Powiało na mnie morze snów… Pieśni zadumy i nostalgii
A Sea of Dreams Did Breathe on Me... Songs of Reflection and Nostalgia

Summary/Abstract: Penderecki’s extraordinary song cycle features a remarkable range of styles (and poets). An analysis of the first three songs offers insight into Penderecki’s compositional strategies, with special attention to pitch structure. Children Amidst the Poppies features developing variation of a pitch class collection characterized as (0257 + 8), or a pentatonic collection with one dissonant half-step. The “shape-shifting” coloristic transformations of this cell and its subsets are fused with an emphasis on Bb and D as competing pitch centers that perhaps imply just two children, enigmatically embraced at the end. Under One Tree features the melodic algorithm of chromatic linear motion reversed by a leap (of various interval sizes), creating sinuous lines that text-paint the flowing tresses of a half-imagined, mad princess. The mystical setting is enhanced by impressionistic orchestration. A sudden shift at the end to a pastoral, added-note collection marks the poem’s shift to an image of the reflecting moon. The third song, poetically translated as Longing for the Fortunate Isles, is characterized by pointillistic, Klangfarben orchestration and a play with generally unordered chromatic trichords, hexachords, and chromatic aggregates. Recurring images among the poems, along with evocative, coloristic tone painting, ensure coherence across a variety of twentieth-century pitch languages. These varied styles are artfully recontextualized in a way akin to musical “topics” in Penderecki’s uniquely synthetic expressive language.

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