composers (B)

composer; b. 21st January 1937 in Łomża. He studied law at Maria Skłodowska-Curie University in Lublin (1954-57). In 1958, he began his composition study in the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw with Tadeusz Szeligowski, and after the latter’s death - with Bolesław Szabelski in the State Higher School of Music in Katowice, from which he graduated in 1964. In 1966-67 he continued his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and in 1972 - in Hochschule für Musik in Graz. In 1986, he received a scholarship of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

His works have been performed in many European countries, in the USA, Australia and South America.

Zbigniew Bargielski has won numerous competitions for composers. In 1965 he was awarded 1st prize in the Young Composers’ Competition of the Polish Composers’ Union for Parades for orchestra (1965). His String Quartet No.1 “Alpine” (1976) won him the 2nd prize in the Artur Malawski competition for composers in Cracow in 1976 and was one of the recommended works of the International Rostrum for Composers in Paris in 1981. A Dream’s Just a Dream for tenor and piano to words by Kazimierz Wierzyński (1982) took 3rd prize in the Karol Szymanowski competition in 1982. In 1995 his Trigonalia for guitar, accordion, percussion and chamber orchestra (1994) received a recommendation of the International Rostrum for Composers in Paris.

A CD dedicated exclusively to his works was released by the Polish Radio in 2006 as part of the “Music of Our Time” series. In April 2008, the Silesian Quartet recorded Bargielski’s complete string quartets, released under the CD Accord label in 2012. The recording was Critics’ Choice for February 2013 of MusicWeb International and received a nomination for the Fryderyk 2013 Award of the Polish Phonographic Academy.

Besides composing, he is a writer and music teacher. He has been teaching composition in Music Academy in Bydgoszcz (since 2002) and in Music Academy in Kraków (since 2003). He also writes music for films and the stage.

Zbigniew Bargielski has been decorated with the Medal of “Merit for the Polish Culture” (1990), the Officer’s Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order (1995). the Award of the Polish Composers’ Union (2001), and the Gloria Artis Gold Medal (2011).
 

works

The work of Zbigniew Bargielski has a largely autonomous place in Polish music history, and it has developed independently of fashions, trends and tendencies. He makes very efficient use of the various achievements of modern compositional language, but without a radical departure from tradition, and he maintains a noticeable distance from both modernism and post-modernism. The characteristic feature of Bargielski’s music is his concept of a “central” system which organises mostly the pitch, but is also at times applied to the organisation of rhythm and sound colour. “The procedure allows for the selection of dominant sounds,” says the composer, “which in their turn function as centres for the various segments of the form. Those dominant elements come to the fore through frequent repetition while other, more neutral sounds make up the structural backdrop.”
In his commentary to Zbigniew Bargielski’s Slapstick in the 1998 “Warsaw Autumn” programme book, Andrzej Chłopecki writes: “It is clear that Bargielski’s work is still evolving, but it is rather a spiral development which aims at enriching the aesthetics by subtle gradual transformations, not by leaps. It is noteworthy that in the last two decades Bargielski has not undergone a crisis leading to an aesthetic change - neither radical and violent (as with Penderecki), nor veiled but equally distinct (as in the case of Lutosławski). If there is any transition point to be found in Bargielski’s work, it is marked by the Violin Concerto of 1976, whose insensely lyrical quality, though not suffused with either the germ of the new simplicity, or the New Romanticism (the latter made a frontal attack on Polish music in that very memorable year), is nevertheless a subtle proof of Bargielski’s sensitivity to the spirit of the age. But the music of Zbigniew Bargielski emerged unscathed from that aesthetic turmoil.”

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