Witold
Szalonek

Witold Szalonek was born in Czechowice-Dziedzice in 1927. He studied piano with Wanda Chmielowska and composition with Bolesław Woytowicz at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice (1949–56). In 1962 Szalonek moved to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger. From 1967, he taught composition at his alma mater in Katowice; from 1970 to 1974, he was head of the Department of Composition and Music Theory. In 1970–71 Szalonek lived and worked in Berlin as a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

Szalonek was an original representative of the Polish avant-garde movement associated with sonorism. He composed many of his pieces using “selective dodecaphony,” and considered sound and tone colors as form-shaping principles. Timbre and sound colors were implemented in his music as important carriers of content and emotional expression. Szalonek researched new sonic capabilities of woodwind instruments and developed unconventional articulation techniques. He systematized these “combined sounds” in the form of a catalog and lexicon intended for both composers and performers. In the 1960s and 1970s, his music was frequently performed at the Warsaw Autumn festival. This was where Otto Tomek, music director of Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, heard Szalonek’s composition Quattro monologhi per oboe solo in 1968. Tomek was an active ambassador of Polish music in Germany and recommended Szalonek to Peter Nestler, the director of the Artists-in-Berlin Program. In his letter to Nestler, Tomek observed that this very interesting Polish composer remained in the shadow of his colleagues. Indeed, even though Szalonek emphasized sonoristic values and searched for new articulation methods in his work, he did not belong to the group associated with the Polish school of composition at that time. Szalonek was also active as a writer and thinker; he was interested in aesthetic theory, and specifically in the aesthetic impact and social significance of the most recent developments in Western avant-garde music. In his lectures and texts, he explored radical experiments and the language of new music from a global perspective—comparing Western avant-garde music to traditional music from Bali or Japan. During his stay in West Berlin, Szalonek eagerly embraced the multicultural atmosphere, which strengthened his opposition to Eurocentrism in music. Appointed as a professor of composition at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin (now Universität der Künste), he returned to West Berlin in 1973. During that time, he became friends with the Berlin-based, Korean émigré composer Isang Yun. They both taught composition at the Hochschule der Künste and presented their compositions at joint concerts. Szalonek died in Berlin in 2001. 

Text: Monika Żyła