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Tadeusz Baird

Tadeusz Baird

1928-1981

  • Excerpt from an essay by Izabella Grzenkowicz

    Tadeusz Baird's music is a very distinct phenomenon in the contemporary Polish music, Its uniqueness was determined by not only the strenght of the composer's individuality or the format of his talent but also by its deep roots in the tradition.

    He was called a traditionalist and a romantic of contemporary times. These terms, independently of the stylistic evolution of the composer, permanently stuck to him, since they revealed to some extent the essential features of his aesthetic attitude. The creative reference to tradition is presented in Baird's music in a complex way. To be sure, he was not a revolutionary, yet he was not a conservatist, either. As for his technical means of expression, he was even an innovator, whereas in his ideas he needed support of sound foundations, the sense of his being linked with what had preceded him.

    Those links are expressed in the most forceful way in the sphere of aesthetics, in the affinity of Baird's music with the aesthetic of Romanticism. He was not an epigone, he neither adopted ideas not applied mannerisms, or stylization. In his proper trend of creative work, not going beyond the twentieth century's tendencies, he used a moderately modern idiom. His music is overflown with elements of Romanticism; it resonates with the spirit and the climate of the epoch, linking it inseparably with the contemporary times. Its uniqueness consists in a very noble, refined following of certain aesthetic concepts, which Baird adapted in his own art. The composer has carried out this idea by applying skillfully the specific musical devices, marking them with a definite sense and function. To ilustrate the phenomenon of Baird's musical effects we could only mention preservation of preeminence of melody, which – although modernized and transformed according to the requirements of modern techniques – remained in his music the dominant vehicle for musical expression. Another illustration of the uniqueness of Baird's compositional skill is his giving of a restless, rubato-like, quasi-improvisatory character to the musical course. Next is his filling of the musical content with emotion, especially with lyricism, as well as his preference for psychologically intensified type of subjective utterance.

    Considering the issues of ties with tradition in Baird's creative output, it is impossible to omit his relationship with Karol Szymanowski, whose art. He revered and whom he considered to be his spiritual father. There are affinities in the sound sophistication and colouristic susceptibility; in the filling of the soundtissue with emotionalism; in the restless, refined climate of the music; in piety for their consideration of compositional means of expression.

    The invigorating stream of tradition was influencing Baird's music in various ways. And only the talent of his magnitude was able, drawing from so many sources, to create art so outstanding and authentic, so highly indyvidual and - at the same time – so universal in its humanistic outlook.

    (Excerpt from an essay by Izabella Grzenkowicz
    from Conversations, Sketches, Reflexions,
    T. Baird and I. Grzenkowicz, PWM 1982)