About Andrzej Krzanowski

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Biography

1977

PHOTO: Young Musicians for a Young City Festival in Stalowa Wola, from the left: Eugeniusz Knapik, Aleksander Lasoń, Grażyna Krzanowska, Andrzej Krzanowski, 1979, photo: Stanisław Szlęzak
Young Musicians for a Young City Festival in Stalowa Wola, from the left: Eugeniusz Knapik, Aleksander Lasoń, Grażyna Krzanowska, Andrzej Krzanowski, 1979, photo: Stanisław Szlęzak

We were classmates. In Stalowa Wola, with some invisible thread, Krzysztof Droba wove us into a generation and it turned out that there are certain features of our work that made it possible to gather completely different artistic personalities into one group.
Eugeniusz Knapik

Events

  • 1977
    He collaborated with the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio in Warsaw in connection with the work on the song Transpainting.
  • 1977
    He received a membership card of the Union of Authors and Stage Composers (No. 4413d).
  • 1977
    He received the rector's award of the State Higher School of Music in Katowice.
  • 1977-05
    He participated in the 3rd Young Musicians for a Young City Festival in Stalowa Wola.
  • 1977-06-20
    Son Kamil Andrzej was born in Pszczyna, the second child of Grażyna and Andrzej Krzanowski.
  • 1977-06-26
    At the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris, Polish Radio was represented by Program IV.

Major concerts

  • January 25, State Higher School of Music in Warsaw, composer concert
  • January 26, III Youth Festival in Warsaw, National Philharmonic - performance of the Programme I
  • April 3, State Philharmonic in Olsztyn – premiere of Study V by the Warsaw Accordion Quintet
  • May 14, 3rd Festival of Young Musicians for a Young City in Stalowa Wola, composer concert - premiere of Partita for oboe, clarinet and bassoon (Reed Trio of the Silesian Philharmonic) and Etude II for soprano, flute and percussion (Olga Szwajgier - soprano, percussion, Wanda Balcar - flute), performance of Studium II for solo accordion (Andrzej Krzanowski - accordion) and Study V (Warsaw Accordion Quintet)
  • January 24, Music Gallery in Warsaw, composer concert - premiere of Study II for accordion by Andrzej Krzanowski, as well as performances of [I] Sonata for accordion, Three Pieces for Oboe and Trumpet and Programmes I, II and IV
  • 12 September, XV Bydgoszcz Music Festival - premiere of Nocturne, Prelude and Fugue by the Warsaw Accordion Quintet
  • 17 September, XXI International Festival of Contemporary Music „Warsaw Autumn”, chamber hall of the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw, night concert - premiere of the audiovisual performance Transpainting to the libretto by Kazimierz Urbański
  • December 15, auditorium of the State Higher School of Music in Krakow, concert in memory of Artur Malawski, combined with the performance of compositions awarded in the Composers' Competition Artur Malawski - premiere of the 1st String Quartet of version B (1st prize) by the Wilanów Quartet
  • June-August, Polish Radio, nationwide program - presentations of Andrzej Krzanowski's works: Three Pieces for Oboe and Trumpet (June 3), Programmes I, II and IV and Study III (June 4), Study II (June 5), Partita for oboe , clarinet and bassoon and Etudes II for soprano, flute and percussion (29 July, retransmission of the Stalowa Wola concert on May 14), Three studies for soprano, flute and percussion and Study II for accordion (August 6)

Compositions

Detailed information

Full BiographyShort BiographyAwardsAbout AndrzejDedications

Calendar

1958

Show 1958
In the family, he was raised to be a priest. Until the last grade (high school graduation), it seemed that he would become one. He was a very dutiful altar boy. The accordion goes back to the orchestra founded in his elementary school by Mr. Brandys. Andrzej was very passionate about it and took additional tutoring with the Szwed family. After three months, he went through the entire coursebook material. Apparently, the organ players from Czechowice were relatives of our family. Perhaps this was the reason why Andrzej was so closely bound up with music.

1959

Show 1959
I grew up in a small town with only two music teachers - one taught the violin and the other the accordion. I dreamed of becoming an accordionist.

1965

Show 1965
[…] He was a boy just like the others. Lively and cheerful, kind and affectionate, very emotional and gentle in interactions. He studied well. He was a good friend […] Andrzej loved his accordion. He never refused to play at school and scout parties [...] His bond with the class teacher was not severed after graduation. He would come, share his successes, invite him to the academy's auditorium for his recitals ... Andrzej did not let his successes go to his head.

1966

Show 1966
Characterized by eternal serenity and sincere cordiality in contacts with the people he met on his way, he drew his creative inspiration from the beauty of the surrounding world, and he tried to complement each musical statement with an expressionist idiom of poetics ...

1967

Show 1967
For Krzanowski, who started his musical education by learning to play the accordion, this instrument became the subject of his first creative explorations and discoveries; allowing him to shape a world of sonic imaginations in a young, rapidly maturing talent whose creative passion led to the absolute pinnacle of his art and overcame stereotypes, his instrument gaining a new prestige in concert, solo and chamber music.

1969

Show 1969
Krzanowski's interest in sound, its specificity, timbre and duration manifested itself before his studies, during his schooling. The first compositional samples showed the hallmarks of his later stylistics and the treatment of sound or their complexities as a different kind of continuum of continuous or repetitive sounds with fluctuating dynamics.

1970

Show 1970
He started his work with sketches, creating the sound material and main motifs. He wrote quickly, the score was complete right away – with markings, arches, dynamics ... He wrote by hand, of course, and he heard the music within himself – computers were not the basic tool of that time. Different sizes of sheet music, a dozen pencils, a sharpener, good erasers and black pens were always within easy reach.

1971

Show 1971
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki was for Andrzej a great authority and a great composer. Classes often took the form of long conversations about music, literature, art and life. Górecki allowed Andrzej true freedom in his creative activities, did not change them according to his own concept, and often did not even see the currently written score. But due to his strong and charismatic personality, he was a true master for Andrzej, leading him on the path towards truth, independence and honesty.

1972

Show 1972
The accordion influenced my approach to sound. For sound as a continuous phenomenon that can be animated by appropriate technical means.

1973

Show 1973
I am a child raised on television and radio. I browse through lots of poetry, which I sort according to my impressions. As I read, I can already hear certain specific pieces of music that should harmonize with this poetry. I put the text on an equal footing with the music.

1974

Show 1974
Krzanowski was inspired by the sounds of the world around him: the timbre in which he grew up and which became the hallmark of his music. I'll tell you what it came from. Andrzej lived in Czechowice-Dziedzice. When I came to it for the first time, I was struck by the acoustics and the "chatter" of this small town. In the evenings, when it was already very quiet, I heard the prolonged whistles of the locomotives. The sirens of the refineries also rang out frequently, announcing the time of the second or third shift, sometimes a fire or other danger. Andrzej was soaking this "music" up since he was a child. He lived close to a refinery, close to a train station, an ambulance and a church. The sounds of alarms, bells and sirens "entered" him in a natural way.

1975

Show 1975
Andrzej was open to such the avant-garde that could enrich his musical language, mainly concerning sound and timbre. The use of unconventional instruments such as sirens, flexatons, metal pipes, whistles or the use of e.g. extreme registers was not invented by him, of course, but was an important feature of his work.

1976

Show 1976
My interest in music is by no means collective. There was no need to establish any "joint-stock company", any union in a relationship, only common interests, discussions. It was enough for us.

1977

Show 1977
We were classmates. In Stalowa Wola, with some invisible thread, Krzysztof Droba wove us into a generation and it turned out that there are certain features of our work that made it possible to gather completely different artistic personalities into one group.

1978

Show 1978
We all must have a master, and probably do. I loved Górecki's music, hence some of my technical and technical tricks, but I always tried to make it possible to subscribe to it, so I would not be called "the little Górecki", but be Krzanowski. From Lutosławski, I learned how to use the orchestra and chamber ensembles, but in a more watchmaking manner. I believe that we first must discover quantity, and then find some sort of individual path.

1979

Show 1979
Through perhaps conscious psychological and social process of composing music for the accordion by Krzanowski, which was, after all, an instrument previously absent from the canon of European music, the composer broke through certain aesthetic barriers. There are no bad instruments. That was what Mozart could have said when he played the clarinet in the orchestra. After all, it was a folk instrument at that time. We all think with colors at the very beginning, from the cradle. And this accordion timbre is great when such an accordion master as Andrzej Krzanowski gets his hands on it ...

1980

Show 1980
Music played a special role in Andrzej's family: musical values ​​were intertwined with families in an inseparable knot. With the Krzanowski family, everything was family-musical as well as music-family. [...] In times of crisis, as well as art and family, the figure and work of Andrzej radiate with some enormous good. An artist and a man who - against the times - created music with love and created a loving family.

1981

Show 1981
Andrzej Krzanowski, from the first years of his composing activity, strove to create his own "musical world". He used the achievements of the past and combined them with his own ideas, which he often "absorbed" from the world around him.

1982

Show 1982
He was a visionary who certainly did not compromise in music. He gave off the impression of being a man who creates regardless of the surrounding reality, regardless of whether the work has a quick chance to materialize in the form of execution or not.

1983

Show 1983
Krzanowski penetrated, enriched, broadened, (...) brought out new tonal, articulation and expression possibilities, and the critics emphasized this, discussed it, desiring to get away from the accordion using this accordion, informing, for example, that this accordion is used by Krzanowski to depict whether he imitated the poetics of electronic music. And Krzanowski, instead of treating it as an episode, a stage, highlighted accent (it would then be politically correct), he built his world out of it and around it (which could cause anxiety). He was eminently romantic in action.

1984

Show 1984
Krzanowski (...) creates poetry from his music; (...) he fills his music with poetry, saturates it just as he fills poetry with his music. In its romanticism, Krzanowski's music is deep, warm and touching at the same time.

1985

Show 1985
Anything that would not be forgiven at that time in Darmstadt (from 1984 he taught the accordion class at the Summer Courses for New Music there), during the famous festival.

1986

Show 1986
First there was Andrzej - a cordial, warm man who thinks seriously about music. Only then did I get to know his music, which also turned out to be close to me. I said that I was looking for an antidote to post-serialism, to music dehumanized by Darmstadt, and here by Schaeffer. And Andrzej's work was such an antidote for me. It was a world of sounds (often new, such as the original spaces of accordion sounds) in the service of emotions and expression; dramatic, lyrical, always – something one could feel - honest.

1987

Show 1987
When one looks at the list of Andrzej Krzanowski's works, the density and intensity of his scope are impressive. Symphonies, quartets, choral pieces, multimedia rehearsals, computer music are proof of its multiple possibilities, but accordion pieces - solo, chamber, in various sets and configurations, filling the space, ranging from virtuoso to those intended for children, indicate the field that Andrzej Krzanowski has chosen to practice. In this stubborn cultivation, he was representative of craftsmen, in the best sense of the word, e.g. of the Baroque period, who treated their profession as a task to be fulfilled, as a service to those who needed this activity.

1988

Show 1988
He was undoubtedly an original music poet. He had a poetic kindness towards the world and people, tinged with a haze of melancholy, and at the same time cheerful - although he was certainly not an eccentric in the style of fin de siecle poets or rebellious, depressed existentialists.

1989

Show 1989
All these more or less refined forms, more or less innovative compositional means served Andrzej Krzanowski to achieve the overarching goal: to influence the listener as much as possible, to convey emotions and reflection on life and passing, to move him or her.

1990

Show 1990
You who never want to listen to me / Lower your foreheads when I start dying / In the gates of the grave I will forgive you everything / Even those wounds that do not want to sleep / You who do not want to see me anywhere / Open your eyes when I will start to leave / Because I leave the sources so clean / That only in death will you understand their brightness

Photos to Download

  • IMG: Andrzej Krzanowski at Trzcianka, 1976
    Andrzej Krzanowski at Trzcianka, 1976, archiwum rodzinne / family archive
  • IMG: Grażyna and Andrzej Krzanowski at the Music Encounters in Baranów Sandomierski, initiaded by Andrzej Chłopecki, 1978
    Grażyna and Andrzej Krzanowski at the Music Encounters in Baranów Sandomierski, initiaded by Andrzej Chłopecki, 1978, Wacław Pintal
  • IMG: Andrzej Krzanowski (1)
    Andrzej Krzanowski (1), Julian Gembalski
  • IMG: Andrzej Krzanowski (2)
    Andrzej Krzanowski (2), Julian Gembalski
  • IMG: Young Andrzej in Czechowice-Dziedzice
    Young Andrzej in Czechowice-Dziedzice, archiwum rodzinne / family archive

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The use and publication of this photo is possible only for the purpose of free of charge information and promotion of the composer or his work, respecting the personal rights of the author of the photo. Any other use of the photo (e.g. concert programs, books or recordings for sale) requires the additional consent of the Foundation.


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Partners

Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury, Dziedzictwa Narodowego i Sportu
pochodzących z Funduszu Promocji Kultury – państwowego funduszu celowego,
w ramach programu „Muzyka”, realizowanego przez Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca.