Old Polish Music
3 Pieces in the Old Style Op. 24
''Old-Polish Music is, as it were, a 'sculptured work of art'', with precisely thought-over instrumental colour, texture, tonality and dynamics. The tonal ideas of Old-Polish Music are anticipated in several of Górecki's earlier compositions, such as the second and third work of the Little Music series as well as in the short fanfare for brass instruments and strings Wratislaviae gloria. Old-Polish Music is an extremely interesting work in respect of its texture, formed by three separate, contrasted layers (compositional ideas): I trumpets and trombones, II strings, III horns. The very sound material of the work is no less essential. The composer used here the medieval organum Benedicamus Domino, which he first transformed and then quoted its melody faithfully, as well as the evening song by Wacław of Szamotuły - one of the most distinguished composers of Polish Renaissance entitled Dusk Is Already Falling, from which he derived the tenor part. Entrusting each of the string parts with a different, serially shaped version of the same melodic line of the song, Górecki blurred the original version of the melody.
[Based on A. Thomas, Górecki, Kraków 1998, PWM]
- Type: score
