SUMMARIES
The Scholarly Activity of Professor Anna Czekanowska-Kuklińska and Its Significance for the Development of Ethnomusicology in Poland
Tomasz Nowak
Prof. dr hab. Anna Czekanowska-Kuklińska, who died on October 18, 2021, was a researcher steeped in a multicultural environment and a family with rich scientific traditions. Educated in Poznań, she began her scientific activity at a time when the analytical paradigm dominated Polish ethnomusicology, and her works constituted the pinnacle of ethnomusicological statistical analysis in Poland. Over the course of her career, she worked to establish international connections that sparked a paradigm shift within and led to further development and internationalization of the entire ethnomusicological community in Poland. The essay summarizes Professor Czekanowska’s achievements and highlights those that were of greatest importance for the development of the Polish ethnomusicology.
Keywords: ethnomusicology in Poland, internationalization, development of ethnomusicology
“In You, My Mind, I Measure Time” — A Slightly Different Perspective on Professor Ludwik Bielawski
Barabara Śnieżek
The article shows selected facts from the life and work of the well-known Polish ethnomusicologist, Professor Ludwik Bielawski, based on his memoirs and the materials provided. The article presents new information about his childhood and youth as well as rich, previously unpublished photographic material from his private collection. In this way, this essay contextualizes Bielawski’s artistic persona—as profiled by Anna Czekanowska (‘Ludwik Bielawski – uczony wielkiej pasji’, Muzyka 1999, no. 2)—with information about his family and private life.
Keywords: World War II, time, ethnomusicologist, Cassubia, private life
The Personal Dimension in Ethnomusicology
Piotr Dahlig
Since the 1930s, it has become important for ethnomusicologists to record personal details about those whose music they document. This has been demonstrated in Western Poland (Wielkopolska) where, while musical traditions underwent swift changes, traditional musicians (i.e. bagpipers and fiddlers) remained active for a longer period than elsewhere in Poland and even worked to safeguard their musical heritage by including it in the regional school curriculum. Proceeding from the works of Alan P. Merriam and John Blacking, we can define four predispositions of music making: to name, to perform, to learn/teach, and to estimate aesthetically. Music researchers of the 19th century were little interested in—or unable to—collect personal data of the musicians they met and whose music they documented. First, researchers often worked from the assumption of collective expression in rural societies and therefore did not fully appreciate individual expression. Second, peasants sometimes refused to give their names to ethnographers out of fear or distrust. Third, and most importantly, researchers of the period worked from the assumption that vocal music in particular emerged from collective efforts, and therefore individual performers were not seen as important; in most cases, it was only instrumental musicians who were worthy of mention in researchers’ notes and publications. Therefore, the shift toward documenting musicians’ personal data and correlating this data with analysis of the music itself enables us a see a clearer picture of musical practice, especially regarding notions of an ideal musician. There are four aspects in this regard: (1) uniqueness, that is the performer is able to not only navigate the particulars of their own musical tradition, but does so in fully expressive and distinctive ways; (2) maturity: the development of the performer’s musical skills leads to artistic maturity; (3) balance of individualism, individual expression with the mood of social expectations: general availability and intelligibility of statements in a given community, (4) equivalence: the same weight of the implementation of inaudible music / song (musica mundana according to Boethjusz, mystical) and audible music / song: synthesis of two sound worlds: musica humana, i.e. the unity of spirit and body, and musica instrumentalis, i.e. „humanly organized sound” (according to John Blacking, 1984), i.e. voice, also in possible connection with a musical instrument. This is a legacy of antiquity in the relatively conservative cultures of rural communities in Central and Eastern Europe.The most convenient for personal case studies in ethnomusicology largely concern instrumental.
Keywords: ethnomusicology, personality, cultural anthropology, aesthetics of folk music
Jewish Folklorists in Warsaw: Profiles of Selected Researchers
Agniesza Jeż
In the article I discuss the issues of the development of Jewish folklore in Poland, with particular emphasis on the profiles of selected researchers who initiated research into Jewish folklore, including folk songs. This phenomenon was in line with analogous trends that were then present in almost all of Europe. However, in the case of Jewish culture, devoid of official statehood, this work was of particular importance. It contributed to the formation of a sense of ethnic and national identity based on the relationship with the Yiddish language (understood just as language, not jargon) and with all the richness of tradition. The three selected researchers I discuss in the article represent different approaches to the material, colored by their own circumstances. The songbooks they compiled differ from one another in the ways songs are documented and their accompanying information (or absence thereof). In the article, I reflect on the sources of these songbooks and discuss how each is a product of certain activities (selection of material, obtaining additional information, text and musical notation, etc.) through which each researcher filtered information. However, despite such limitations, songbooks seem to be a credible source, taking into account the context of the collection and the available information about the author of the compilation. In such cases, songsbooks can enrich our knowledge about the era and the circumstances of researchers working in this period.
Keywords: folklore, songbook, Jewish folk music, folklorists, folk songs.
The Correspondence of Frédéric Chopin as a Source for the History of Wind Orchestras
Maciej Kierzkowski
Frederic Chopin and his musical output are probably the most extensively researched topics in Polish musicology. Chopin is most often described as a composer and pianist, but he was also an observer of the musical life of his era. The correspondence of Frederic Chopin comprises an extensive primary source of which two letters (first, to Wilhelm Kolberg dated 18 August 1826; second, to Tytus Woyciechowski dated 31 August 1830) are of particular value in researching wind bands in Poland. Both letters (to date not previously compared to one another) provide primary evidence of the early civilian and military wind bands of the late 1820s and early 1830s, including aspects related to instrumentation, repertoires, and performance occasions. The essay recapitulates existing knowledge on the topic of wind bands in Chopin’s correspondence providing comparative analysis of the composer’s own words, other primary sources, and the outcome of relevant international musicological literature. The article also offers new hypothesis referring to the early use of the piston cornet in the Polish military in the late 1820s.
Keywords: Frederic Chopin, correspondence, wind band, military band, Sochaczew, Bad Reinertz, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Lower Silesia
The Tradition of Fire Brigade Wind Band Competitions in Poland in the Light of Reports Published in the Monthly “Orkiestra” (1930–1938)
Maciej Kierzkowski
The history of the Volunteer Fire Brigade bands in Poland begins in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. This history is related to that of firefighting organisations which, from the middle of the nineteenth century, were established in the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (mainly in the Kingdom of Poland under Russian rule) and remained active as a network of associations in the interwar period in Poland. Along with the development of firefighting unionism that took place after the Great War came coordinated educational activities at the national level, including wind band contests. These musical competitions have become one of the important tools used in the process of socio-musical engineering aimed not only at wide-ranging music education, but also at the promotion of national values. The implementation of VFB band contests resulted in the rise of the fireman band movement and also contributed to the standardization of practices of amateur music-making. The primary motivation of the founders of the VFB contest initiators was to encourage the artistic development of both individual musicians and particular bands. However, the overall goal was also more generally aimed toward the development of Polish national musical culture.
Keywords: wind bands, contests, Voluntary Fire Brigades, instrumental music, interwar Poland
Ten Years of the Cassubia Incognita Album and the Cassubia Cantat Festival as a Contribution to the Revival of Early Kashubian Repertoire
Dawid Martin
In 2009, on the initiative of Jaromir Szroeder, a regionalist on staff at the West Kashubian Museum in Bytów, the museum in cooperation with the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences released an album titled Cassubia Incognita. The album featured archival recordings of Kashubian music collected mainly in the 1950s during the Action to Collect Folk Music, although it also includes older records made in the winter of 1945 by Tadeusz Wrotkowski from the Western Phonographic Archives in Poznań. The rich material on this album documents the diversity of the old Kashubian repertoire, mostly song-based, which was partially forgotten after World War II and partially replaced by popular songs created by regional writers and distributed by numerous folkloristic groups in this region. The release of the album was the beginning of an artistic project with the same title, the idea of which was restoring the old Kashubian repertoire to modern circulation. Since 2010, The Western Kashubian Museum in Bytów has organized the Cassubia Cantat festival, which is a competition for interpretation of the songs collected on the Cassubia Incognita album. From the beginning, the event has attracted artists presenting various musical genres (folk music, folkloristic stylization, rock, jazz, electronic music). The Cassubia Cantat project has also inspired some well-known artists (Olo Walicki, Dominik Strycharski, Sebastian Wypych, “Żywiołak”) to include source material from the Cassubia Incognita in their own compositions. Thanks to these activities, the old repertoire is return to musical practice in a completely new context.
Keywords: Cassubia Incognita, Cassubia Cantat, Kashubia, phonographic collections, festival
The Phonographic Image of Traditional Music Performed during the National Festival of Folk Bands and Singers in Kazimierz Dolny
Joann Szczepańska-Antosik
The article gives an overview of the music recording process at the annual Polish National Festival of Folk Bands and Singers in Kazimierz Dolny. The essay discusses a variety of acoustic and aesthetic problems specific to the recording of traditional music including the microphone techniques used to capture the performance, creation of the auditory space, musical balance, and timbral shaping. The article summarizes the author’s 16 years of experience in recording traditional music at the festival for the Polish Radio.
Keywords: traditional music, sound engineering, documentary recordings, auditory image, Polish National Festival of Folk Bands and Singers in Kazimierz Dolny
The Impact of Traditional Music Festivals and Competitions on Contemporary Musical Culture in the Minangkabau Region
Maria Szymańska-Ilnata
In the Minangkabau region, traditional music is still alive and well. Traditional music has undergone numerous and significant transformations since the mid-twentieth century, shaped primarily by government regulations, globalization, technological development, and the changing tastes of the performers themselves and their audiences. The diversity and interesting varieties of traditional music in the region is evident, among other contexts, during festivals organized in both large and small towns in the region. The article focuses on the analysis of contemporary festivals including consideration of the foundational principles of particular festivals, their impact on participants and their art, and the role of festivals in politics, tourism, and the lives of Minangkabau people.
Keywords: Minangkabau, West Sumatra, festival, institution, changes