Możliwości partytury – możliwości poezji. Schäffer i Wirpsza
The Possibilities of Musical Score, The Possibilities of Poetry. Bogusław Schäffer and Witold Wirpsza

Summary/Abstract: This paper is an attempt to compare experimental artistic activities taken independently by the composer Bogusław Schäffer, and the poet Witold Wirpsza in the 1960s. In the works of the former the role and ways of using a word in his graphic scores are pointed out. It is argued that the score of S’alto for Alto Saxophone and Chamber Orchestra of Soloists (1963) might be recognized as the first example of concrete poetry in Poland. As far as Wirpsza’s work is concerned, two texts are discussed: a poem Południe (Noon), found in the archive in Książnica Pomorska in Szczecin, and referring to the new forms of musical notation; and an essay entitled Gra znaczeń (The Game of Meanings), important for Polish literary neo-avantgarde, and its fragments dedicated to musical notation. Following the intuitions of Gillo Dorfles, both artists’ activities are discussed as attempts to respond to postwar “semiotic crisis” previously explored in various ways by the artists of the European neo-Avantgarde.

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