Krzysztof Penderecki at 80

[maestro267]

While Radio 3 will still be going through Britten-mania, the day after his centenary (Saturday 23rd November) is the 80th birthday of one of the great living composers, Krzysztof Penderecki. He's created a large body of works, including symphonies, concertos, and quite a few large-scale works for choirs and orchestra. While his early music was highly experimental and atonal, his later works have taken on a neo-Romantic vein, and are quite accessible to the new listener. My personal favourite of his works is his 7th Symphony, "Seven Gates of Jerusalem".

Your reflections on this anniversary, please.

[Roehre]

Certainly an important composer, but for me Draeseke's bon mot re Schumann applies (paraphrased) to Penderecki: He started as a genius but developed into a mere talent.

[Petrushka]

Certainly an important composer, but for me Draeseke's bon mot re Schumann applies (paraphrased) to Penderecki: He started as a genius but developed into a mere talent.

There is something in this. The 1st Symphony from 1973 is a startlingly original work but subsequent essays in the genre don't have quite the same appeal.

[edashtav]

Certainly an important composer, but for me Draeseke's bon mot re Schumann applies (paraphrased) to Penderecki: He started as a genius but developed into a mere talent.

Spot on, Roehre!

[maestro267]

No reason not to enjoy his music though.

[Boilk]

Certainly an important composer, but for me Draeseke's bon mot re Schumann applies (paraphrased) to Penderecki: He started as a genius but developed into a mere talent.

Isn't it pretty obvious that he could go only so far with his 'sonorism' style? He evidently felt he had little or nothing more to plough there and switched styles. Had he continued sonoristic-ally and repeated himself, he might have lost an audience or been labelled a one-trick musical pony. In the event he probably lost most of one audience (modernist fans) and gained another. But I think Penderecki did what he needed to as a composer. Even Ligeti's more sonoristic phase was shortlived wasn't it?

Where would his dectractors here suggest he should have taken his early style if it were to evolve further in the '80s and beyond?

[Petrushka]

Isn't it pretty obvious that he could go only so far with his 'sonorism' style? He evidently felt he had little or nothing more to plough there and switched styles. Had he continued sonoristic-ally and repeated himself, he might have lost an audience or been labelled a one-trick musical pony. In the event he probably lost most of one audience (modernist fans) and gained another. But I think Penderecki did what he needed to as a composer. Even Ligeti's more sonoristic phase was shortlived wasn't it?

Where would his dectractors here suggest he should have taken his early style if it were to evolve further in the '80s and beyond?

A valid point and one faced by other composers too.

[Serial_Apologist]

There are plenty of places waiting for composers to go, without necessitating a complete volte-face. Modernism, or rather, it's adherents, lost nerve. Well, not all of them. There's Ferneyhough, whom I am listening to right now, for starters.

[LeMartinPecheur]

There are plenty of places waiting for composers to go, without necessitating a complete volte-face. Modernism, or rather, it's adherents, lost nerve. Well, not all of them. There's Ferneyhough, whom I am listening to right now, for starters.

This is a tough one, isn't it? Adherence to the faith leads to a greater and greater appeal to a smaller and smaller audience?

One can make a judgment in moral terms, and in economic terms. Sadly, the two seem to be pretty close to mutually exclusive. But the language most used in 'judgment' is usually a quasi-moral one - sell-out, betrayal of ideals, lack of commitment/courage, etc etc

I think I'll just 'say thank you for the music' - all of it. In case I find I need it.

For clarity I'll just add that there are only 3 CP discs on my shelves currently, and I'm struggling to get to grips with all of them...

[Roehre]

Isn't it pretty obvious that he could go only so far with his 'sonorism' style?

No, for me it isn't. Why is it obvious, according to you? and why is it obvious for you he changed track the way he actually did?

Composers mentioned sofar -and I include here a serial track/style changer like Stravinsky as well- remained recognisably themselves, something I cannot say listening to e.g. Penderecki's 1st and 7th symphonies.

[Roehre]

No reason not to enjoy his music though.

No. certainly not. Nice music it is, but where are his fingerprints, what is his personal style?

[Richard Barrett]

Isn't it pretty obvious that he could go only so far with his 'sonorism' style?

Most of the statements I've seen from him in interviews seem to support the idea that he's basically a rather conservative composer who spent a few opportunistic years aligning himself with the western European avant-garde. Luckily some powerful and original music came out of it, although there are also some moments that come close to plagiarism, like the harpsichord part of Partita (from Ligeti's Continuum) and several features of Canticum canticorum Salomonis (from Stockhausen's Momente which partly uses the same text).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Isn't it pretty obvious that he could go only so far with his 'sonorism' style? He evidently felt he had little or nothing more to plough there and switched styles. Had he continued sonoristic-ally and repeated himself, he might have lost an audience or been labelled a one-trick musical pony. In the event he probably lost most of one audience (modernist fans) and gained another. But I think Penderecki did what he needed to as a composer. Even Ligeti's more sonoristic phase was shortlived wasn't it?

Where would his dectractors here suggest he should have taken his early style if it were to evolve further in the '80s and beyond?

Somewhere forwards, perhaps, as did Xenakis and Lutoslawski (as well as Ligeti, whom you mention) to name but three radically different composers. Ligeti and Lutoslwski re-positioned their later work in the light of 18th and 19th Century Musics without compromising their individual stylistic fingerprints nor abandoning the discoveries of their Music from the 60s: instead they build from their previous work, moving incrementally into new, unpredictable worlds of expression. It is the post-'80s work in which I hear Penderecki repeating himself - a thirty-five year "one-trick pony", if you wish to use such terms.

[Richard Barrett]

Ligeti and Lutoslawski re-positioned their later work in the light of 18th and 19th Century Musics without compromising their individual stylistic fingerprints nor abandoning the discoveries of their Music from the 60s: instead they build from their previous work, moving incrementally into new, unpredictable worlds of expression.

I'm not really sure about Ligeti in that connection... Does anyone by the way know Penderecki's incidental music for the 1965 film The Saragossa Manuscript (an astonishing film based on the just-as-astonishing novel by Jan Potocki)? Apart from some baroque pastiche if consists principally of electronic sounds, listening to which makes me regret that he didn't do more work in that area.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not really sure about Ligeti in that connection...

Not even the Second Quartet and the Violin Concerto?