Oczekiwanie / Expectancy

was intended as the third and last movement in a cycle that started to take shape many years ago. Though after completing And Night Will Be No More for accordion and chamber orchestra (2010) I did not plan any musical cycle, I knew I wanted to write And the Sea Is No More for harpsichord and chamber orchestra (2013), and then I knew I had to complement what came out of it with another work.

All the three works are “concertos” of sorts (though not named as such) for solo instrument and chamber orchestra—this is their first common characteristic. The other is that some musical motifs and gestures recur throughout all three compositions. But what unites these works into a cycle happens more on the level of ideas. All three, in fact, refer to the Apocalypse of St John. In the first two cases, this link is emphasised by the titles borrowed from the Apocalypse.

In the case of my new work, I have long struggled to find an appropriate title. While I knew from the beginning that the title should be a “continuation,” I later realised the music led me elsewhere. I was inspired by words found in a book by Joseph Ratzinger, Death and Eternal Life. In one passage, referring to Heidegger, the future Pope writes the following statement: “The ‘readiness to expect’ is itself transforming. The world is different, depending on whether it awakens to this readiness or refuses it. Readiness, in its turn, is different, depending on whether it waits before a void or goes forth to meet the One whom it encounters in his signs such that, precisely amid the ruin of its own possibilities, it becomes certain of its closeness.”

Marcin Bortnowski