During the National Student Research Conference “Young Polish Music” organised in the Music Academy in Katowice in May 2014, there was a heated debate about the possibility of a school of composition, a generational or even situational group (cohort) emerging nowadays. Even though the participants did go beyond some general conclusions, the subject itself is worth considering, especially in the context of a concert featuring pieces by four schoolmates from the same music academy.
Kamil Kruk (b. 1989), Piotr Peszat (b. 1990), Piotr Roemer (b. 1988), and Szymon Stanisław Strzelec (b. 1990)—can these four composers be described as a group?
The idea of a generational cohort can probably be dismissed from the start, as the four artists share no common generational experience—unless we consider living in a fluid modern world and lack of knowledge of any other but the postmodern reality to be such a unifying factor. Do they, therefore, form a school of composition? Probably not: their music, temperaments, and styles are very different. Though each of them is still looking for his own path of development, they have already formed the rudiments of their artistic idioms: Kruk—broad gestures, excitement, the desire to draw his audience into the whirl of musical events, also literally, thanks to the ingenious application of topophonics; Peszat—mysterious, “odd” if acoustic sounds; an attempt to redefine sonorism; Roemer—electronics and refinement; focus on how the music sounds; close collaboration with the performers and an awareness that music is written for a real-life audience; Strzelec—an iron discipline of construction, postspectralism, and a tendency to produce attractive sound in orchestral compositions, but rough Lachenmann-style sound in works for smaller ensembles. Interestingly, each of these composers studied under a different professor: Kruk with Anna Zawadzka-Gołosz, Peszat with Krzysztof Meyer and Simon Steen-Andersen in Aarhus, Roemer with Magdalena Długosz, and Strzelec with Zbigniew Bargielski.
What do they have in common? First of all, they work closely together. In the “Il Cannone” Composition Students’ Academic Club (together with their schoolmates: Franciszek Araszkiewicz, Rafał Bosko, Grzegorz Brus, Paulina Łuciuk, Martyna Kosecka, Błażej Wincenty Kozłowski, Dawid Kusz, Stanisław Rzepiela, Renāte Stivriņa, Monika Szpyrka, Natalia Wojnakowska, and others), they organise meetings with composers, debates and, most importantly, concerts. Of great assistance in this respect is the recently formed Lutosławski Orchestra Moderna, conducted by Błażej Wincenty Kozłowski. Secondly, they share a critical attitude to both tradition and postmodernism, and want to be perceived as modernists. They believe that even though art derives from a sensitive reaction to reality and preserves its links to the real world, it remains an autonomous discipline. For this reason it should (or at least it can) have its own ethos—not necessarily a universal one. Strzelec defines this approach as follows: “Everybody must build and make sense of their own canons of art. No element absorbed from the outside is truly and completely ‘our own’. The use of such elements will always suggest mindless imitation.” Peszat makes a rather different claim: “There are no universal ethical canons in composition, and in art in general. If art is to be an objective concept, it must refrain from passing judgments, as by doing so it would condemn itself to subjectivism. An artist (or artistic group/community) may formulate ethical and aesthetic canons (theories of art) for themselves, but these will never become objective or universal.”
Thirdly, all these young composers are characterised by a high level of self-awareness. Kruk and Roemer graduated in music theory, while Peszat and Strzelec formulated their creative aims during conferences (such as the Elementi in Cracow) and in their graduation works. All four composers emphasise the importance of reflection and self-reflection in the creative process. Kruk explains: “I assume that if a composer has learnt to name musical phenomena, and is familiar with the terminology of the musical process, etc. it allows him or her to use the musical material in a conscious manner, and so to recognise himor herself more easily in the music. The ability to name the phenomena makes one aware of certain regularities, and opens the way for conscious exploration.” Even though their artistic stance is different, their joint activities and the above-listed similarities make it possible to see this group of composition students from Cracow’s Academy of Music as a undoubtedly ambitious community focused around certain values, working together. Only the future will tell what directions their music takes and whether they achieve their artistic aims. For now, all of them believe that writing music makes sense. As Roemer summed it up: “The so-called contemporary music plays a marginal role in today’s world, but may turn out to play a much greater one in the future.”

Dominika Micał President of Music Theory Students’ Academic Club Music Academy in Cracow