CHAIR OF HUMANITIES

• Com­po­si­tion, Con­duct­ing and The­ory of Music
  • Insti­tute of Com­po­si­tion and Sym­phonic Conducting:
  • Chair of Composition
  • Chair of Conducting
  • Insti­tute of Musi­cal Sciences:
  • Chair of The­ory of Music
  • Chair of Humanities

The his­tory of the Chair of Human­i­ties, one of the organ­i­sa­tional struc­tures of  the Depart­ment of Com­po­si­tion, Con­duct­ing and Music The­ory, is very short. In 2002 the Sen­ate decided to incor­po­rate the Unit of Human­i­ties and For­eign Lan­guages in Depart­ment 1, first as a Unit then as a Chair, and in 2004 the Chair was incor­po­rated in the newly founded Insti­tute of Music Studies.

The func­tions which this didac­tic and research unit serves in the sys­tem of edu­ca­tion of musi­cians — human­is­tic and lin­guis­tic — are not new. From the very begin­ning of artis­tic school­ing in Poland those who were respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing edu­ca­tional pro­grams for future com­posers and con­duc­tors were sen­si­tised to the prob­lem of how to ensure that grad­u­ates had a gen­eral knowl­edge base. Józef Elsner was already aware of the need of a com­pre­hen­sive edu­ca­tion wor­thy of the age, as we know from Fry­deryk Chopin’s cor­re­spon­dence: he stud­ied for six hours a week with Brodzin­ski, Ben­tkowski and oth­ers — and there­fore suc­cess­fully com­pleted the lit­er­a­ture and his­tory courses at the uni­ver­sity level.

Ele­ments of the gen­eral human­i­ties were present in the cur­ricu­lum of the War­saw Insti­tute of Music. One of the sub­jects was aes­thet­ics and stu­dents took this course along with his­tory of music after pass­ing their exam­i­na­tion in the Pol­ish lan­guage. We know very lit­tle about how aes­thet­ics were actu­ally taught. „I shall be teach­ing gen­eral aes­thet­ics accord­ing to Liebelt, the aes­thet­ics of music and critical-aesthetic analy­sis”, wrote Adam Krasiński. After an inter­val of sev­eral years a new class was opened at the Insti­tute in 1872 headed by Bolesław Wilczyński — „The his­tory and aes­thet­ics of music”. The cur­ricu­lum, approved by the board, cov­ered such sub­jects as: gen­eral aes­thet­ics and its basic cat­e­gories (beauty, value), an out­line of the his­tory of other areas of cul­ture (lit­er­a­ture, the fine arts). Since the prob­lems to be taught were com­plex, stu­dents took this course in their sec­ond last and final year. Lack of text­books forced stu­dents to take „very exact notes” of the lec­tures. Prior to 1930 the only human­is­tic sub­ject in the cur­ricu­lum of the State Con­ser­va­tory in War­saw was a com­bi­na­tion of aes­thet­ics and his­tory of music, taught by Bolesław Wilczyński who was suc­ceeded in 1919 by Hen­ryk Opieński.

Karol Szy­manowski, the rec­tor, sug­gested chang­ing the sys­tem of edu­ca­tion for musi­cians. He believed that it was nec­es­sary to broaden the spec­trum of human­is­tic edu­ca­tion con­sid­er­ably if the school was to edu­cate open-minded and intel­lec­tu­ally savvy musi­cians. Not only did Szy­manowski sug­gest the need to enrich the edu­ca­tion offered with the basic con­cepts of phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics so as to show music’s due and proper and „place in the his­tory of the spir­i­tual devel­op­ment of human­ity”, he also made sure that his ideas would be imple­mented by intro­duc­ing a new sub­ject, phi­los­o­phy (taught by Fr. Hieronim Feicht).

After World War II, when music edu­ca­tion in Poland was incor­po­rated in the aca­d­e­mic sys­tem, it was nec­es­sary to broaden the range of the human­i­ties. The objec­tives of this edu­ca­tion were defined as follows:

1. con­tin­u­a­tion and expan­sion of gen­eral education;
2. broad­en­ing of intel­lec­tual hori­zons in order to enable con­scious for­ma­tion of world view and approach to social, polit­i­cal and cul­tural reality;
3. devel­op­ment of the dis­po­si­tions which are nec­es­sary in inter­per­sonal communication.

The com­pli­cated polit­i­cal his­tory of com­mu­nist Poland was reflected in changes of the syl­labus and its con­tents. Stu­dents in the fifties had to lis­ten to lec­tures on Marxism-Leninism and then, in the next decades, on polit­i­cal econ­omy and cul­tural pol­i­tics. The com­pul­sory block of so-called „social-political” sub­jects was fixed by appro­pri­ate instruc­tions from the min­istry of cul­ture. This block included the fol­low­ing sub­jects: intro­duc­tion to the social sci­ences, phi­los­o­phy, the foun­da­tions of polit­i­cal sci­ences, his­tory and the­ory of cul­ture. The edu­ca­tional offer was occa­sion­ally broad­ened to include soci­ol­ogy of cul­ture, soci­ol­ogy of art or cul­tural pol­i­tics and cul­tural eco­nom­ics. The organ­i­sa­tion frame­work edu­ca­tion was also defined. The Inter-college Insti­tute of Socio-political Sci­ences was founded at the State Higher School of Drama in War­saw in 1975. This insti­tute super­vised the Socio-political Sci­ences Units at every higher edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment (until 1981). Dur­ing mar­tial law a new unit was cre­ated at the Acad­emy of Fine Arts in War­saw — the Insti­tute of Socio-political Sci­ences.
The Inter­de­part­men­tal Social Sci­ences Unit, soon to be renamed the Human­i­ties Unit, func­tioned at the Fry­deryk Chopin Acad­emy of Music until the early ‘nineties.
For many years lec­tors who taught for­eign lan­guages at the AMFC were affil­i­ated with Depart­ment 1. In the ‘nineties an inde­pen­dent, inter­de­part­men­tal organ­i­sa­tional unit, the For­eign Lan­guage Unit, was cre­ated. It did not last very long and was soon incor­po­rated in the Unit of Human­i­ties and For­eign Lan­guages.
The human­is­tic edu­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum was greatly expanded after 1991: human­is­tic sub­jects were now in the group of fac­ul­ta­tive sub­jects. Stu­dents had to get credit for 180 hours of human­is­tic sub­jects of their own choice and 240 hours of one for­eign lan­guage (before they had to learn two for­eign lan­guages). This rule still obliges.
In order to fill all the vacan­cies for the human­is­tic sub­jects it was nec­es­sary to employ a group of spe­cial­ists: philoso­phers (Paweł Beylin, Hen­ryk Hinz, Janusz Skład­owski), his­to­ri­ans (Bożena Krzy­wobłocka, Bog­dan Jagiełło, Jerzy Adamski, Bożena Fabi­ani), econ­o­mists (Hanna Kawalla, Maria Siko­rska) and sev­eral AMFC grad­u­ates (Tadeusz Mak­lakiewicz, Mieczysława Dem­ska, Blanka Łukom­ska, Jagna Dankowska, Bogusław Stro­bel). The lec­tor staff has remained fairly sta­ble. Antoni Platkow, French lan­guage lec­tor, worked here for almost half a cen­tury. Through­out the 35 years of its inde­pen­dent exis­tence at the AMFC the Human­i­ties Unit has been man­aged by: Bożena Krzy­wobłocka (1970–75), Lidia Kalestyńska (1975–78), Mieczysława Dem­ska (1978–84), Bog­dan Jagiełło (1984–91), Jagna Dankowska (1991–2005), Mieczysława Dem­ska (2005 -). Dr Ryszard Pankiewicz was peri­od­i­cally the head of For­eign Lan­guage Studies.

Music edu­ca­tion is a spe­cific form of edu­ca­tion and some­times requires spe­cial didac­tic mate­ri­als. Such mate­ri­als have been devel­oped from time to time. At the turn of the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties sev­eral vol­umes of teach­ing mate­ri­als were pub­lished includ­ing his­tory of cul­ture (M. Demska-Trębacz, B. Fabi­ani), aes­thet­ics (J. Dankowska) and soci­ol­ogy of art (M. Demska-Trębacz). Sev­eral attempts have also been made to pre­pare spe­cial for­eign lan­guage course books. Two course books were even­tu­ally pub­lished: for Eng­lish and German.

Research

The fac­ulty of the Chair of Human­i­ties not only teaches but also con­ducts research, indi­vid­u­ally and in sev­eral work groups: phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics of music, anthro­pol­ogy of music and dance, the­ory and his­tory of music cul­ture, his­tory of art. Research find­ings are pub­lished in cyclic edi­tions of the FCUM sci­en­tific press called On Music and Human­is­tic Ideas (11 issues have been pub­lished so far, M. Demska-Trębacz (Ed.). Sev­eral mono­graphs (phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence of cul­ture) and con­fer­ence pro­ceed­ings have also been pub­lished. The most recent pub­li­ca­tion is: Teresa Grzy­bkowska (Ed.), The musi­cal motif in Jacek Malczewski’s paint­ing, War­saw 2005.

Didac­tic objectives

The Chair’s basic func­tion is the teach­ing of human­is­tic sub­jects and for­eign lan­guages (lec­tures and lan­guage courses).
Most spe­cial­i­ties allow stu­dents to choose their own human­is­tic sub­jects which end with exam­i­na­tions. The fol­low­ing fac­ul­ta­tive sub­jects are taught: Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy, Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy, Phi­los­o­phy of the 20^th Cen­tury, Aes­thet­ics, His­tory of Ancient and Medieval Art, His­tory of Mod­ern Art, Art of the 20^th Cen­tury, His­tory of Cul­ture.
Some spe­cial­i­ties have a set, oblig­a­tory human­is­tic course, how­ever. For exam­ple, stu­dents of Church Music must com­plete: Social Teach­ings of the Church and The­ol­ogy of Signa Tem­pori; stu­dents of Sound Engi­neer­ing must com­plete: Aes­thet­ics. Optional sub­jects have been pre­served for the fol­low­ing Majors of BA Stud­ies: Instru­men­tal Stud­ies (120 hours), Vocal Stud­ies (180 hours) and Music Edu­ca­tion (60 hours). Stu­dents of Con­duct­ing and Com­po­si­tion can choose between Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy and Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1^st Year, 60 hours), and His­tory of Ancient and Medieval Art (2^nd Year, 60 hours). Sub­jects com­pul­sory for stu­dents major­ing in The­ory of Music are: His­tory of Cul­ture (1^st Year, 60 hours) and Cho­sen Issues of Pilos­o­phy (2^nd Year, 60 hours).
Stu­dents choose one for­eign lan­guage course from the fol­low­ing: Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Russ­ian, which end with an exam at the B2 Level accord­ing to the Com­mon Euro­pean Frame­work of Ref­er­ence for Lan­guages pre­pared by the Coun­cil of Europe.
At BA Stud­ies the for­eign lan­guage course is com­pleted in a four-semester sys­tem (120 hours) for the Majors: Instru­men­tal Stud­ies (Depart­ment 2, Depart­ment 3) and Music Edu­ca­tion (Depart­ment 5), and it is com­pleted in a six-semester sys­tem (180 hours) for the Majors: Vocal Stud­ies, Sound Engi­neer­ing, Con­duct­ing, Com­po­si­tion and The­ory of Music (Depart­ment 1, 4, and 6). Stu­dents of Vocal Stud­ies and Con­duct­ing must also study Ital­ian (three years, 180 hours).

The Chair of Human­i­ties in War­saw cur­rently has a fac­ulty of 11 includ­ing three tit­u­lar pro­fes­sors, three asso­ciate pro­fes­sors with post-doctoral degrees, two assis­tant pro­fes­sors and four mas­ters of art. There are also two per­sons coop­er­at­ing with the Chair (one PhD and one MA). Aca­d­e­mic teach­ers who are lec­tur­ers at the FCUM Depart­ment of Instru­men­tal and Edu­ca­tional Stud­ies in Białys­tok are also mem­bers of the Chair.

Chair Mem­bers

Mieczysława Demska-Trębacz, PhD, full pro­fes­sor — Head of the Chair
Teresa Grzy­bkowska, PhD Hab., full pro­fes­sor
Jagna Dankowska, PhD Hab., uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor
Tadeusz Kobierzy­cki, PhD Hab., uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor
Stanisław Szadyko, PhD Hab., asso­ciate pro­fes­sor
Elż­bi­eta Lesiak-Bielawska, PhD, assis­tant pro­fes­sor
Agnieszka Muszyńska-Andrejczyk, PhD, assis­tant pro­fes­sor
Bog­dan Goniarski, MA, senior lec­turer
Woj­ciech Mędrze­jew­ski, MA, senior lec­turer
Alicja Ogrodz­ińska, MA, senior lec­turer
Elż­bi­eta Zeiske-Krawczyk, MA, senior lecturer

Co-workers

Ryszard Micha­lik, PhD
Artur Tanikowski, MA

Sec­re­tary: Ewa Bar­ciszewska, MA
Room 300, tel. +48 (22) 8277241 ext. 248
e-mail: knh@chopin.edu.pl