Jak wykreować „podwórkowy klimat”, czyli muzyka Zenona Kowalowskiego do serialu animowanego Reksio
How to conjure up a “backyard atmosphere”, or the music of Zenon Kowalowski to the Reksio animated series

Author(s): Katarzyna Babulewicz
Subject(s): Music
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Reksio animated series; cartoon music; Zenon Kowalowski
Summary/Abstract: The Reksio animated series was produced in 1967-1990 in the Animated Cartoon Studio in Bielsko-Biała. The musical setting of sixty four episodes was the work of Zenon Kowalowski (b. 1939), a composer and teacher, the author of music for over short subject and medium subject 150 films, an artist who had professional and family-related associations with Cieszyn. Even though the opening of Reksio constitutes one of the best-known fragments of Polish film music, heretofore the musical setting of the series has not been the object of treatment (apart from a BA thesis and an article of the author). The music of Reksia is distinguished by melodic richness, masterlful creation of humorous situations (which is not that obvious at all in the case of music intended for a children’s film, as it might have seen, assuming the music of the show’s contemporary foreign productions for comparison’s sake). Brilliant instrumentation is one of the highlights of the music. Each of the films received extremely well-thought out musical treatment, music tones in with the visual layer, although its variety is motivated not only by content-related themes, resulting from scripts, which were brilliant in their own right. Among interesting compositorial ideas one may mention e.g. the utilisation of the opening theme of the film as a Leitmotiv of a mountain trek or the illustration of a visit to a museum by music which is reminiscent of a Baroque concerto. The article presents a synthetic description of the musical setting of the entire series, and the conclusions are supplemented by fragments of statements of the composer himself, derived from an interview conducted by the author in 2012.

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