Does Penderecki play better than Lewandowski did recently (in the national team)? Is it possible in 2024 to get a grant for reconstructing his scores, obviously using AI? Let’s gossip. Only gossip can counter the concrete-hardening collective memory, a memory of culture as vast and varied as a runway inscribed with neat letters in the right size: Common Good + National Memory.
This makes it a type of memory we smoothly deal with. When needed, we all remind ourselves of some figure, usually never met in person, and start writing an essay on a given, anniversary topic. This is the scheme of media interested in culture.
If by some miracle such a figure could be placed in the middle of this airport of national memory, from which we continuously try to take off towards the future, the mnemonic landscape’s scale would turn it into a barely noticeable shadow, a detail, a nuance, a tidbit. That’s the role of artists today, even in a society taught by the 19th century that the Artist doubles as a Prophet, Priest, sometimes even a Martyr.
We live in an era when the old operating system of memory is no longer up to par, and a new one is still not on the market.
Even in art, there are figures who have managed to mark their importance as undisputedly as in sports. In post-war Polish culture, this happened in a similar way, thanks to a competition at least twice. In 1948, thirty-four-year-old Henryk Tomaszewski received five first prizes at the International Film Poster Exhibition in Vienna. All fair and square, works marked with various emblems.
In 1959, at the Second Young Composers Competition, twenty-six-year-old Krzysztof Penderecki won three first prizes. For certainty, Penderecki wrote one piece with his right hand, another with his left (he was ambidextrous), and had the third transcribed. That’s what you call a serious approach to competitions.
Once attention is so spectacularly focused, it stays for a long time. One still needs to meet and satisfy the vague but intense expectations of the surroundings with what is done later. Like in sports, one must “maintain high form”.
Both succeeded brilliantly. It’s impossible to sensibly talk about the adventures of Polish culture without mentioning Tomaszewski or Penderecki. But how do you deal with such national-concrete monumentality in such storytelling?
This is where gossip, private opinion, a sharp joke, an anecdote come in handy.
In the diary of the wife of one of the most important representatives of Polish surrealism from the early sixties, there’s a short entry, undoubtedly influenced by a recent meeting: “Krzysztof Penderecki, a man whose ego long outpaced the speed of sound”.
Who knows, this might be an important parameter for a composer, though it probably requires a completely new notation.
