Aspekty transcendencji w twórczości Henryka Mikołaja Góreckiego i Krzysztofa Pendereckiego

Abstract

Both Górecki and Penderecki represent the generation of Polish composers whose music education coincided with the rapid expansion of the Western avant-garde ideals. Those representing the avant-garde identified themselves with the legacy of anti-transcendental, that is anti-constructive, thought. After a period of initial fascination with dodecaphony, serialism and the innovative sound techniques of the 1960’s, both composers began to loosen their ties with the avant-garde. They found the Western principles in marked contrast to the classical understanding of art in its entirety and totality, as well as based on truth and good as the main parameters for the artistic expression of beauty. The shift in the musical idioms of the two composers was also motivated by contemporary socio-political events that had a profound impact on scientific as well as artistic achievements (a Pole was elected Pope, the Solidarity Movement was born, the communist regime collapsed). The works composed in the years that followed demonstrate how both artists sought and stressed the importance of the form of a musical work, by turning to tradition as a source of inspiration. The element they considered vital in the process of artistic creation was the experience of personal freedom, which quite naturally draws on the surrounding ontologically sound reality. By finding artistic inspiration in the beauty of the surrounding observable universe, the composers considered the beauty as one of the best ways to follow, aiming for the Divine Beauty of Eternity as the source of Being.