Works by the 20th/21st century composers from Łódź for a guitar – harpsichord duo

Abstract

The combination of the guitar and harpsichord has inspired composers all over the world for years. Łódź is the place where the greatest number of such pieces in Poland has been written by Jerzy Bauer, Bronisław Kazimierz Przybylski, Sławomir Kaczorowski, Stanisław Mroński, Andrzej Cwojdziński, and others. The creative output of the composers listed above for instruments such as the harpsichord, which is mainly associated with early music, and the guitar, which had its rebirth after WWII, is worth discussing. Composers from Łódź have made a great contribution to the development of literature for such an unusual line-up. Almost all compositions have been written for the Stefańska – Oberbek duo who were active in Cracow in the second half of the 1980s. The present article is mainly based on the materials shared by the guitarist Jan Oberbek and the Elżbieta Chojnacka Center for Contemporary Harpsichord Music. The materials have been discussed in terms of their content, which may be of value for new performers of this music. In each of these works an instrument player faces different problems and unusual solutions for a given instrument, which gives an artist the freedom of interpretation but at the same time creates a challenge related to analysing the piece and searching for a solution for a problem. The sound idiom of the guitar and the harpsichord was the inspiration for the aforementioned composers to create the literature valuable both for artists and for audiences. Unfortunately, this repertoire is hardly ever performed.