Krauze, Zygmunt (EN)

Krauze Zygmunt, *19 September 1938 Warsaw, Polish composer and pianist. He studied at the Academy of Music in Warsaw under M. Wiłkomirska (piano, musical diploma in 1964) and K. Sikorski (composition, diploma in 1964), and later in 1966–67 under N. Boulanger in Paris. In 1957, he received the 1^st prize at the Polish National Piano Competition of Contemporary Music in Łódź, and in 1966, the 1^st prize at the international competition of the Gaudeamus Foundation in Utrecht. Since 1963, he has been giving concerts in music centres in Europe and the United States. In 1967, he founded the ensemble “Music Workshop” (trombone, cello, piano, clarinet) and became its artistic director. Over 100 composers from all over the world have written pieces for this ensemble. Krauze is active as a promoter of contemporary music: he is the co-creator of a series of 20 films entitled Cisza i dźwięk [Silence and Sound] (1988–89), as well as a series of educational films entitled Muzyka powstaje [Music is being made] (1986). In 1983–84, he produced weekly broadcasts of avant-garde music on Radio France Musique. In 1974, he was a scholarship holder of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) in Berlin. In 1982, at the invitation of P. Boulez, he became music advisor to the Institut de Recherche de Coordination Acoustique Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. He lectured, among others, in 1970–71 at Cleveland State University, in 1975 at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm (master class in piano and composition), in 1976 at Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, in 1978 at Indiana University (Bloomington), University of Michigan and Ann Arbor, in 1979 at the Academy of Music in Basel (master class in piano), in 1982 at Yale University (New Haven), in 1986 at the International Summer Courses in Kazimierz Dolny and at Keio University (Tokyo), in 1988 he led an international composition seminar in Grožnjan (Croatia), in 1991 at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem (master class in piano and composition), in 1994 he led, among others, master classes for pianists at the Osaka Academy of Music, Kobe University, Seoul National University, Yale University and Columbia University.

He held many public positions: in 1985, he was a member of the executive committee of the ISCM, and in 1987, he became the president of this organisation. He was one of the initiators of the reactivation of the Polish Society of Contemporary Music in 1980 and was its president four times (1980, 1989, 1992, 1995). He sat on the jury of music competitions many times, e.g., he was the chairman of the jury of the Gaudeamus Foundation composition competition (1992) and three times a member of the jury of the World Music Days (Oslo, Athens, Warsaw). He was awarded the Silver Cross of Merit of the Council of State of the Polish People’s Republic (1975) and the title of Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (1984). He was also a laureate of the annual ZKP [Polish Composers’ Union] award (1988), the award of the Minister of Culture and Art (1989) and the president of the Polish Radio and Television (1987). Many of Krauze’s recordings have been released on record labels such as Muza, ORF, and Nonesuch.

Krauze was one of the first composers to break dictates of the so-called second avant-garde (from the 1940s and 1950s), and in particular, to oppose the principle of maximum material differentiation stemming from serialism and the disastrous implications that saturation with information had to have for the reception of music. The most striking manifestations of this opposition were reductionism and the repetition of elements of musical expression. While in the West, these attributes gave rise to minimal music, whose creators were inspired by pop art, Krauze found his own formula of musical expression with little variability of elements but allowing for, for example, a significant wealth of colours. He called this formula unitary – after W. Strzemiński, the creator of the theory of unitarism in painting. Strzemiński’s aspirations for “optical unity” and giving equal weight to each fragment of the surface of the painting were met in Krauze’s works by a highly organic form. The elements of this form are demonstrated at the beginning of the piece, and their resources do not change in any way during its further course. Characteristic in this respect are, among others, Piece for Orchestra No. 1 (1969) and No. 2 (1970), Polychromia (1968), Voices (1972) and String Quartet No. 2 (1970), although one can already speak of unitary music in Ohne Kontraste from 1960, Malay Pantuns from 1961 and 5 Unitary Compositions from 1963. These compositions place Krauze in the position of a radical innovator at that time. Unitary music is extremely uniform in terms of material and expression, devoid of contrasts and conflicts. Its non-dramatic course overturns the principle of the processual nature of music, directing the listener’s attention to the detail that lasts in time thanks to repetitions and subtle variations. This is facilitated by the lack of such traditional categories of “development” as tensions, climaxes, resolutions or endings; a piece can be started and ended at any moment.

The idea of ​​unitary music, although in its original somewhat doctrinaire form, was abandoned by Krauze in the second half of the 1970s, but it left a lasting mark on his work. Krauze remained cautious in dosing changes within individual formal particles, generally maintaining the principle of unity of musical material; his work is still characterised by a predominance of discretion and delicacy of expression, and contrasts appear infrequently and are never brutal.

If unitary music could begin or end at any time, this implicitly meant the possibility of its unlimited duration. As a consequence, Krauze created the possibility for listeners to make such decisions on their own. This possibility was provided by the appropriate use of architectural space. Krauze’s interests in this field were concretised in 1968 in the form of Spatial Composition No. 7, which he realised in six specially constructed rooms of the Contemporary Gallery in Warsaw. There were 12 loudspeakers, from which music was continuously emitted, different in each room; the listener, choosing their way through the “maze” and staying in each room for as long as they wanted, shaped the final version of the piece themselves. Some spatial-musical compositions were also performed in concerts.

From the mid-1970s, Krauze performed many times as a pianist with a programme entitled The Last Recital. It consists of contemporary pieces, among which the composer introduced, as interludes, shorter or longer fragments of works from the Classical Romantic repertoire, amusingly distorting their notation. It was a specific manifestation of the postmodernist attitude, the most important determinant of which is, after all, the ironic revaluation of tradition. The “postmodernist state of mind” should undoubtedly explain Krauze’s turn towards folk and ethnic tradition in works that he himself calls “music about music;” in the same light, one can see the reclaiming of other traditional musical codes, including various musical stereotypes and idioms (e.g. the idiom of the Romantic concerto in both the violin and piano concertos), popular codes, and even kitsch and – perhaps above all – tonality. The idea of ​​“music about music” is represented by, among others, Aus aller Welt stammende, Folk Music, Fête galante et pastorale, Suite de danses et de chansons, Idyll, Automatophone or Soundscape – all from the 1970s. They have nothing in common with the folk characteristic of Polish neoclassicism. Folk material is not the subject of transformations, it is quoted in crudo or subjected to collage. In Fête galante et pastorale, Krauze quotes idioms and gestures of popular music, which interpenetrate each other in a typically postmodern dream convention. Folk material is evoked in an extremely different way in Idyll and Soundscape. These are clearly presented sounds of a rural environment (Idyll) or non-professional music-making of various groups (Soundscape – churchgoers, children, drunkards).

Krauze’s individual sound idiom was formed very early. Already in Polychromia, one can note the predominance of intervals of seconds and minor thirds, typical for this composer. These intervals, used especially in horizontal arrangements, “circulate around each other,” and their different constellations are subject to repetitions or slight variational changes. This does not prevent the creation of such different types of melodics as those presented in the piano concertos (evoking ornamentation and the climate of the Far East) and the violin concerto (“gypsy note”). Another distinguishing feature of Krauze’s style is the rhapsodic rhythmic motif, consisting of two (or one) concise values ​​and one long one. On the other hand, the lack of a defined rhythmic pattern is equally frequent. Elements of tonality have been very clear in Krauze’s works since the early 1970s, but, like other traditional codes, they are subject to revaluation. The sounds are arranged in a tonal scale, but they are deprived of their full harmonic context and free, for example, from such obligations as resolving dominants. In the later phase of his work, from the end of the 1970s, Krauze abandoned definitively tonal arrangements in favour of freer sound constellations. At the same time, the composer moves from discretion and emotional restraint to open expression. The sound material is now much more diverse (although melodic motifs are usually based on a single rhythmic turn), and the colours are contrasted somewhat more starkly. Instead of repetitions or subtle ornamental variations, sometimes “unendliche Melodie” (Quatuor pour la naissance) with varied harmonic values ​​appear. However, contrasts still occur mainly at the moment of starting a new formal particle, within which Krauze prefers relatively great uniformity. An outstanding work of the last period is the Piano Quintet, composed on the 100^th anniversary of W. Strzemiński’s birth, exceptionally rich in expression, from lyricism to exaltation. In the Symphonie parisienne, a transparent, airy texture is sometimes adjacent to a massive, symphonic sound, sharp fortissimos – to a fragile, disappearing sound tissue.

A separate place in Krauze’s oeuvre is occupied by piano works, which illustrate all phases of the composer’s interests (except spatial music). Krauze moves from the unitary pieces of the 1960s to the postmodern Nightmare Tango or Music Box Waltz. Sometimes, the music is accompanied by a theatrical anecdote (Gloves Music, played with gloves). Krauze often uses the sound of a prepared and amplified piano: in Stone Music and Arabesque, the single source of sound is the strings pressed by a stone, made to vibrate using a metal rod; the effect is surprisingly rich figuration (arpeggios, glissandi, tremolandos, etc.). Krauze achieved considerable success as a composer of theatre music, written for Parisian stages. He collaborated with Jorge Lavelli, one of the most outstanding contemporary directors.