About the book: Andrzej Chłopecki (1950–2012) was a leading music critic, expert on modern music, and promoter of Polish music. In his insightful opinions and uncompromising analyses, he remains an unattainable model of courage, based on deep knowledge and genial intuition.
Since the end of the 1970s he contributed to the Polish Radio not only through his charismatic voice. He modelled the Radio on the example of European public broadcast stations: a public radio as an institution of culture. With similar élan, he animated musical life as director of festivals such as the Velvet Curtain and Musica Polonica Nova, and as member of the programme committee of Warsaw Autumn. He inspired composers—he “composed their composing,” effectively pressing musical institutions to commission and perform their works, thus creating the music history of the last decades.
He was a masterly writer, author of hundreds of articles notably for Tygodnik Powszechny, Ruch Muzyczny, Odra, MusikTexte. Yet it was in his columns published in two cycles, Ear Diary (for Res Publica Nova) and Sharp Listening (for Gazeta Wyborcza) that his writing talent fully bloomed. In those brilliant short articles, comparable to the output of other leading Polish critics such as Zygmunt Mycielski, Stefan Kisielewski, or Jan Weber, his particular judgments always lead to a broader reflection; his humour is peppered with melancholy; and his outstanding personality is reflected in the language. A mirror of musical life? Yes, but framed with Andrzej’s personality.