The Body (Krzysztof Wołek)
was commissioned by the Friends of the Warsaw Autumn Foundation using funds from the Ernst von Siemens Foundation. I began writing The Body shortly after completing a year of study with Louis Andriessen in The Hague and during the first few months of my 8-year stay in Chicago. The year I spent in Holland proved extremely important for the subsequent trajectory of my artistic endeavors. My previous studies in composition took place in Katowice, Poland in the second half of the 1990s. During that time, due to very harsh economic conditions, the arts were in a difficult and insecure state. Access to audio recordings, scores and information on recent developments in contemporary music was very limited. I saw the Netherlands at the beginning of the 21st century as a country of tolerance, in which contemporary art and music was strongly supported by the government and society, and thus working and studying in Holland enabled my discovery of new aesthetics and mediums for musical and artistic expression.
The formal structure of the piece, the choice of the instrumental ensemble and the harmonic and rhythmic characteristics of the work combine to create an aesthetic that is strongly rooted in and inspired by Dutch contemporary music as well as American blues. The lyrics of The Bodyare a selection of texts from
The Price of Folly by Erasmus of Rotterdam and were chosen and arranged so that they would convey my beliefs, which were deeply influenced by my experiences in Holland. The world in which we live is founded upon consumerism, the desire to possess, and the need for instantaneous rewards and corporeal pleasures. It also glorifies that which is rooted in science and is based on proof. At the same time, European society at large, and the younger generation in particular, has become increasingly critical of organized religion, which, in previous centuries, nurtured our spirituality and accounted for the unknown and unaccountable. I believe that culture and art, especially that which is contemporary and reflects the spirit of our time, can ably serve to nourish our spiritual selves.
Krzysztof Wołek
Desiderius Erasmus Encomium moriae
…animum immersum illigatumque esse corporeis vinculis, hujusque crassitudine praepediri, quo minus ea, quae vere sunt, contemplari, fruique possit. Proinde philosophiam definit esse “mortis meditationem”, quod ea mentem a rebus visibilibus, ac corporeis abducat, quod idem utique mars facit. ltaque quam diu animus corporis organ is probe utitur, tam diu san us appellatur, verum ubi ruptis jam vinculis, conatur in libertatem asserere sese, quasique fugam ex eo carcere meditatur, tum “insaniam” vacant.
ltidem vulgus hominum ea quae maxime corporea sunt, maxime miratur, eaque prope sola putat esse.
Nam isti primas partes tribuunt divitiis, proximas corporis commodis, postremas animo relinquunt: quem tamen plerique nee esse credunt, quia non cernatur oculis. (E diverso illi… )
Principia, sensus tametsi omnes cum corpore cognationem habeant, tamen quidam sunt ex his crassiores, ut tactus, auditus, visus, olfactus, gustus. Quidam magis a corpore semoti, veluti memoria, intellectus, voluntas. lgitur ubi se intenderit animus, ibi valet.
…cum “amantium furorem omnium felicissimum esse” scriberet. Etenim qui vehementer amat jam non in se vivit, sed in eo quod amat, quoque long ius a seipso digreditur, & in illud demigrat, hoc magis ac magis gaudet. Atque cum ani mus a corpore peregrinari meditatur, neque probe suis utitur organis, istud haud dubie furorem recte dixeris. Alioqui quid sibi vult quod vulgo etiam dicunt: “Non est apud se”, & “ad te redi”, & “sibi redditus est”? Porro quo amor est absolutior, hoc furor est major, ac felicior.
Erasmus Desiderius The Praise of Folly
(…) The soul is sunk and shackled by corporeal bonds; being so clogged by the grossness of the body that but little can it contemplate and enjoy things as they truly are. Hence Plato defined philosophy as “a study of death“, because it leads the mind away from visible and bodily things, and certainly death does the same. And thus as long as the soul uses the bodily organs aright, so long it is called sane, but when with its bonds broken it attempts to make good its liberty, planning, as it were, escape from its prison, then it is called mad.
In like fashion the great masses of people admire what things are most corporeal and deem that such come near to being the only things they are.
For the majority assign the leading role to riches and the next to bodily comforts, while they leave the lowliest for the soul, which most of them, however, believe does not exist, because it is not seen by the eye. (The others opposite…)1
In the first place, although all the senses have alliance with the body, certain of them are grosser, such as touch, hearing, sight, smell, taste, while certain ones are less closely tied up with the body, as the memory, intellect, and will. To whichever one the soul applies itself, that one grows strong.
(…) The madness of lovers is the happiest state of all. Now he who lives intensely no longer lives in himself but in whatever he loves, and the more he can depart from himself and enter into the other, the happier he is. And when a mind yearns toward travelling out of the body, and does not rightly use its own bodily organs, you doubtless, and with accuracy, call the state of it madness. Otherwise, what do they mean by those common phrases, “he is not at home,“ and “to come to yourself,“ and “he is himself again“? Furthermore, so far as the love is more perfect the madness is greater and more delightful.
Translated by Hoyt Hopewell Hudson Published by Princeton University Press, 1941
1 Translated by the composer
