Symphonic Poem "Kościelec 1909"

The symphonic poem Kościelec 1909 is a tribute to the life of Polish composer Mieczyslaw Karłowicz. It was premiered on 5 November 1976 in Warsaw, at the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Philharmonic and the 100th anniversary of Mieczysław Karłowicz's birth. For Kilar, that was a time of passionate fascination with the folklore of the Tatra Mountains, already musically re-created in Kshesani, written two years earlier. The composer writes of his work that it has three symbolic themes or motifs: The "Kościelec theme" (as I tentatively called it) with its choral character emerges from the low registers of the contrabasses like a mountain peak from the dissipating mists. It slowly rises to the higher registers of the strings, thickens and becomes more powerful, to reach its apogee in the work's first luminous climax. Subsequent phases of the rise of the "Kościelec theme" are separated by the interventions of another theme (I have called it "the call of the abyss"), which, in parallel with the "Kościelec theme," covers an ever larger space of strings, rising to the next, higher woodwind groups. The ' Kościelec theme' was subsequently modified; it preceded the emergence of the third, most melodically complex theme, the 'theme of destiny'. It is a mountain melody... It prepares the return of the "call of the abyss" in the brass instruments. It is my intention that the whole of "Kościelec" be one great gradation. The sudden interruptions of dynamic tension, which appear several times in the score, are intended to prepare the subsequent, increasingly dramatic climaxes... Kilar's work combines motifs associated with the folklore of Podhale with the contemporary compositional technique he uses - a characteristic dense harmony with a predominance of dissonances and clusters. The poem Kościelec 1909 is one of Wojciech Kilar's most popular and most frequently performed and recorded works.