CHAIR OF COMPOSITION

Com­po­si­tion was first taught in War­saw at the School of Music and Drama (1816). In 1821 Józef Elsner who was also Rec­tor of the Insti­tute of Music and Decla­ma­tion at the School began to lec­ture on the the­ory of music com­po­si­tion. By 1826, 11 stu­dents were study­ing com­po­si­tion, includ­ing Fry­deryk Chopin. Other well-known com­posers, e.g., Ignacy Dobrzyński, August Freyer and Tomasz Nidecki, also fin­ished the School.

In 1863 Stanisław Moniuszko began to co-operate with the Music Insti­tute (headed by Apoli­nary Kąt­ski). He taught coun­ter­point, com­po­si­tion, har­mony and instru­men­ta­tion. Ten years later (1972) Władysław Żeleński began to teach har­mony and coun­ter­point and in 1888 Zyg­munt Noskowski, a for­mer grad­u­ate (1863), began to teach coun­ter­point, com­po­si­tion and orches­tra.

The Insti­tute fac­ulty super­vised the fac­tual aspects of the teach­ing — the prin­ci­pal objec­tive of con­tem­po­rary chairs. Also sim­i­lar to chairs today, the War­saw Insti­tute of Music (1888–1903) had a Ped­a­gog­i­cal Coun­cil (Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, Exec­u­tive Depart­ment) which offered all spe­cial­i­ties. Gustaw Rogul­ski (har­mony, coun­ter­point), a stu­dent of Hec­tor Berlioz, rep­re­sented com­po­si­tion.

In the nineteen-nineties the Insti­tute boasted such out­stand­ing grad­u­ates of com­po­si­tion as: Hen­ryk Mel­cer, Mikalo­jus Kon­stan­ti­nas Čiurlio­nis (a Lithuan­ian com­poser), Mieczysław Karłow­icz, Ludomir Róży­cki, Tadeusz Joteyko, Mieczysław Kazuro, Antoni Sza­łowski and Apoli­nary Sze­luto.

In 1919 the Con­ser­va­tory of Music was estab­lished on force of a decree signed by Józef Pił­sud­ski, Ignacy Jan Paderewski — as Prime Min­is­ter, Zenon Przes­my­cki “Miriam” — as Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Art. Roman Statkowski taught the com­po­si­tion class until his death in 1925. His grad­u­ates included: Jan Mak­lakiewicz, Piotr Perkowski, Kaz­imierz Wiłkomirski and Jerzy Lefeld. The com­po­si­tion class was then taught by Hen­ryk Mel­cer, Piotr Rytel, Witold Mal­iszewski, Karol Szy­manowski (who, for a short but sem­i­nal period, was direc­tor of the Con­ser­va­tory and later rec­tor of the Higher School of Music), Kaz­imierz Siko­rski, Władysław Raczkowski and Ludomir Róży­cki. The list of com­posers who also taught at the Con­ser­va­tory includes: Jerzy Lefeld, Stanisław Kazuro, Stanisław Niewiadom­ski, Juliusz Wertheim, Michał Surzyński, Jan Mak­lakiewicz, Grze­gorz Fitel­berg, Euge­niusz Morawski and Kaz­imierz Wiłkomirski. Some of them taught such method­olog­i­cal sub­jects as instru­men­ta­tion, coun­ter­point, score read­ing, and instru­ment stud­ies. All in all, this large group was the core of the com­po­si­tion depart­ment fac­ulty. It had a deci­sive voice as far as the shape of the spe­cial­i­sa­tion is con­cerned, i.e., played a role sim­i­lar to the role of the present Chair of Com­po­si­tion.

In 1932 the State Con­ser­va­tory of Music was reor­gan­ised and a depart­men­tal struc­ture was intro­duced. Depart­ment I com­prised two spe­cial­i­ties: com­po­si­tion and music the­ory, and the teach­ing staff con­sti­tuted the Fac­ulty Coun­cil. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Coun­cil were mem­bers of the Scientific-Artistic Coun­cil, the top author­ity of the whole school. The Fac­ulty Coun­cil of Depart­ment I was there­fore an obvi­ous pre­de­ces­sor of the Chair. Thirty-two com­posers grad­u­ated from the Depart­ment at the time includ­ing: Grażyna Bacewiczówna, Maria Dziewul­ska, Jan Ekier, Tomasz Kiesewet­ter, Ste­fan Kisielewski, Witold Lutosławski, Jan Adam Mak­lakiewicz, Artur Malawski, Andrzej Panufnik, Piotr Perkowski and Antoni Sza­łowski.

After World War II Stanisław Kazuro, com­poser and teacher, reor­gan­ised the War­saw music school which was named the State Higher School of Music in 1946. The School had four depart­ments and the first one was the Depart­ment of Com­po­si­tion, Con­duct­ing and Music The­ory. In 1957, fol­low­ing a reor­gan­i­sa­tion, the num­ber of depart­ments increased to six and a num­ber of chairs were also estab­lished, includ­ing the Chair of Com­po­si­tion headed by Tadeusz Szeligowski. In 1962 the School was given aca­d­e­mic sta­tus and was later renamed to the Fry­deryk Chopin Acad­emy of Music (in 1979), and to the Fry­deryk Chopin Uni­ver­sity of Music (in 2008).

The fol­low­ing pro­fes­sors have headed the Chair of Com­po­si­tion since its estab­lish­ment in 1957:

Tadeusz Szeligowski (1957–1962),
Piotr Perkowski (1962–1972),
Tadeusz Paciorkiewicz (1972–1977),
Tadeusz Baird (1977–1980),
Zbig­niew Rudz­iński(1980–1981),
Włodz­imierz Kotoński (1981–1999),
Mar­ian Borkowski (1999–2004),
Zbig­niew Bag­iński took over the Chair on 1st Octo­ber 2004.

The Chair of Com­po­si­tion is an organ­i­sa­tional unit of Depart­ment 1: Com­po­si­tion Con­duct­ing and Music The­ory and together with the Chair of Con­duct­ing it forms the Insti­tute of Com­po­si­tion and Sym­phony Con­duct­ing. It groups emi­nent Pol­ish com­posers whose cre­ative work has won them many inter­na­tional suc­cesses. The Chair of Com­po­si­tion fac­ulty divide their time between artis­tic work, research and teach­ing future com­posers. The pur­pose of instruc­tion is to pro­vide stu­dents with a com­pre­hen­sive body of knowl­edge and skills in the field of com­po­si­tion, with spe­cial empha­sis on con­tem­po­rary com­pos­ing tech­niques. The Chair of Com­po­si­tion is a place where its mem­bers advance their qual­i­fi­ca­tions, per­fect their teach­ing meth­ods, exchange artis­tic and ped­a­gog­i­cal expe­ri­ence with other acad­e­mies and artis­tic com­mu­ni­ties and do research on widely under­stood meth­ods of com­po­si­tion, forms of musi­cal expres­sion (tra­di­tional and con­tem­po­rary), espe­cially Pol­ish.

The Chair of Com­po­si­tion is respon­si­ble for a group of sub­jects which are taught both at Depart­ment I and at other depart­ments such as: Com­po­si­tion, Har­mony, Exer­cises in Har­mony, Coun­ter­point, Instru­men­ta­tion, Instru­ment Stud­ies, Score Read­ing, Con­tem­po­rary Com­po­si­tion Tech­niques and Elec­tronic Music.

The fol­low­ing pro­fes­sors have taught com­po­si­tion classes since 1945: Tadeusz Szeligowski, Kaz­imierz Siko­rski, Jan Mak­lakiewicz, Piotr Rytel, Bolesław Woy­tow­icz, Piotr Perkowski, Tadeusz Baird, Andrzej Dobrowol­ski, Witold Rudz­iński, Tadeusz Paciorkiewicz, Włodz­imierz Kotoński, Zbig­niew Rudz­iński, Mar­ian Borkowski and — cur­rently — Krzysztof Bac­ulewski, Zbig­niew Bag­iński, Marcin Błażewicz, Zyg­munt Krauze, Stanisław Moryto.

In 1990, within the frame­work of the Chair of Com­po­si­tion, Włodz­imierz Kotoński estab­lished the Com­puter Music Stu­dio. In 1999 Mar­ian Borkowski led to the estab­lish­ment of the fol­low­ing spe­cial­ist lab­o­ra­to­ries: Con­tem­po­rary Com­po­si­tion Tech­niques (head: Zbig­niew Bag­iński), Instru­men­ta­tion and Instru­ment Stud­ies (Marcin Błażewicz), Pol­ish 20th and 21st Cen­tury Music (Alicja Gronau-Osińska) and Coun­ter­point (Paweł Łukaszewski).

Thanks to Mar­ian Borkowski’s ini­tia­tive the fol­low­ing events have been tak­ing place since 1999:
  • Chair of Com­po­si­tion Con­certs (twice a year), doc­u­mented and pub­lished in the form of records, two of which were nom­i­nated to the “Fry­deryk” award — the Award of the Record Indus­try (XXIth Cen­tury Pol­ish Choral Music, Acte Pre­al­able, AP0100, 2001; Musica Polonica Nova, War­saw Com­posers, Acte Pre­al­able, AP0106, AP0107, AP0108, 2004);
  • AMFC Com­poser Sym­posia (I — 1999, II — 2001, III — 2003, IV — 2005, V — 2007), pre­sent­ing com­posers’ ideas and work and then pub­lished in the AMFC Press;
  • Pol­ish National Com­posers’ Com­pe­ti­tions for Music Acad­emy Stu­dents (I — 2003, II — 2004);
  • Con­certs of Electro-acoustic Music (at least once a year).

    • The Chair also organ­ises open con­certs given by for­eign guests from many coun­tries (Japan, Korea, USA, Canada, Ger­many, Switzer­land, Chile, Roma­nia) and Poland, includ­ing the Chair of Com­po­si­tion Fac­ulty, and scientific-artistic ses­sions devoted to the out­put of out­stand­ing Pol­ish and for­eign com­posers (Kaz­imierz Siko­rski — 1995, Franz Schu­bert — 1997, Feliks Nowowiejski — 1998, Piotr Perkowski — 2001, Witold Rudz­iński — 2003). It pub­lishes ses­sion pro­ceed­ings, books on the analy­sis of con­tem­po­rary music, com­pos­ing tech­niques, the aes­thet­ics of music and the ren­der­ing of con­tem­po­rary music. In 2002 the Chair of Com­po­si­tion began to offer bien­nial Post­grad­u­ate Com­po­si­tion Stud­ies co-ordinated by Mar­ian Borkowski. About 30 com­posers whose lives and work has been pre­sented in the Almanac of Com­posers at the Fry­deryk Chopin Acad­emy of Music in War­saw (Ed. A. Gronau-Osińska) now work at the FCUM.

    Com­poser Con­certs organ­ised by the dif­fer­ent com­po­si­tion classes and the annual Electro-acoustic Music Con­cert pre­sent­ing the work of the Elec­tronic Music Stu­dio are impor­tant tests of stu­dent progress.

    Chair Mem­bers

    Chair col­lab­o­ra­tors

    Zyg­munt Krauze, full pro­fes­sor
    Dar­iusz Przy­byl­ski MA


    last modified: 25/01/2012
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