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Krzysztof Penderecki

Composer Krzysztof Penderecki

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Aaron Jay Kernis

Having spent my life in Chicago, it's been great to experience many world premieres by our world-famous orchestra and opera company. The instrumental pieces come more frequently, so the operas are that much more special for their rarity. The U.S. Bicentennial of 1976 brought forth a number of new works in various parts of the country, practically all of them by American composers. Lyric Opera of Chicago, however, chose to ask the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki to create something for us. Though controversial in some quarters, Paradise Lost turned out to be a significant production both here in the Windy City, and in Italy when it was produced at La Scala. There were panel discussions with the composer and the production team, and much of the public turned out for the spectacle despite it's being a couple years late.

In March of 2000, the composer was back in Chicago to conduct performances of his Seven Gates of Jerusalem which introduced some new percussion instruments. I had the chance to speak with him at that time and he was full of bounce and good humor about everything. His accented-English was quite good, and he sprinkled many delightful turns of phrase into his ideas, some of which I've been able to leave in this text. We spoke about both his vocal and instrumental works, and here is what was said that afternoon . . . . .

Bruce Duffie: First, tell me the joys and sorrows of writing for the human voice.

Krzystof Penderecki: I am writing all my life for human voice. I began when I was a student. My first piece for the voice was written in 1957, The Psalm of David, and then the Strophen for soprano was written in maybe ’58. Since that time, as you may probably know, I wrote so much for voice.

BD: What is it about the voice that intrigues you?

KP: I think it’s the most beautiful instrument ever created, the human voice. Since I’m writing for voice almost fifty years, I can always find something which interests me in the voice, so it’s no limit writing for voice, I think.

BD: Does the use of texts alter then the way that the musical line will be drawn?

KP: No. Of course, I’m writing different pieces, not always sacred music, and in different languages too. I’m using a lot of Latin and Czech and German. Of my four operas, three are in German, one is in English, and now I’m going to write probably an opera in Spanish. It’s always different because of the different languages.

BD: Is it up to you, though, to make sure that the text language is conveyed in the musical language.

KP: Oh, yes. And I think writing in the specific language, the piece is different. My music in Czech sounds different, of course, than the pieces written in Latin.

BD: Do you get inspiration from the texts for how the music will be sung?

KP: From the text, but sometimes also from the sound of the language, yes. Both, I would say.

BD: I assume, though, that you never have that kind of inspiration when you’re writing a symphony or a string quartet.

KP: I think it’s absolutely different. Writing for instruments, music is more abstract, I would say. I’m looking for some sounds of the instruments, to find the different new sounds. In the Seven Gates of Jerusalem, I invented a new instrument, the tubaphones. They’re pipes, long, plastic pipes. I wanted to have a deep percussion tuned instrument, and it doesn’t exist, so I had to invent the new instrument.

BD: Were you inventing a new instrument to get a new sound, or were you inventing a new instrument to reproduce the sound you had heard in your ear?

KP: Yes, yes. I’m imagining a sound which I cannot produce because there is no such instrument, so then I am looking for the new instrument.

BD: Did you create that sound in your mind, or did you discover the sound floating in the cosmos?

KP: [Laughter.] No. In this case, I had the music from Australia or New Zealand. The folk music, with the musician using the long bamboo. But this was not enough sounds, not perfect sound which I wanted, so I tried to do it with other instruments, through other material, like plastic, which sounds better, I think.

BD: It sounds better than the bamboo?

KP: Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely. Yes.

BD: Are you looking for a “perfect” sound, or a perfect reproduction of the sound?

KP: I don’t know what is perfect. You never can achieve perfect sound.

BD: Are you basically pleased, though, with the sounds you hear coming back at you?

KP: You know, the problem for all composers, not only for me, is that we have to use instruments which were built 300 years ago, or 200 years ago. The newest instrument in the orchestra, maybe, is the saxophone, but it’s over 100 years old now. In the century of the great discovery, landing on the moon and so on, we still have to write for very old instruments, museum instruments really. I think this is the problem. It became really the problem in the second half of the twentieth century, that there is not much progress because of the lack of the instruments.

BD: Would your music be completely different if you had different instruments to write for?

KP: Oh, absolutely. If there would be new instruments, there would be new possibilities, new sound, new combinations, new orchestration and so forth. I think that in our century now, the people must develop new instruments.

BD: You feel, then, restricted by using these old instruments?

KP: Almost everything has been done for those instruments. What can you do? What can you expect now after what we have done in the fifties and sixties with all the old instruments? Our experimenting with strings, using also some elements of electronics but not with electronic instruments, trying to transcribe the sound, which I heard in a studio and adapted for the instruments in Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. It doesn’t sound like a string orchestra, but it is a string orchestra. But how long can you do it? If you go one step farther, you will destroy the instrument, of course. I almost did. [Laughter.] I remember in the sixties many orchestras went on strike and refused to play my music because I developed new techniques, asking them to scratch and to use their instruments like percussion instruments. So there was revolution at that time.

BD: But you seem to have moved away from that...

KP: ...because I have done everything that was possible for the instrument, and now I think I am looking for the new instrument rather than to try to write for the old instrument something which is really not the nature of the instrument.

BD: So you need to create a new form of playing along with the new music?

KP: Oh, yes. But, you know, we need the engineers that will develop the new instruments. The composer can have only some ideas.

BD: Are you’re soliciting people to bring you new instruments so you can work with the sounds they make?

KP: I think so, yes. I’m always looking. In almost each piece I’m trying to use the new instruments. Sometimes they are not new instruments, but they’re not used for the symphonic music, like ocarinas. In two compositions, I used twelve ocarinas. They have an interesting sound.

BD: Yes, it’s sort of a hollow kind of sound.

KP: Yes, yes.