Granice artystycznej wolności. Pawła Szymańskiego powroty do tradycji
The Limits of Artistic Freedom. Paweł Szymański’s Returns to Tradition

Summary/Abstract: The music of Paweł Szymański (b. 1967) goes beyond the scope of unambiguous classification – it is impossible to include it in the clear trend of style. Szymański, as a contemporary of the composers of the Stalowa Wola Generation and in a sense corresponding with their assumptions (e.g. in the characteristic “returns to tradition”), creates an individual musical world. Strongly rooted in tradition, he expresses at the same time the artistic freedom that can be perceived in several spheres – both on the level of syntax (breaking the rules, conventions) and of semantics of his works (playing with the recipient’s expectations). The individual relation to tradition is also visible in the composer’s approach towards the category of a genre, which – to include the most characteristic features – can be the artistic continuation of given models, unique stylisation, sometimes of the border of “explicit imitation” or mirroring the postmodern distance of the author towards the work and its recipient. In the light of such a diverse attitude towards the tradition of a genre, the question arises concerning the artistic freedom, about which Szymański says, following Søren Aabye Kierkegaard: “Freedom is beyond any choice”.

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