Tears flow and flow and cannot stop flowing. This piece, written 30 years ago, owes something to minimal music, or rather to my incomplete understanding of it at that time. It owes even more to the Polish postmodernist school. Interestingly, Tears were written in opposition to the “Bartókofiev” style then cherished at the Prague Academy, rather negligently presided over by Zhdanov – but also in opposition to New Music, whose forbidden fruit I tasted at private lessons with Marek Kopelent. When I “declassified” my Tears after the premiere in the meadow by the Berounka River, Kopelent praised the piece with his characteristic tolerance and distinction. He accepted the repetitions, the aleatory canon in three tempos and the neverend ing melody in D minor (or, more precisely, in the 212121 mode). It was this piece that attracted the attention of Andrzej Chłopecki at the courses for composers in Kazimierz, and he included it in the programme of a Warsaw concert half a year later (in 1986 in the Wójtowska Basement). This event launched a long series of performances of my works in Poland and of works composed specially for Poland, in which Andrzej was always involved.

Martin Smolka