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Reflection on the Occasion of International Day of Music
2011-09-29
“We live in a diverse sonosphere: sounds surround us as Nature and as Culture. Just look at the trees and listen to their sound. If just that this natural pure tone did not disturb "bad" culture,” says Krzysztof Penderecki in a text written especially for the upcoming International Day of Music (October 1). Here is the full text made available by the Institute for Music and Dance:We live in a diverse sonosphere: sounds surround us as Nature and as Culture. Just look at the trees and listen to their sound. If just that this natural pure tone did not disturb "bad" culture.
Are we thus with Music? Those, who go very far in their outpourings, even claim that everything is music, even us ourselves. Boethius believed that a true musician is one who reaches the harmony of the soul. How his words might be useful to modern man, who often receives disharmony, mistakenly and dangerously called harmony ...
Music has always accompanied me - it is part of nature that surrounds me, and the Culture, in which I grew up and tried to educate myself. Now when I plant trees in Lusławice, I think of the garden as a musical score, so choosing colours and motives so that they make a logical musical form. But when I write a piece, somewhere deep in my imagination resonate the sounds of the elements: air and water, earth and sky.
An escape to Nature, to her music, brings harmony, disintegrating or lost in the difficult and tangled human way, and the exploration of Culture, its masterpieces, teaches that that which is offered by Nature can be organized and make an artistic form and a meaningful artistic expression.
Writing - during the Chopin Year – the cycle „Powiało na mnie morze snów…” Pieśni zadumy i nostalgii (because now the closest to me in the culture of sounds is song time - lyrical time), I listened to the music of Polish poetry and contemplated the meaning of texts written by the great Polish poet-prophets - colourists and musicians of the word. I was looking for the melody and the spirit of the "letters" and Fryderyk Chopin's music has become in this quest once lost, and now recovered, as my "late love." Chopin's music springs both from the love of Nature, and also more widely understood Culture, which opens us toward that which is high, transcendent.
Once I gave in to the "madness" of avant-garde music: I was interested in seeking and creating new sounds - new music. Never, however, for the sake of experimentation or external effects. In the frenzy of activity there is in fact method, when that which is achieved with particular material is endowed with meaning. And music is wonderful value, rooted in Nature and Culture, which can convey those meanings in a universal way, beyond specific languages. And hence its great strength - the strength of universal Beauty. That is worth remembering.
Krzysztof Penderecki
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