Justyna Kowalska-Lasoń: A Portrait with a Caravan in the Background

JUSTYNA KOWALSKA-LASOŃ: A PROFILE

The composer Justyna Kowalska-Lasoń, a representative of the youngest generation in Polish music (b. 1985), has written new works for many years with great success and left her original mark in this field. Her impressively numerous and varied achievements in the areas of composition, music performance, teaching and music life organisation include major awards, student successes, presentations of her own works, and published analytic studies. She is active in the music world in many centres throughout Poland and Europe, as well as overseas. She has scored successes in prestigious competitions for composers, and many of her works have been performed at major festivals and in concert by well-known ensembles (cf. Appendix).

Kowalska-Lasoń is also a teacher at her alma mater (since 2011), from which she graduated with distinction (2010) after studies with (her would-be husband) Aleksander Lasoń. In 2015 she obtained a doctoral degree in composition from the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw (DMus dissertation supervised by Prof. Marcin Błażewicz). Since 2009 five of her works have been published by PWM Edition. She has repeatedly held scholarships from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as well as the Marshal’s Office of the Silesian Province.

July 2012 saw the release (by the Silesian Music Society) of a CD album dedicated to her music, Śpiewam nowoczesnego człowieka [The Modern Man I Sing]. She is a prize winner of the 1^st ‘New Faces in Music’ Programme, implemented under the auspices of the Institute of Music and Dance, as well as an author of computer graphics exhibited in Cieszyn and Rzeszów. Her compositions have been recorded by and broadcast on Polish Radio (2010), as well as the Hungarian MR3 Bartók Rádió (2019). Her students have won awards in composer competitions. Her works (Te frazy...Te pieśni... Te arie...[These Phrases... These Songs... These Arias...] for string orchestra and OBRAZ 1929 [IMAGE 1929] (Zdzisław Beksiński in memoriam) have been included in the Polish Library of the Polish Music Center at the University of Southern California. Kowalska-Lasoń is also a concert pianist and flutist. She features, along with 11 other Polish composers, in PWM Edition’s New Generation calendar.

Her extremely interesting output strikes the audience with the originality of artistic message and the consistent choice of technical means. It is a cohesive artistic output, captivating the ear with the magic of sounds, provoking reflection, frequently presenting surprising references to more or less distant past. It juxtaposes plainchant models with neo-sonoristic elements, static textures with sudden turns of action, a graphic kind of music with soundscapes stretching up to distant horizons, and arioso-type lyricism representing the union of nature and the sacrum. All this makes up a form of painting in sounds, sometimes with Oriental overtones. This sensualist portrait reveals a subtle and metaphoric shadow in the background. It forms an artistic whole, a constant continuation and complementation, both concatenation and paraphrase. The composer herself describes this quality in her music as nomadic; I could classify it as postmodernist, neo-sonoristic sensualism.

The above-mentioned intensive shadow, which carries a distinctive message, is associated in the music of Justyna Kowalska-Lasoń with models which the composer herself has pointed out, taken over from paintings by Zbigniew Beksiński, from selected types of plainchant and Oriental chant; from the primacy of intuition in the creative process over strict canons and specific places. These models combine conceptual construction with poetic atmosphere, with a preference for variations and improvisations, with song-like melodic lines rooted strongly in plainchant models, with a clear-cut but freely treated musical form, and with emphasis on sound colour vibrating in space.

Her profoundly humanist project focuses on consciously selected, recurrent elements, including a network of self-quotations. The project metamorphoses Eastern meditation, fusing it with an ‘intrusive’ European rationality. It emanates a harmony of heart and mind, horizontal and vertical lines, in a way which the audience can distinctly follow. The flow of motifs, centred on some selected points, belongs to the realms of both change and stasis, and reflects Eastern spirituality, rooted in nature, which is understood here as the omnipresent sphere determining the world’s roles, a sphere to be approached with humility.

Yet another theme that needs to be tackled here is Kowalska-Lasoń’s opposition to the so-called écriture feminine. The composer can see no specifically feminine elements, methods or types of associations in the world of music composition.

Her music needs to be discussed through the prism of the moderate Romantic paradigm of Isaiah Berlin1, and in the context of Tomasz Plata’s thesis concerning Romanticism as a trend that continues to have relevance to Polish culture2.

KOWALSKA-LASOŃ’S OUTPUT OF COMPOSITIONS

Kowalska-Lasoń’s output of compositions fuses local elements with those of distant cultures. The composer herself confirms the need for, and the relevance of, those ideological factors, creatively transformed in her works. Moods are also an important ingredient of her music. It is therefore only natural that we should examine the degree of coherence in these neo-sonoristic constructions, associated with veiled and vague moods, featuring musical sequences, meditation and the peace-and-quiet of a meadow. In order to assess that coherence, we should adopt Agata Bielik-Robson’s view of the present-day ‘altered’ Romanticism as being to some extent a rational trend3. This new Romanticism, adjusted to contemporary life, is no longer as wild as its 19^th-century predecessor. It is an intuitive type of Romanticism4 exploring both the essence of things and other spheres of culture, rooted in condensed and conceptually justified emotions. Kowalska-Lasoń’s music is, in a nutshell, a contemporary version of Sense and Sensibility; albeit without the British accents that characterise the writings of the famous philosopher.

Bielik-Robson also speaks of the outstanding poets who “establish a new metaphysical canon, which, in opposition to modernity’s tendency to profanation, saves the indispensable intuition of the sacrum for our own era.”5 In my view, Kowalska-Lasoń’s music is part of this trend toward preserving traditions but modifying them in the ‘spirit’ of our own times. It is a Romanticism devoid of canonical limitations, employed as a vehicle of modernisation6, as an antithesis, Blake’s art of struggle7, but also in Emmanuel Reibel’s sense as un etat d’esprit8. This is the view of this trend that emerges from their and many other interpretations. Supported by contemporary technical solutions, it is at the same time rooted, as in the past, in the ‘stirrings of the soul’, in an experience of the sacred dimensions of space and thought. It is from this perspective that I look at the musical and poetic message of Kowalska-Lasoń.

A nomad is likewise determined (albeit in an adventurous fashion) by freedom and boundlessness. If we understand nomadism as the habit of crossing boundaries, overcoming limitations and breaking habits, we may evoke the transitory nomadic entity that is made up of constant turns and momentary events, and is directed toward music’s not-fully-determined spirit or mode of being9. This interrelation is further hinted at by the highly suggestive, visionary titles of the composer’s works10.

If we now move on to the topic of composition technique, the composer makes use of controlled aleatoricism in the spheres of rhythm and melody11, of modified plainchant formulas, of a set of self-quotations (which Kowalska-Lasoń calls “a pseudo-chain of creation”), of sonoristic tools based on active articulation techniques, of free musical forms with no references to the canon, and finally – of electronics.

Can this kind of nomadism, with Romantic and reflective elements as well as responses to the sacrum, also be found in the musical works of Justyna Kowalska-Lasoń? Below I have discussed a selection of her works that map out her musical peregrinations.

KOWALSKA-LASOŃ’S COMPOSITION TECHNIQUE, ON THE EXAMPLE OF SELECTED WORKS

Our journey along the composer’s ‘silk road’ will start with the awarded Sanctus for mixed unaccompanied choir (2005)12, which is a moving cycle of four musical pictures leading to a quiet, symbolically ascending coda. I see the whole as a reflection of a chance encounter of strangers in a temple, united at the end of the ritual. Each of the four episodes dies down in the end in order to return. The choral techniques13 applied here are not a display of contrapuntal virtuosity or vertical chorale-type settings, but represent a much more original concept. These improvised, ‘dispersed’ dialogues are a metaphorical representation of the faithful who come to the church (segment I), pray incongruously at first (segment II), later polychorally on Venetian models (segment III), in order finally to attain the highest degree of prayerful, communal coordination, reach a climax and die away again. The elevation of the coda demonstrates concord despite a suggestion of diversity. The cycle of climaxes reflects a Romantic concept of form, in which narration proceeds from one strategic point to another. The choir has an anthropocentric function, it reflects the human quest for harmony and for God, rather than interpreting the well-known canonical prayer. If we accept Michel Fleury’s iconoclastic view of impressionism as a continuation of the Romanticism14, then such an interpretation of Kowalska-Lasoń’s composition seems most appropriate in my view.

The composer herself emphasises the importance of the sacred atmosphere and of the metaphysical sacrum which exists in every place and time, not limited by dogma and institution, but experienced as the sacrum of the forest, the synagogue or the Orthodox church. My own interpretation will therefore place the sacrum, as Bohdan Pociej15 and Father Kazimierz Szymonik did, at the very core of music, in the essence of its construction16. Father Jacek Bramorski openly declares: “a musician is a contemplative person,”17 and views sacred art as the “via pulchritudinis”. Art is the road of quest for the good, not merely a sphere of the senses; it is a “mystical gate,” the field of “what is audible but invisible,” “a wave from the otherworld.”18 As the classical author in this field, Gerard de Leeuw once claimed, the sacrum is what makes itself manifest and revealed, what has the power of impact on humans, and is present in places, persons, and objects19.

The awarded and frequently performed Śpiewam nowoczesnego człowieka [The Modern Man I Sing]20, dedicated to the composer’s husband, can be interpreted as insistent but ineffective striving for a catharsis, as recurrent attempts to find refuge from the brutal sounds of the present-day world, from the street noise. The work bears a motto from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, which suggests a possible interpretation. In my view, the tripartite structure of the piece represents a kind of therapeutic séance of the ‘I-sing-to-calm-you-down’ type.

The poem, likewise structured as a Romantic network of culminations, documents the stirrings of the soul, moods, moments of shock and the subsequent gradual calming down. The composition contains no melodic, textural or even coloristic motifs in the traditional sense of the word. The single violin note at the end of segment I says more of the ‘modern man’ than any detailed analyses of the sound structures. Arabesques, broken melodic fragments, allusions to plainchant contrasted with ‘outcries’ of the brass or bells; fast-shifting patches of colour juxtaposed with quiet noises; fanfare motifs and entries of the low brass; static patches contrasted with dramatic action – this is the catalogue of musical components that make up this colourful tapestry, whose atmosphere brings to mind associations with Zdzisław Beksiński’s paintings or perhaps with the element of terror present in the backgrounds of Gustav Klimt’s works.

Segment II dies away, French style, as in the earlier Sanctus, while segment III, ostensibly ‘well-groomed’, ends with a telling ‘cracking’ sound. Here we could talk of impressionism again, but an expressionistic and more dramatic one. If we were to look for any (unmotivated) parallels for this intuitive, introverted neo-sonorism, they could be found in the oeuvres of two aesthetically distant but still (dialectically) comparable composers: Charles Koechlin and Florent Schmitt. These two postimpressionists brought the line of development leading from Debussy to a (metamorphosed) culmination, before the emergence of Messiaen.

Reference to these two French artists, who in various ways were related to distant cultures, brings us into the sphere of Oriental influences, for which Kowalska-Lasoń seems to have a special preference. Those Oriental inspirations are reflected in the freedom of non-preconceived forms; in the momentary nature of events; the intuitive flow of impressions; the dominance of variant forms and improvisation; in her universalist understanding of the sacrum; the emphasis on percussion; the use of colour as an element of construction; the use of traditional formulas as relics transformed in a different ‘climatic’ context; the lack of canonically conceived melodies contrasted with vertical structures and musical energy in the European sense of this notion. Kowalska-Lasoń’s Oriental world is a reinterpreted one, devoid of stereotypical associations, selectively approached; it combines local, European with borrowed-Oriental ingredients.

All this is also partly true of Te frazy... Te pieśni... Te arie... [These Phrases... These Songs... These Arias...] for string orchestra (2009)21, which is likewise equipped with a motto from a Walt Whitman poem, suggesting some possible interpretations of the music. In this piece, vitality meets moments of calming-down, as the composer herself wrote in the commentary22. The music progresses logically (from Diatonic and Non-diatonic to Prologue, Arias I and II, and Epilogue) with the arias serving as complementary elements of form. The composition is characterised by frequent and much highlighted glissandi; an Epilogue dying away in single bundles of sound; bands of relict song material; the dialectic opposition of strict time to aleatory elements; variable tempi and varied character of the different sections; combination of controlled and unpredictable factors. The songs present themselves as colourful, sparkling and iridescent constellations of pictures, or rather – of pastels and moods.

The alternating sections of movement (the first two) and of peace (the static aria segments, conceived not traditionally, but as long fluctuating bands – Arias I and II as one whole); bruitist elements; repercussions of the initial structures in later sections (Prologue); operating with harmonic blocs; dynamic changes and mobility, emphasising upward movement in the opening sections, contrasted but not conflicted with the ‘receding’ Epilogue; finally, simultaneous presentations of brief events, with song-like elements in segments IV, V, but also already introduced in segment II – all these together make up what I see as a multicultural landscape or a film consisting of numerous frames that, however, do not add up to form a continuous narrative. References to both European energy and Oriental stasis suggest, further, a dialogue of cultures, religions, musical temperaments, and mentalities.

The links between music and the visual arts, so important for this composer, are very prominent here. Kowalska-Lasoń decodes music as a graphic art and interprets graphic arts in a musical context. This proves, once again, her attachment to the Romantic synthesis of arts, the correspondance des arts... Music as a culture transfer?23 Or as eternal, mutually complementary spheres, united since the Greek chorea?24 This music speaks, it seems, primarily with emotions and with colours that attract us from a distance to listen and yield to their spell; not to conceal our reactions, but to respond in painting, song and tale...

The frequently performed OBRAZ 1929 [IMAGE 1929] (Zdzisław Beksiński in memoriam) for symphony orchestra with piano (2008) is commented upon by the composer in the booklet attached to the already mentioned CD album. In this work we move away from the Orient25, but the technical elements are the same as those listed above26. It is made up of an Epilogue (dying away), Arie e chorale I and Aria II (which form the central sections of this symphonic poem), preceded by a dynamic and stormy introduction and separated by a link of the same character. The composer’s fascination with the paintings of Zdzisław Beksiński finds its equivalent in this work, emphasised by the intense initial neo-sonoristic and bruitist elements and shocking moods, and balanced with a (significant) return to tradition, namely – to a misty-and-drowsy type of diatonic writing.

Kowalska-Lasoń’s arias are not homophonic tunes, but plainchant in longer values presented as harmonic (chord) melodies. The symbolically treated bells recur several times (possibly as a ‘Polish accent’, intentional or not) and constitute – along with the solemn hymnic Aria I and the simpler and more subdued Aria II – delicate indirect references to the atmosphere of the sacrum. The epilogue is a crescendo ending with a bell motif and noise (of people leaving the church?). This multi-dimensional work contains numerous suggested references to music history and to Polish and European cultural symbols (the sacrum; the dialectic of energy and song, of horizontal and vertical structures, lines and sound patches).

CONCLUSION

My incomplete portrait of the composer Justyna Kowalska-Lasoń, an unwilling traveller, communing with nature, meditating in the mountains and immersed in other cultures; an artist who takes quick decisions and questions the existing dogmas – can only be animated by the sounds of her music, which reflects both the chaos of our times and a longing for peace, the drastically fast transformations and the unchanging values of the sacrum, nature and music.