Professor Maria Wacholc, PhD

fot. Foto Biel

Music the­o­rist, teacher, author of text­books, song books and many pub­li­ca­tions on music. She stud­ied at the State Music School in Gdy­nia (1957–1961) with Wanda Stankiewic­zowa (piano) and Bolesław Pawel­czyk (the­ory) and then at the State Sec­ondary Music School in Gdańsk (1961–1965) with Józef Sekura (piano) and Wanda Dubanow­icz (music education).

In 1965–1973 she stud­ied at the State Col­lege of Music in War­saw with Pro­fes­sors Józef Bok, Maria Dziewul­ska, Kaz­imierz Gierżod, Zofia Kielanowska, Win­centy Laski, Witold Rudz­iński, Ste­fan Śledz­iński, Maciej Zalewski and oth­ers. She grad­u­ated with hon­ours from the Depart­ment of Music Edu­ca­tion in 1969 and the Depart­ment of The­ory, Com­po­si­tion and Con­duct­ing (Music The­ory sec­tion) in 1973.

She received her PhD in music the­ory in 1987 for her dis­ser­ta­tion Jan Adam Mak­lakiewicz (her super­vi­sor was Father Pro­fes­sor Jerzy Piku­lik; the dis­ser­ta­tion was pub­lished by the Fry­deryk Chopin Acad­emy of Music in War­saw in 2000). Maria Wacholc received her sec­ond degree qual­i­fi­ca­tions in music the­ory at the Cra­cow Music Acad­emy in 1997 on the basis of her mono­graph Ks. Antoni Hlond (Chlon­dowski). Vol­ume I — Życie, dzi­ałal­ność, twór­c­zość kom­pozy­torska [Life, work, com­po­si­tion]; Vol. II — Kat­a­log twór­c­zości kom­pozy­torskiej [Cat­a­logue of com­po­si­tions] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Salez­jańskie, 1996) and a lec­ture On the effects of con­tem­po­rary music on the evo­lu­tion of the the­ory of ear train­ing in post-war Poland.

Maria Wacholc has worked at var­i­ous lev­els of music edu­ca­tion for more than thirty years. She began her teach­ing career directly after her grad­u­a­tion from the Depart­ment of Music Edu­ca­tion when she was still study­ing at the Depart­ment of The­ory, Com­po­si­tion and Con­duct­ing. Dur­ing the early years of her teach­ing career she con­ducted school choirs and taught the­ory at pri­mary music schools. She began to work at the Fry­deryk Chopin State Sec­ondary Music School No. 2 at Bed­narska Street in War­saw in 1970 where she taught the prin­ci­ples of music, ear train­ing and har­mony. She worked at this school until June 1984. She returned to this post in Sep­tem­ber 1993 and con­tin­ues to work there today.

She began to work at the Fry­deryk Chopin Acad­emy of Music in War­saw at the Music Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment. She is now asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Fry­deryk Chopin Uni­ver­sity of Music where she teaches ear train­ing and harmony.

As a music the­o­rist Maria Wacholc is mainly involved with ear train­ing in music edu­ca­tion. In 2000–2001 she pub­lished a 6-part ear train­ing man­ual Ele­men­tary Solfa for pri­mary music school grades I-VI. This man­ual con­tains more than a thou­sand exer­cises, most of which are gleaned from the music out­put of var­i­ous peri­ods of his­tory. Her Ele­men­tary Solfa pro­poses a new the­ory of ear train­ing in pri­mary music schools, one which meets the demands which con­tem­po­rary music places on this sub­ject. The man­ual is now being pub­lished in Braille by Toc­cata. Ever since she intro­duced her Ele­men­tary Solfa to schools Maria Wacholc has been invited to sci­en­tific ses­sions, sem­i­nars and author soirés (War­saw AMFC 2000, 2001; Gdańsk 2000, Słupca 2001, the Blind Union in War­saw 2001, Prze­myśl 2001, Żyrardów 2002) where she presents her method­i­cal ratio­nale and her new the­ory of ear training.

Maria Wacholc has devel­oped ear train­ing syl­labuses (instru­men­tal depart­ment grades I-VI and vocal depart­ment grades I-IV) and the prin­ci­ples of music (grades I-II) for sec­ondary music schools. She has also writ­ten a three-volume hand­book Vocal note read­ing, pub­lished by Pol­skie Wydawnictwo Muzy­czne, Cra­cow. This hand­book has been approved for schools and is now being used in sec­ondary music schools, grades I-VI and some music acad­emy departments.

In her teach­ing at the Depart­ment 5, Fry­deryk Chopin Uni­ver­sity of Music, Maria Wacholc uses her own method of ear train­ing in which she draws upon her inter­est in choir music and her edu­ca­tion in choir con­duct­ing with Wanda Dubanow­icz in Gdańsk (1961–1965) and Pro­fes­sor Józef Bok in War­saw (1965–1969). In her ear train­ing classes for future con­duc­tors of choirs and music ensem­bles she uses orig­i­nal a capella and vocal-instrumental choir pieces from var­i­ous epochs as her basic exer­cise mate­r­ial, includ­ing many pieces by twentieth-century Pol­ish com­posers, e.g., K. Szy­manowski, J. A. Mak­lakiewicz, R. Twar­dowski, H. M. Górecki, K. Pen­derecki, M. Sawa, W. Kilar and S. Moryto. These com­po­si­tions, which she presents in the form of phono­graphic record­ings, help to develop the abil­ity to write down the work of music, develop musi­cal mem­ory and also to con­duct aural analy­sis of the var­i­ous ele­ments of the work. Pre­sented in the form of orig­i­nal scores, these works help stu­dents to mas­ter vocal note read­ing and many other skills. Thanks to the adop­tion of orig­i­nal choir and vocal-instrumental works, stu­dents can develop their aural dis­po­si­tions and also acquaint them­selves with orig­i­nal music out­put, but above all with the com­po­si­tional method­ol­ogy of dif­fer­ent composers.

Maria Wacholc has writ­ten many pub­li­ca­tions for gen­eral schools includ­ing Reper­tory and Infor­ma­tion, a music hand­book for senior high schools, grades I-III, as well as col­lec­tions of choir pieces: Let us sing! Songs for school choirs for equal voices, Songs for school choirs for 3 mixed voices. She has also writ­ten a Pol­ish song­book for the gen­eral pub­lic con­tain­ing over a hun­dred of the most pop­u­lar Pol­ish songs arranged for voice and piano, pre­sented in chrono­log­i­cal order and includ­ing his­tor­i­cal comments.

Maria Wacholc has writ­ten many arti­cles, papers, con­cert reviews and reviews of musi­cal pub­li­ca­tions. These works have been pub­lished in such jour­nals as “Ruch Muzy­czny”, “Życie Muzy­czne”, “Przegląd Powszechny”, “Litur­gia Sacra”, The ISME Bul­letin, “Wychowanie Muzy­czne w Szkole”, “Nasz Dzi­en­nik” and the Sci­en­tific Pro­ceed­ings of the Acad­e­mies of Music in Gdańsk and War­saw. In addi­tion to her pub­lished works Maria Wacholc has also writ­ten many publisher’s reviews com­mis­sioned by var­i­ous institutions.

Maria Wacholc