ABSTRACT
This is the most extended chapter, devoted to avant-garde changes in Polish music (1956–1974). A certain amount of space is devoted to the establishment of Warsaw Autumn festival and its impact on the musical scene in Poland, which resulted with international success of the so-called ‘Polish school of composers’, with its innovative musical world, marked mostly by sonorism (the term is broadly discussed). The author analyses avant-garde changes in music, which influenced symphonic writing in Polish music after 1956. As during the period the symphony was not a very popular genre, the discussion starts with other orchestral music, presenting significant symphonic ideas, often developed later in the symphonies by name. The innovative ideas by composers such as Lutosławski, Baird, Serocki, Górecki and Penderecki are discussed in more detail, with underlining the late-avant-garde symphonies composed at the turn of 1960s and 1970s and serving as a synthesis of innovative ideas with more traditional feeling for symphonic structure (Lutosławski’s and Górecki’s Symphonies no. 2, Penderecki’s Symphony No. 1). The idea of symphony as a stream of consciousness by Baird is given a separate place, as is a concept of symphony as avant-garde experiment, represented by Górecki’s Symphony No. 1. The contribution of Polish composers into the modernisation of symphonic tradition is broadly demonstrated here.
