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vita
During his lifetime Stanisław Krupowicz has already been the citizen of
four states: the Soviet Union, People’s Poland, the Third Polish
Republic and, most recently, Europe. In each of these cases (well, perhaps
with the exception of the third), he did not have in fact any choice;
someone else decided for him. As an inhabitant of Czechowice-Dziedzice, he
started his new education in civic society from the study of heritages of
all kind, treating historical and philosophical heritages as the prolegomena
to an anacrusis of the propaedeutics to all matters European. Unexpectedly,
he got stuck on Blake, in whose work he found confirmation of what he had
suspected for a long time and what kept him awake during the night. For
several years now Stanisław Krupowicz has been feeling sleepy. The European
dream has proved to be a permanent reality.
Stanisław Krupowicz
Selected works (since 1980): Symphony (1980), Tempo 72
for amplified harpsichord and strings (1981), String Quartet No. 2 (1982),
Easter Disloyalty of cd for any set of instruments (1982), A Certain Case of
a Certain Generalised Canon at the Fourth and Fifth for nine performers
(1983), Unquestioned Answer, variation on a theme by Ives for chamber
orchestra (1984), Music for s for tape (1984), Thus Spoke Bosch for tape
(1985), Half a Dozen Chaste Stanzas for piano (1985), Half Way Through for
tape (1986), Farewell Variations on a Theme by Mozart for amplified string
quartet and tape (1986), Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Computers (1987),
Nightfall for tape (1987; composed with Toni Milosz and Ira Mowitz), Only
Beatrice for female reciting voice, amplified string quartet and tape
(1988), Alcoforado for tape (1989), Smoking Room Blues for midi ensemble
(1991), A Lighter Shade of Grey for violin and tape (1992), Fin de si¬cle
for orchestra (1993), Certain Cases of the Generalized Mixed Cadence for
synthesizers (1995), Polonaise 1995 for orchestra (1995), Miserere for
soprano and two a cappella choirs (1996), Christmas Oratorio for soloists,
choir and orchestra (1997), Gratanter iubilemus for two a cappella choirs
(1998), 444 for string quartet (1998), Centum annos for alto, improvising
conductor and a cappella choir (2000), Paragon Paradigm for sinfonietta
(2000), Fanfares for ach for chamber orchestra (2000), Partita for Cello and
Computer (2002), Europe, computer opera in one act to a libretto after Blake
(2004).
Europe
Blake’s assessment of Europe of the end of the 18th century is
striking in its topicality. Seen from the perspective of the 21st century,
it appears to be even more topical. In diagnosing the fall of Europe, Blake
pointed to its two basic causes: falsely interpreted and
‘applied’ Christianity and a conviction of the redundancy of any
religion. These two strands constitute the essence of the content of Europe.
They are at the same time the greatest mistakes of mankind.
The first mistake was to reduce religion to a series of bans and
commandments. As a consequence, life has become an unbearable routine, in
which every attempt to overcome existing limitations is condemned as a sin.
And so religion has to be disposed of – claimed the intellectuals of
the Enlightenment. This is the second, and even worse, mistake. Deprived of
any axiological axioms, the human mind creates one utopia after the other.
And utopias are dangerous, very dangerous, especially when dressed up in
professorial robes and when they pretend to be, roughly speaking, of an
academic nature; in extreme cases they can cost lives of tens of millions of
people.
The diagnosis and the ensuing verdict of exile to the land of Ulro may be
not too harsh but it should be remembered that the only nightmare that Blake
knew from close encounter was the English-English war in America and the
crimes of the French Revolution. He did not know of course the various
‘-isms’ of the 19th century, all those pagan inventions of man
who is allegedly ‘the measure of all things’. What would be
Blake’s verdict if he wrote his Europe today?
Newton discovered the law of mechanics. The intellectuals of the
Enlightenment decided to apply them to the humanities because it was a good
thing to have a universal system that could describe everything. Blake
ridiculed them. How he would laugh his head off today if he knew that Darwin,
Einstein and so many others were robbed of their discoveries, which were
taken over by the social sciences and philosophy? Historical materialism,
relativistic morality?
The 21st century. Europe united in the spirit of, and perhaps even thanks
to, the French Revolution. All are equal, all are free, all are brothers.
No, he’s no Robespierre, don’t exaggerate.
Marx – he’s gone out of fashion, for the time being;
structuralism – people got bored with it…
And how about… how about using the theory of that positive parasite to
describe our concept, you know that biologist… what’s his name?
Europe was written as a commission of the ‘Warsaw
Autumn’ Festival, with financial support from the Ministry of Culture.
The electro-acoustic sounds were realized in the Computer Composition Studio
of the Wrocław Academy of Music. My special words of gratitude go to the
Wrocław Academy of Music for the computer equipment which I used during the
realization and performance of the opera, to Marcin Bortnowski and Cezary
Duchnowski for their computer controlling software as well as to Ewa Guziołek-Tubelewicz
for the sound engineering of the audio material used for creating the
electro-acoustic parts of the opera.
Stanisław Krupowicz
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