Czyż on Maciejewski « Fantastical melancholy

Czyż on Maciejewski

Maciejewski’s Mazurkas “better” than Szymanowski’s? Hm… I don’t know.

Before I met Maciejewski in person, Artur Rubinstein, who was close friends with him, told me a lot about him. (…) During dinner after a concert I asked Rubinstein about Szymanowski’s Mazurkas, and he started to tell me about his adventures with Maciejewski. He preferred to play Maciejewski’s mazurkas and they elicited warmer reactions from audiences, with all due respect to Szymanowski. Maciejewski aimed high and penetrated regions frequented by the great Karol. These mazurkas and the Kurpie Songs (the title couldn’t have been accidental) were a concealed challenge. And in these two duels it is Maciejewski who scored points. He was better here, no mean opponent!

In the first years of war Rubinstein happened upon Maciejewski in Sweden. Roman wrote the music to almost all of the plays directed by Bergman, had just divorced, and had gone through two operations of the stomach. First they removed half of it, then half of the remaining half. To save himself, Roman abandoned conventional medicine and took to yoga. Rubinstein said he looked like half the shadow of a fakir. Maybe two thirds. There was hardly anything left.

Rubinstein believed in Maciejewski’s talent and wanted to help the composer, so he commissioned a piano concerto (promising to include it in his repertoire as soon as it would be finished). Maciejewski accepted the commission under one condition: that he would be allowed to first finish the Requiem he was working on. He let Rubinstein take him to the States, where the pianist arranged ideal surroundings for his healing and work. Rubinstein often inquired both about the treatment and the composition. Roman was getting better, he was regaining strength. To questions about his creative work he invariably answered:

‘I am writing the Requiem.’

This lasted months. One day Rubinstein surprised Roman:

‘Dear friend,’ he said ‘I am happy to be your host, but I’ve found something even better for you. Metro Goldwyn Mayer is looking for a new general music director. They want you. They are waiting. It’s a great position – financially, you will become completely independent. 20 000 dollars a month, two secretaries, a swimming pool, and a sauna next to your office…’

Maciejewski took the job, but ran off after only a week: he gave up the great pay, the prestige, the two secretaries, the drinks, the lunches, the parties, the contracts, the discussions, the receptions etc. He rented a small cottage at the very shores of the Pacific. He ate only raw vegetables and each morning he ran on the wet sands of the coast. Soon, he was in good enough form to take up the job of organist at some chapel or other, where masses were held only on Sundays. He started a choir, and this “Roman-Choir” soon became known the world over, and was invited to perform in many cities of the West Coast. I suspect that he started it in order to try out ideas for choral parts of the Requiem. They do sound magnificent. (…)

I once took the old recording of the Requiem, with the Cracow Polish Radio ensembles under the composer, to Berlin and passed them on to the Berliner Philharmoniker intendant, doctor Stresemann, asking him to interest Karajan in the piece. Back then, I conducted there quite often, and I should have done this myself, but I was always on the move and could never catch Karajan. Stresemann, who disliked me sincerely (and vice versa), lost the tape and that’s how it all ended.

Today I listen to the new recording (Strugala, Wojnarowski + soloists and ensembles of the National Philharmonic in Warsaw) and find the work fascinating. It is written in a universal style. We can find in it every achievement of musical form, expression, style, idiom – from Bach and Handel to Ravel, Stravinsky and the modern avantgarde; but all of it melted in a pot of great creative personality, in the course of gigantic, grueling work.

It is late evening. In the darked out room I submit to great waves of music. Few pieces touch me in such a way. And it is really simple, almost naive music. As if written for children – the way the greatest composers always do it. It has wonderful moments, and lesser ones.The magnitude of the piece would allow for small changes, a cautious, wise abridgment, without harming the shape of the whole.

This is one of the few fascinations I have in contemporary music. I admire the composer: he knew perfectly well and understood what was happening around him, and certainly had to have heard pieces by Xenakis, and Cage, and the youngest explorer-innovators, and had read what is written about composing today and knew the rules of the game – and yet he remained adamant and brave. He did not yield in, did not succumb to fear, did not rush, listened to no one – and just went on with his thing…

(Hernyk Czyż Pamiętam jak dziś…, Warszawa 1991, p. 128-131)

[EDIT 25th March 2009: This post has been attracting so much spam recently that I've decided to disable comments. If you'd like to comment, simply go to the previous one and do it there.]

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This entry was posted on 12 July 2008 at 14:02 and is filed under Polish 20th century and contemporary music. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.