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Polish Cultural Institutes
Ministry of Culture and National Heritage - Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych
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Adam Mickiewicz Institute ul. Mokotowska 25 00-560 Warsaw tel. (+48 22) 44 76 100 fax (+48 22) 44 76 152 www.iam.pl ![]() about us
redakcja@culture.pl
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Tadeusz Wielecki, the composer and bassist, was born 5 July 1954 in Warsaw. He studied double bass with Alfred Wieczorek and Andrzej Mysiński and composition with Włodzimierz Kotoński at the Warsaw Academy of Music. In 1986 he was granted a Witold Lutosławski scholarship, he continued his composition studies with Isang Yun in West Berlin and Klaus Huber in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1986-7. As a bassist, Wielecki performs contemporary solo works, giving concerts in a number of European countries, Azerbaijan, and the United States. He has also been involved in the promotion of contemporary music and artistic education, leading programs on the new music for children and youth in the Polish Radio. In 1992 Wielecki chaired the Artistic Committee of the World's Music Days of the International Society of Contemporary Music in Warsaw. His "Concerto à rebours" for violin and orchestra was listed among the recommended works at UNESCO's 1999 International Composers' Tribune in Paris. Since 1999 Tadeusz Wielecki has been the director of the 'The Warsaw Autumn' International Festival of Contemporary Music. Wielecki is one of the most interesting Polish composers of the middle-aged generation. On the one hand, his attitude to composing is marked by emotional expressiveness. On the other hand, his approach to the process of composing is highly intellectual. A number of his works reveal intellectual experimenting. It goes without saying that Wielecki's compositions are influenced by his experience as a bassist. Wielecki is particularly interested in modifying the traditional technique of playing stringed instruments. In his 1998 "Concerto à rebours" for violin and orchestra, the composer develops a special method of playing that could be referred to as "sliding". It is about continuous movement, fingers sliding along the strings, as opposed to the traditional technique where fingers are statically placed on the fingerboard of the instrument. According to the composer, this technical innovation has musical consequence as it impacts the sound of music. A special musical category and, equally, an important element of the composing technique is for Wielecki the "musical gesture". The composer elaborated on it: "Its essence is the dramaturgic indivisibility of a motif, of a musical unit. It is therefore a kind of a musical event, one that cannot be reduced to some very simple form without detriment to its basic function - the function of the element of a musical action. And then it is something that should have the nature of a sign. A mere motif or some abstract music cell will not be a gesture. As a matter of fact, it is about taking the principle of gesture as a body reflex to the territory of musical discourse. The reflex conveys a message, though without words. A man makes a gesture to communicate his feeling about something, his own, innermost truth. Yet a gesture has a musical value in having its own energy, rhythm, tempo, a specific duration. It is feasible to transfer these characteristics to sounds. However - and here we are touching the essence of the issue - these elements also convey expressions and meanings. And since the key aspect of a musical gesture is its distinct and specific character, I can see the gesture-using method of composing opening up opportunities for music which plays with expressions and energies. There is also the possibility to achieve higher plasticity of the music matter and, independently, to give sounds a humanistic sense of a higher degree than the one they have when treated as a pure construction".Wielecki has put his idea of the musical gesture to practice particularly in his three compositions entitled "A Study of the Gesture" and composed, respectively, for clarinet, piano and cello (1995), for piano (1997), and for clarinet, trombone, piano, cello and double bass (2000). In general terms, Wielecki explains the idea of his music in the following way: "My purpose is to relate to the deep, innermost layers of the psyche. When dealing with music, we face the unlimited, the transcendent. A musical, artistic action comes from communicating with another person, but with God, the Absolute, in perspective".Compositions:
Author: Polish Music Information Center, Polish Composers' Union, March 2002, list of compositions updated: 2009 |
Browsing history![]() ![]() ![]()
![]() On Monday, September 20, the first Polish arena for the Euro 2012 Cup will open in Poznań. The official ceremony will be honoured with a concert featuring Sting performing with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, conducted by Steven Mercurio. Until September 25 (except for Sundays and holidays), the John the Baptist Archcathedral in Warsaw will host daily organ recitals as part of the 7th edition of the "Grand Organ of the Archicathedral" Festival. "Dotyk człowieka/Beruehrungen" is the title of the exhibition presenting works of six Polish contemporary artists displayed at the German Embassy in Warsaw (Jazdów street): on view until September 27. On October 17, the National Museum in Poznań will host the first public presentation of Claude Monet's "Beach in Pourville". The painting was stolen ten years ago. The painting returned to the museum in January 2010 after the folice found the thief. Jazz pianist Chick Corea will give his only Polish solo concert on November 8 in Zabrze.
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