Janek Wiśniewski, grudzień, Polska (Janek Wiśniewski, December, Poland)
- Elżbieta Sikora

INA/GRM commission. 

In the mercury light of Gdańsk’s factories, workers carry the body of dead Janek Wiśniewski on a door, high above their heads. Victim of absurd cruelty, Orpheus returns to hell: a great musical metaphor erupts with a series of sonoristic lightnings... 

S.O.S.: an abstract telegraph, contaminated insects, songs of the dead from Tibet, primeval percussions, speleology of the thought, irony, sarcasm, and laughter. Eros– Thanatos. A Gregorian ritual...

Liquid music, metaphysical organ, sign–as–shock, sign–as–wall, sex–sign, eye–sign, sting–sign, a wind from space, where bumblebees explode in the rhythms of bullets that killed Janek Wiśniewski. The struggle between the Angel and Jacob, Freedom and Death... 

(a page from the diary of painter Ladislas Kijno) 

This work is the third part of the triptych dedicated to Orpheus. The work was recorded at the GRM Studio in Paris in winter 1981 and spring 1982.

Just before entering the studio, I received the news of the imposition of martial law in Poland. The four guitar chords that open the famous song Janek Wiśniewski padł, written during the revolt of Gdańsk workers in 1970, constitute the starting sound material for the entire musical structure. 

Elżbieta Sikora