The Phenomenon of Sacrum in Polish Music During the Cold War Era as a Means of Expressing the Aspiration for Independence. The Inspiration of John Paul II
The Phenomenon of Sacrum in Polish Music During the Cold War Era as a Means of Expressing the Aspiration for Independence. The Inspiration of John Paul II

Summary/Abstract: The Polish October of 1956 was more than a political event.. It began the process ofdismantling the official and mandatory doctrine of socialist realism that had officiallydominated the countries of the Eastern Bloc. Cracks in the Iron Curtain appeared inmusic, film and literature. The first International Music Festival “Warsaw Autumn” of thesame year became a forum of new trends and tendencies in music. Later on, the flow andebb of liberty interspersed with relapses of the communist regime eventually paved theway for the veritable explosion of freedom in 1989.This process of change was greatly influenced by Poland’s traditional religiousness and thelong-term wisdom of its Catholic Church at the time, which created a significant space ofrelative freedom, an enclave, an intellectual underground for believers and atheists alike.The election of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as Pope in 1978 might have been a majorturning point for this process in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Poland.Seemingly parallel to that, ever since that first crack in the Curtain, Polish composers becameincreasingly interested in religious themes, and this resulted in a wave of new compositionsthat very clearly focused on the aspect of Christian spirituality. This phenomenon culminatedbetween 1978 and 1989, which saw the appearance of the greatest masterpieces of sacredmusic (Górecki, Penderecki, Kilar), “marked by its contact with sacrum.”

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