ABSTRACT
Ewa Synowiec is one of the Polish women composers born in the 1940s. She started her career in Cracow, as a pianist. During this period, she met the composer Bogusław Schaeffer (1929–2019) who fascinated her so deeply that she became his student as a composer. Schaeffer’s strong personality is present in the music of Ewa Synowiec in its clearly avant-garde style. Synowiec moved from Cracow to Gdańsk just after graduation. As a composer she was already well-formed in her artistic metier: her works are strongly autonomous and distinct from musical convention. At the beginning, Synowiec used 12-tone technique in, for example, Plus ca change - plus c’est la meme chose (1973) but, at the same time, she started to experiment with graphic scores in pieces such as Utwór na dwa fortepiany / Piece for two pianos from 1966. She then experimented with open forms – Gra / Play (1972), Syntonia (1976) – as well as aleatoric music – for example, 72 (1972) and Da camera (1977). Finally, she concentrated on graphic music. The first compositions in this stream related to elements of traditional musical notation – for example, Refuge (1982) and Głosy ze ściany / Voices From The Wall (1982). Gradually, however, her music started moving in the direction of completely abstract colour pictures. In fact, they are independent works of art and in this form were presented at exhibitions.
