Buczyński, Paweł (EN)

Buczyński Paweł, *7 April 1953 Laski, †2 January 2015 Warsaw, Polish composer. From 1974 to 1979, he studied composition at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw under T. Baird, and from 1983 to 1984, he continued his studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna under R. Haubenstock-Ramati as an Austrian government scholarship holder. He participated in the Darmstadt Summer Courses for International New Music (1980, 1982, 1984) and in the International Workshop for Young Composers in Borovets, Bulgaria (1982). From 1979, he worked at the Academy of Music in Warsaw, where he was vice-dean of the Faculty of Composition, Conducting and Music Theory from 1983 to 1986. In the 1980s and 1990s, he held various positions on the Main Board and the Warsaw Branch Board of the Polish Composers’ Union. From 1990 to 1994, he lectured at the State Higher School of Theatre in Warsaw. He won several composition competitions: in 1977, he received first prize at the Youth Forum in Krakow for his String Quartet, in 1980 he won first prize at the ZKP Youth Competition for Muzyka opadających liści, and in 1985 he received an honourable mention at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris for Muzyka opadających liści.

Buczyński’s music derives directly from drama and lyricism of Baird, and the composer primarily aimed at achieving expressive goals. The departure from aleatoricism and graphic notation occurs in Litania for orchestra, in which a specific type of harmony becomes the starting point for the formation of an original harmonic system; minor-third chords form the structural axis to which other harmonic elements are added. The composer also used the concertante technique, for example in Oratio MCMLXXXII. 

Literature: K. Baculewski Polska twórczość kompozytorska 1945–1984, Krakow 1987.