The passion according to Penderecki

The relationship between music and religion has long been a clearly delineated one. Up to the late Middle Ages, music employed for ritual expressions of faith in sacred contexts was contrasted with secular music, then mostly played in open spaces. The former was believed to aid in the communication of divine truths, while the latter was suspected of arousing sensuality and thus potentially leading away from the spiritual perspective of life. In subsequent centuries, music entered first the courtly salons, then the concert hall and the home. Such music, created for virtuoso performance or for the enjoyment in private chambers, occasionally made room for an expression of religious experiences outside the dedicated spaces of worship. This aspect is particularly intriguing in instrumental music, where allusions to extra-musical messages are at best hinted at in titles or explanatory notes, and in those cases of vocal music where it can be shown that the musical language adds significant nuances to the verbal text.On the basis of various case studies that transcend a music-analytical approach in the direction of the hermeneutic perspective, this volume explores in which ways the musical language in itself, independently of an explicitly sacred context, communicates the ineffable. The discussion focuses on the musical means and devices employed to this effect and on the question what the presence of religious messages in certain works of secular music tells us about the spirituality of an era

Texture in Penderecki's sonoristic style

In his so-called "sonoristic" period of the early 1960s--represented by pieces such as Threnody, Fluorescences, Polymorphia, and others--Penderecki employed a compositional system whose axiomatic concept was not a single sound, but the sound matter in its totality. Distinct states of this sound matter were governed by two relatively independent systems: (1) a basic system which ruled the texture of sound masses and (2) a timbre system governing their sound color. Categories of the basic system are a few binary oppositions concerning pitch, time, and loudness: spatial mobility vs. immobility, temporal mobility vs. immobility, spatial continuity vs. discontinuity, temporal continuity vs. discontinuity, high vs. low register, loud vs. soft dynamics. These categories account for the morphology of the basic system because a combination of terms chosen from individual categories generates an inventory of units in Penderecki's sonoristic style. The same set of categories also determines syntax, as the temporal order of units in the course of musical narration is ruled by the internal logic of individual binary oppositions. Categories of the timbre system are in turn metal, wood, and leather--materials of which the sound sources of traditional musical instruments are most often made--forming a ternary opposition. The timbre system underlies the wealth of new musical tools as well as eccentric playing techniques on traditional instruments called for by the composer