{slider=Poezje [Poems], song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra. W nieznanej mowie /fragment/}

Dorothy Dorow - soprano, Teatr Wielki Chamber Ensemble, cond. Jan Krenz, „Warsaw Autumn” 1969

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{slider=Poezje [Poems], song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra. Nic /fragment/}

Dorothy Dorow - soprano, Teatr Wielki Chamber Ensemble, cond. Jan Krenz, „Warsaw Autumn” 1969

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{slider=Poezje [Poems], song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra. Strumień /fragment/}

Dorothy Dorow - soprano, Teatr Wielki Chamber Ensemble, cond. Jan Krenz, „Warsaw Autumn” 1969

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Poems for soprano and chamber orchestra

Poems for soprano and chamber orchestra

From the technical-compositional point of view, Poems is a logical continuation of the problems tackled in Niobe – an attempt to create a satisfying interaction between the text and the instrumental layer of the work. Since Serocki really wanted to make the text understood, he used a small-scale instrumental line-up – without the brass, but with celesta, two harps and piano, two small percussion groups and a small string section. As a result we do not hear sounds that are too loud or penetrating; what we get are rather gentle, bright notes.

The dramatic climax of the piece comes in the third song (Nothing). Its first part deals with what happens “at night” and builds ups dramatic tension through repetition of selected words: “at night”, “the word nothing”, “grows”, “spreads”, “rapidly”. In part two (dealing with what happens during the day), tension is released only to fall on a fragment with a  spoken text without any musical accompaniment. Only with the last words (“as a knife through meat”) do we hear sounds of the marimba, the piano and the harp.

This is followed by the last song, restoring the cheerful mood from the beginning of the work (buying fruit in a market square, sunshine getting into a room). It is full of sounds pleasant to the ear and illustrative sound effects related to the eponymous chicks. The composers uses here “squeals” of the flute and the clarinet, quick glissandi and runs. Lynn Davies notices here an interesting rhythmic technique, which can be seen as an allusion to Kandinsky’s painting techniques and which involves treating pointillist sound groups in a way that will produce “a timbral accelerando-decelerando without changing the underlying pulse”.

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• Tadeusz A. Zieliński, O twórczości Kazimierza Serockiego [On Kazimierz Serocki’s Oeuvre] , Kraków 1985.
• Lynn Davies, “Serocki's ‘Spatial Sonoristics’”, Tempo 1983 no. 145.
• Ulrich Dibelius, “Poèsies of Kazimierz Serocki', Polish Music 1970 no. 1.

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Sheet music available from: PWM, RICORDI