Szalonek Witold
(1927–2001)
He was born in Czechowice-Dziedzice (Silesia, Poland), and died in Berlin. During the years 1949–56 he studied the piano with Wanda Chmielowska and composition with Bolesław Woytowicz at the Music Academy (PWSM) in Katowice. He continued his studies during the years 1962–63 with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. From 1967 he taught composition at the Music Academy in Katowice, and during the years 1970–74 he headed the Department of Composition and Theory at the same academy. A year ’s scholarship at the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst in Berlin (1970–71) resulted in an offer of professorship at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin in 1973, where Szalonek succeeded Boris Blacher as professor of composition.
One of his achievements was to discover “combined sounds”– multiphonics of a particular timbre, which can be obtained with woodwind instruments.
From 1970 he conducted courses and seminars on the subject of his own compositional techniques at music academies and universities in a number of countries, including Denmark, Germany, Finland, Poland and Slovakia. His works were performed at many festivals of contemporary music, such as the Summer Courses of New Music in Darmstadt, the ISCM World Music Days, Warsaw Autumn, Time of Music in Vitasaari (Finland), Gulbenkian festival in Lisbon, Inventionen in Berlin, Alternatives in Moscow and Contrasts in Lviv.
In 1964 he was awarded the Music Prize by the City of Katowice, and in 1967 the Prize of the Minister of Culture and Art. In 1990 he received an honorary doctorate from the Wilhelmian University in Münster, and in 1994 he won the annual award of the Polish Composers’ Union.
S e l e c t e d w o r k s ( a f t e r 1 9 9 0 ): Symphony of Rituals for string quartet (1991–96), Medusa’s Head I for one to three recorders in C (1992), Invocazioni per due chitarre (1992), Medusa’s Head II for one to three recorders in C (1993), Diptych I for mixed choir (1993), Diptych II for 16 saxophones (1993), Sept épigrammes modernes for saxophone quartet (1994), Gerard Hoffnungs Six Unpublished Drawings for saxophone quartet (1994), Three Preludes for Piano (1996), Zakopane Suite for reed mouthpiece (1996), Medusa’s dream of Pegasus I for horn and recorder (1997), Medusa’s dream of Pegasus II for horn and flute in C (1997), Miserere for 12-voice choir of soloists (1997), Chaconne–Fantaisie for solo violin (1997), Bagatelle di Dahlem II for flute and piano (1998), Oberek No. 1 for guitar (1998), Drei Liebeslieder for baritone and piano (1998), L’hautbois mon amour for solo oboe, two harps, timpani and string orchestra (1999), Poseidon and Medusafor two piccolo flutes, alto flute, crotales and bass flute (2001).
