Word: penderecki
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...winds and strings. The resulting dialogue is almost Joycean in its plural textures and moment-to-moment subtleties. Recording studios also offer new technical means of composing, through such devices as the echo chamber, multi-track recording and tape superimposition. "In this way," says Poland's Krzysztof Penderecki, "the process of recording itself has become a means of composition as well as communication." Of course, none of this technical expertise would be possible without tape, on which all LPs are originally recorded. And there are those who see tape-especially video tape, with which the home listener may some...
...critics had grounds for apprehension - but on quite another score. They were gathered for the American premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki's The Devils of Loudun by the Santa Fe Opera, a troupe known for its firm (and rare) conviction that contemporary opera deserves a place right alongside the old favorites. The Devils is a highly unorthodox piece of music. At earlier performances this summer in Hamburg and Stuttgart, it had been greeted with as many pans as praises (TIME, July 4). Santa Fe once more was sho ing its devil-may-care spirit in risking, along with the tried...
...turned out, no one need have worried. The Devils was cheered at Santa Fe. There was even help from an unexpected source: precisely at the moment when one of Penderecki's characters shouted "God is dead!" there came a clap of thunder and a storm enveloped the theater. The audience was as impressed by the opera as by the incident. But despite its effectiveness, The Devils seemed episodic, eclectic, and the complex Penderecki (pronounced Pen-der-ete-key) score sometimes trod meekly behind the drama instead of forcefully alongside it. What gave absolutely no grounds for complaint were...
Boos and Bravos. Penderecki scored the opera for an 80-voice chorus and a massive orchestra: 32 woodwind and brass instruments, 42 strings, an organ, harmonium, electric bass guitar and a diverse array of percussion instruments, including timpani and musical saw. Though it produces the now familiar range of Penderecki sound-semi-tones and quarter tones, tone clusters, glissandi and primitive knocking noises-the orchestra plays a secondary role to the chorus, which is constantly busy humming, singing neo-Gregorian chant, screaming, laughing, muttering and yelping...
Some critics complained that Penderecki had wasted an expense of talent in illustrating a bizarre footnote to history, and had failed to provide his opera with any sense of contemporary relevance. The audience response at the Hamburg premiere was a blend of boos and bravos, although applause predominated at a different production of the work in Stuttgart last week. Penderecki was unfazed. Isn't opera an archaic form for modern composers? he was asked. "Only people who don't have the brains to write one think so," was his answer...