''The title Scontri, or Collisions, originated as the opposite of the name Incontri (1955) - the work written a dozen or so years earlier by the Italian 20th-century composer Luigi Nono. After a 'storm'' and a number of negative opinions caused by its premiere, Scontri - unconventional in many respects - finally gained the fame it deserved. The innovations proposed by Górecki involved not only the external aspect of the composition concerning the irregular arrangement on the stage of the orchestra of monumental dimensions, or the giving up of the traditional score notation (28 sheets instead of the score), but also affected the very substance of the work, which is constructed of six more widely expanded sections further divided into a number of shorter ''mosaics'' (28). Górecki's most essential achievement in Scontri consists in making the technique of total serialism comprising, beside pitches, also rhythms and dynamics more efficient. It is interesting that each of the four instrumental groups introduced here (woodwinds, brass, percussion with harps and strings) has its own, separate series and the composer distinguishes the main series and three other ones. Each of the series is characterized by privileging one interval, e.g. the series of the wood instruments brings the seconds into prominence, the series of the brass the thirds, and the series of the strings the fourths. The title collisions can really be seen in all the parametres of the work, e.g. in the texture, where mass clusters intertwine with single lines of solo instruments or in the register, where the high pitch of the piccolo flute is combined with the low counterbassoon, thus emphasizing different colouristic qualities. In his monograph on Górecki, Adrian Thomas writes that owing to his ingenuity the composer ''had unleashed a fire, which scorched both his listeners and himself''. [Based on A. Thomas, Górecki, Kraków 1998, PWM]