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Works
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Works in detail
- Segmenti
Segmenti
Segmenti per orchestra (1960–61)
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Orchestra of the Kraków Philharmonic, cond. Andrzej Markowski
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The work was premiered during the 6th "Warsaw Autumn", on 22 September 1962. Serocki followed in it his new artistic postulates concerning the sound and form of the musical work. He used an orchestra entirely devoid of bowed string instruments. Instead, he put particular emphasis on the sonorist capabilities of wind instruments (12 instruments divided into three groups placed at the back sides and at the front of the stage), string instruments (placed at the front of the stage, behind one of the the wind groups) and percussion (four groups placed at the front, at the sides and at the back of the stage, between two groups of wind instruments). This kind of disposition is of great importance given the spatial relations produced among the sounds, which is undoubtedly a continuation of experiments carried out in Episodes for strings and three percussion groups from 1959.
The work’s sound material is very rich: it includes both sounds with specific pitches as well as various noises of murmurs. This is supported by a varied instrumental articulation, e.g. playing the flute while simultaneously murmuring into it or striking the key, various glissandi on the string instruments as well as the use of various types of sticks and brushes in the percussion part.
Serocki used novel methods of notating duration in the score of Segmenti. The eponymous “segments” are marked by capital letters of the alphabet from A to T. Their duration is indicated by a horizontal, thick line at the bottom of the page where the number of seconds is given. Thus the performer is to decide himself or herself how fast to play the notes in the segment. Untraditional groupings of notes e.g. aperiodic and periodic sound sequences are used. There are also ones that are to be played gradually, accelerating or decelerating.
The instrumental parts in Segmenti are based on sections of the twelve-note scale, which make up various structures – including various clusters and “figurations” with increased rhythmic movement. Each segment of the piece has a unique sonic character and contains a different configuration of elements. Tomasz Kienik has also demonstrated that what plays an important role in Segmenti is the relation between the pitch and the timbre. Detailed analyses of the instrumental parts in particular show that, for instance, the French horn uses the note C as well as privileged pitches of A and B flat to the maximum. In addition, structurally related instruments have “common features with regard to quantitative pitch organisation”, while sources of colour are consistently assigned to relevant pitches.
In Serocki’s work, the succession of segments has a distinct dramatic quality, in which – according to Tadeusz A. Zieliński – the introductory section is followed by three more, climactic sections as well as the final sound on crisscrossing glissandi. This drama is easily discernible when we listen to the piece. Among the 17 segments indicated in the score, the A–B–C–D group serves as an introduction to the climax encompassing segments E–F–G–H–K–L–M–N, O–P–R and S–T.
Tadeusz A. Zieliński emphasises the value of Serocki’s work that involves building within the “miniature” framework of the piece a “rich, detailed, intricate structure”. This is, indeed, true, for Segmenti testifies to the composer’s brilliant sensitivity to all nuances of sound. This “intricacy” can best be seen in segments from F to O, where superimposed elements include clusters, individual sound impulses, melodic figurations as well as percussion sounds with specified and unspecified pitches.
The work also contains simpler, more uniform arrangements of sound structures. For instance, in segments B and C the coherence of sound results from the instrument line-up itself, for these sections were entrusted to the flute and the maracas, respectively. Segment D is extremely interesting, composed as it is of sounds produced by wind instruments with sophisticated articulation. The following element (E), on the other hand, contains figurations of wood percussion instruments superimposed on a delicate, noise-like background of the piano cluster produced by rubbing the strings with nails (fregando col unghie). Moreover, the composer usually selects percussion sounds from different groups placed on stage. He mixes the sounds of the wind instruments in a similar manner.
The score of Serocki’s Segmenti is very vividly translated into the real sound of the work – full of colour movement, thickening and thinning of tones – just as elaborate as its graphic notation.
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Tadeusz A. Zieliński, O twórczości Kazimierza Serockiego [On Kazimierz Serocki’s Oeuvre], Kraków 1985.
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Tomasz Kienik, “Związki między wysokością a barwą dźwięku w wybranych utworach Kazimierza Serockiego” [“Relations between pitches and timbres in selected works by Kazimierz Serocki”], Muzyka 2004 no. 3.
- Iwona Lindstedt, Sonorystyka w twórczości kompozytorów polskich XX wieku [Sonotistics in the Works of 20th Century Polish Composers], Warsaw 2011.
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