Talks

I’m gradually putting up transcripts of some of my talks on Polish music.  Some are pre-concert talks, some research papers.  Until I put them into PDF format, they exclude musical examples (though recording details are given where appropriate).  The visual illustrations were not used in the original talks.  The footnotes are not ‘clickable’, just listed numerically as endnotes that have to be scrolled down to – sorry!  Even so, I hope that the transcripts will be of help to anyone pursuing an interest in Polish music.

You can access them either by clicking on the titles below or scrolling down the TALKS tab above.

If you want to quote from a transcript, please give the normal details of author, title, occasion and date.

• Lutosławski and Literature (Cornell University, 7 April 2010)
an exploration of the potential literary influences on Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto (1970)
• Appendix 1: Lutosławski’s programme note
• Appendix 2: Lutosławski’s references to authors and works of literature

• Echoes of Poland (pre-concert talk, QEH, London, 19 January 2010)
to celebrate the bicentennial of Chopin’s birth, a discussion of the mazurka as viewed by Liszt and by Polish composers, before and after Chopin, combined with examples of poetry written about him since his death in 1849

• Locating Polish Music (keynote paper, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2 May 2009)
a broadly based discussion of Polish music since 1945, with particularly emphasis on the significance of Szymanowski, folk music and pre-existing sources, on memorialisation and on the role of abstraction in Polish music

• Marginal Tincturing?  Lutosławski, Folk Music and the Concerto for Orchestra (IMS Symposium, Melbourne, 14 July 2004)
an outline of Lutosławski’s sources for this key work, based on manuscript found in his house in Warsaw in September 2002 – the paper has since been expanded and will be published in a new collection of essays on Lutosławski in 2016