Konieczny, Zygmunt (EN)

Konieczny Zygmunt,*3 January 1937 Kraków, Polish composer. In 1959–64, he studied composition with S. Wiechowicz at the State Higher School of Music in Kraków. He made his debut in 1959 in the Krakow cabaret Piwnica pod Baranami, with which he was closely associated until 1967; at that time, he composed many songs for Piwnica’s performers, especially for E. Demarczyk, with whom he had collaborated since 1962. Konieczny made his debut as a composer of theatre music in 1959 with music to A. Miller’s play View from the Bridge (directed by J. Grzegorzewski). From 1963, he was informally associated with the Stary Theatre in Krakow and collaborated with many of the most outstanding Polish directors. Konieczny also composed music for feature films (13), short films and animations. He has won many awards for songs, stage and film music. He conducts a seminar on theatre and film music at the PWST in Krakow.

Konieczny’s abundant and diverse work reflects three areas of his compositional interests. These are literary songs (also called acting or poetic), theatre music and film music. However, the closest to Konieczny’s nature seems to be instrumental and vocal work, which Konieczny himself describes as a literary song. In the post-war history of Polish cabaret songs, Konieczny was one of the first composers who tried to break the existing conventions and thus give works written for cabaret the value of artistic creation. The starting point for Konieczny’s compositional activities is the literary text (usually works by outstanding poets, including Leśmian, Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Baczyński, Białoszewski) along with its formal structure, symbolic and semantic layers. Through music, Konieczny tries to bring out all the nuances of the text as precisely as possible; thus, the music in Konieczny’s works is a kind of interpretation of a literary text. The last stage of Konieczny’s work is working with the performer, to whom the composer places several vocal and acting requirements; he usually composes with a specific performer in mind, thus leaving a small margin of deviation from the planned pattern.

In theatre and film music, Konieczny often transfers his experience from working on vocal and instrumental works; the specificity of film and theatre forms creates additional opportunities for compositional penetration, especially in the field of musical form, sound and harmony. Konieczny’s music has a characteristic, easily recognisable style, the originality of which lies in the way of selecting and synthesizing various (actually quite traditional) musical elements (major-minor scale and modal scales, free chord combinations, ostinato melorhythmics, short, broken melodic motifs), which they obtain their final quality through the expression of the performer or in the context of the overall theatrical or film form.

Literature: J. Wnuk-Nazarowa Pieśni i muzyka teatralna Zygmunta Koniecznego, in: Krakowska szkoła kompozytorska 1888–1988, ed. T. Malecka, Kraków 1993.