerity. Each string section, as it ebbs and swells, engages in a kind of dialogue with other sections, and the effect of many instruments playing glissandi at once simulates, rather distressingly, the sound of human voices wailing in a swirling, hellish polyphony. It is a vivid evocation of the horrors of war, and also a good example of Penderecki's so-called 'sensualist,' Neo-Romantic style.

Fonogrammi: Penderecki's 'Fonogrammi', an unusual and still unpublished ensemble work for three flutes, strings, harpsichord and percussion (incl. piano) of approximately 6 and 1/2 minutes duration was composed in 1961. This is another of Penderecki's intriguing and sensual sound studies that have no overt programme (although perhaps a private one for the composer). Penderecki was a 'romantic' in this sense at a time when most composers were involved in some intellectual compositional procedure or other. (That situation still hasn't changed much.) It opens with a clash of suspended cymbals and gong. Strummed piano strings, icy harmonics, and a wild mass of strings with wide vibrato, lead into more percussion. A wacky bass solo is accompanied by string instruments struck quasi-randomly on their bodies, and a crazed cacophony of flutes and percussive sounds follows. Solo flutes play in unusual techniques, fluttertongue, the log drum-like sound of the snapping of the flute keys, which is imitated by knocking on the piano, cymbal flutters and a loud crash with random tubular bells. A serious string chord leads to flute solo accompanied by bells and vibraphone and the very 1960's sound of a vibraslap. Two low, moaning flute tones lead the music out.

De Natura Sonoris I: This orchestral study of sonorities and harmonic tension, composed in 1966, marked a new creative direction for the composer. He fused several elements of his earlier composition with ideas from electronic music (applying them to acoustic instruments) and created a triptych with the first and third music sections open to a great deal of free playing on notated ideas by the performers (including some 'walking bass' jazz-influenced passages). Contrastingly, the middle section is built on densely structured serial logic. The result is highly dramatic music with highlighted sound-combinations but also with a forward momentum usually found in more fully notated styles.

Capriccio: Penderecki's powerful and shocking 'Capriccio' for violin and orchestra was composed in 1967 and lasts approximately 11 and 1/2 minutes. The orchestra is unusually expanded and includes, besides the regular forces, four saxophones, a contrabass clarinet, musical saw, electric bass guitar, harmonium and piano. A group of this size is however necessary to make the overwhelming impression required by the piece. The music is rhapsodic, that is, open in form, but is not lyrical - instead it is a highly emotional depiction of flight, with apparent war references (interestingly, it was premiered in Germany as part of the Donaueschingen Festival in October, 1967), occuring in a surrealist landscape. A tremendous roar quickly builds in the drums and the brass swelling in palpitating, blaring tones, and the violin quickly enters with fast quasi-improvisatory on-rushing passages pitted against wild woodwinds and the opening drums. The violin is left in silence for an enthusiastic cadence ending on a high sustained note. The low saxes and then winds enter on passages as fast as the violin. The violin stutters as a Mid-eastern sounding sax plays a line freely beneath it. A wild exchange of violent string pizzicati. Low trombone blasts. Another pizzicati section backed up with high drums. A massive string cluster than falls in slithery microtones. Sighs, and more microtonal sliding clusters in the deep bass ranges. A musical saw slides upward and crashing tubular bells signal some transformation. High, quiet piercing tones warn of danger. The violin slides in its highest registers. Air-like sounds and fading drones. Extremely low and slow counterpoint underscores a lamenting violin. The tempo of both lines increases in sudden blasts from the full orchestra. Absolute panic ensues. Massive punctuations. Gross imitation of a German waltz. Terror and the grotesque. No little doubt is left about the war reference. An on-rushing dissonant panic builds again. Cracks and snaps from the strings. A furious violin solo, and punctuations from the percussion, as the work suddenly ends.

Canticum canticorum Salomonis: Written between 1970 and 1973 this approximately 17-minute work for choir and small orchestra is a setting of an erotic text drawn from the Song of Solomon. The crashing, clattering of percussion, random showers of high bell sounds, electronic-like sounds of bowed gongs and harmonium dissonances, sensual string glissandos and other unique orchestral timbres underline the dense vocals. Delicate clusters and dreamy interweaving choral patterns open the work. 'Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth, your breasts are better than wine... deck me with flowers, revive me with apples because I am weak with love... you have wounded my heart with one of your looks and with one lock of hair of your neck... rise up north wind, come south wind and blow through my garden to waft its fragrance into the air... I come into my garden... I harvest my myrrh and my spices.' An electronic-like sustaining section is followed by clattering bells, and quasi-random pizzicati. Non-pitched, snaky, erotically moaning choral sounds with whispered phonemes is joined by the bell and pizzicati group. This is suddenly interrupted by the crashing of wooden and drum percussion interwoven with multi-voice speech and whispering. Clack! Everything stops. Clack! It all begins again. Icy harmonics float above the choir which is calling through the stillness. Low flutes and icy harmonics and bells. Sliding strings and uninhibited choral moaning and sounds of desire. Non-synchronous multi-voice slides and other vocalizations, eventually pulsed by bells. The choral masses fade away into one voice sing a single note, as if all the voice originate from that one person. Crystalline percussion sounds are followed by a siren-like chorus. Gentle hand-muted horn notes lead out the chorus on a high cluster that fades gradually away.

De Natura Sonoris II: Composed in 1971, and of approximately 9 minutes duration, this second orchestral sound study uses a smaller instrumental group than 'De Natura Sonoris No. 1', and in texture is more of a sustained and mysterious landscape - icy string harmonics and glissandi with wide vibrato, suspended cymbal, sliding wind clusters, metal rods, low trombone blasts. The unusual and large percussion section includes a sliding bird-whistle, a musical saw, and a piece of railway track. Midway into the piece the orchestra breaks loose with huge scrapping sounds on the strings (somewhat similar to the sound effect of the sideways brushing of a plectrum on koto strings). There are magnificent trombone glissandos, and the brass section imitates the sound of an on-coming train, a highly dramatic, dense and compelling sound aggregation. Suddenly all is still. There are two tympani strokes, and the conflagration begins again, eventually flattening out to a low drone. The on-rushing of low strings brings back the mysterious opening texture returns, along with a few string stabs reminiscent of 'De Natura Sonoris No. 1', and the piece concludes on a single string tone.

The Dream of Jacob: Penderecki's The Dream of Jacob (aka The Awakening of Jacob) was composed for large orchestra in 1974, and lasts approximately seven and a half minutes. It was commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the accession of Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Like most of the composer's other work of the 1960s and 1970s (De Natura Sonoris Nos. 1 and 2, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Fonogrammi, Dimensions of Time and Silence, etc.), this piece is a giant soundscape employing tone clusters, unusual methods of playing instruments, some unusual instruments such as the musical saw, and, while producing strong emotional effects, avoiding melody, harmony, and development in the traditional sense. The title refers to Jacob's well-known dream in the desert of a ladder to heaven on which angels were ascending and descending: 'Jacob woke from his sleep and said: Truly the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it,' Genesis 28:16. The Dream of Jacob opens by creating a surreal dreamscape: low pitched brass chords pulse, a thin electronic-like sustain appears above that, and lower strings add to the drone. Shivering tremolos from the strings appear and disappear. Then great tone clusters in the strings and woodwinds sigh with the timbre of air raid sirens. This develops into larger glissandi interrupted several times with brass choir clusters with scattered punctuations among the solo instruments in the group. Everything slowly disappears except the upper strings which slide by themselves in clusters. This continues as an inverted high pedal point as on-rushing strings join in beneath, and again create a momentary, overwhelming wave. A gong interrupts this activity, everything becomes still again, like a lonely night in the desert, and we return to the opening airy sustain. The sound gradually dissipates.

Emanations: Written in 1958, the 'Emanations' is a seminal work for two string orchestras tuned a semi-tone apart, of approximately 7 minutes duration, presents many of the sounds and much of the sound-painting compositional style that would characterize the composer's later works of the 60's and early 70's. Seemingly an essay on unstable but energetic sounds, the piece begins with a slowly undulating wide vibrato, and then the music builds into dissonant sustained chords and tremolo shakes pulsing at different rates. Then massive tone cluster walls of sound bring everything to a silent standstill. Fragments of contrapuntal tone rows fly between sustained dissonances and breaking sounds (col legno battuta, pizzicati). Sections of tremolo glassy sounds (eg., sul ponticello bowing on the bridge) are followed by hollow detective movie-like textures (flautando, bowing over the fingerboard). The music then slowly begins to de-construct itself, and the piece ends by fading away into the mystery with which it began.

Partita: Composed in 1971, this dynamic composition is set for harpsichord and an orchestra of 9 woodwinds, 22 strings, celesta and various percussion instruments. At the onset, long tones a semi-tone apart begin pulsing, followed by clusters, tremolo tones, fast cycles and whirls of sound in similar pulsations. The harpsichord solos on fast cyucles in different rhythms, backed up by splattering horns, and a wildly avant-garde jazz ombo of amplified instruments. The pulsations then start to fragment in many directions, and fiery cycles shoot off ffrom the winds. This falls apart into glassy sounds, and soon the sawing of strings becomes insistent again. Not to be forgotten, the harpsichordist sounding like Cecil Taylor on speed, comes in again with a wild solo, and the small band develops multi-rhythmic chops, soon taken over by the orchestra. All comes to a halt for a harpsichord solo equally built on fast bi-tonal exercise arpeggios interspersed with chops. This is again taken up by the orchestra, which mutates the texture into a heavenly shimmer. The harpsichordist's energy wanes into almost arhythmical obsession with a passage of clusters, joined by tiny bells and rattling percussion. A breath. Tiny bells, small percussion begins in slow pulse and swells to a faster pulse (that Japanese Zen gesture), this idea is then imitated by the orchestra in uncoordinated sections of high strings and basses. Tubular bells then take over the arhythmical shake, this modulating into the amplified guitar and percussive strings. The harpsichord comes in with a low tone, and immediately speaks in prose-like passages quickly turning into whirls. This spreads out to the orchestra, who follow with many variations on the idea of trills and quick random runs from the bass to the high treble - in between, deep brass come in, the strings chop (like Herrmann's 'Psycho' music), the combo chops, the whole orchestra pulsates each in their own rhythm. Eventually, this settles down in a few repetitions of a single note in the harpsichord. The high strings appear from the silence with a high pitched pulsation accompanied by a slowly sliding tone underneath, like a siren. Very quietly, the deep bass intone a few low tones. The piece is over. An incredibly energetic experience that seems to have had a narrative, but that story is whatever has been evoked in each listener's mind.

Symphony No. 1: Krzysztof Penderecki has said that he looks on his Symphony No. 1, written when he was 40 years old, as something of a summing-up of his first stylistic period. 'I was then attempting to make a reckoning of my two decades' worth of musical experience - a time of radical, avant-garde seeking. It was the summa of what I could say as an avant-garde artist.' Composed in 1973, the Symphony No. 1 - Penderecki's first large work for full orchestra - was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, Perkins Engines Group. It was first performed in the Cathedral of the city of Peterborough on July 19, 1973.

Formally, the five-part arch of the symphony, inspired by a painting of two angels that Penderecki had seen in Ravenna, is analogous to a sonata-allegro, with its statement of the main ideas of the work, the development of those ideas, and their return in something like their original guise. But the ideas in this work are not melodic themes, as would usually be the case; the structure of Penderecki's symphony is held together by the multifarious tone colors produced by the large orchestra and its expanded percussion section. Some of the textures produced are busily contrapuntal, while others remain static for extended periods. Many of the sonorities familiar from Penderecki's notorious early works, such as the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), are present here as well - tone clusters, wild glissandi, microtones, strident chorales, and a wide variety of extended techniques for all the instrumental choirs. The work's first section, 'Arche,' opens with a series of seven strikes of the slapstick. Other percussion instruments and pizzicato strings gradually join in as the music gains momentum. A sustained octave A in the horns leads into 'Dynamis I,' the beginning of the development section, featuring brass fanfares and some faster-paced, scherzo-like music. A central, mysteriously beautiful section in the form of a passacaglia is the largest part of the work. 'Dynamis II' repeats in varied form some of the sounds and gestures of 'Dynamis I,' and another A in the horns leads into the concluding 'Arche I'; it ends with a still, spare coda, featuring a throbbing low A flat in the double basses.

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