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Tag: Krzysztof Penderecki

Fantastic Adventures in the 18th Century on “Sweetness and Light”

The Enlightenment isn’t exactly remembered for its flights of fancy. If the odd novel embraced a fantastic tone, it was frequently in the service of satire, an entertaining means to send-up contemporary mores and pursuits or to mock authority figures and good old reliable human frailty. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll explore a few of these fantastic adventures of the 18th century.

“The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1785) pokes fun at one Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen, a German nobleman and veteran of the Russo-Turkish War, whose reputation for telling outrageous tall tales is lampooned by Rudolf Erich Raspe. Raspe, looking to avoid a libel suit, published the work anonymously, with the result that it was commonly believed that the Baron actually dictated the tales himself. Naturally, the real-life Munchausen was upset by the unwanted attention. Thanks to Raspe, his very name came to be associated with feigned illness and pathological lying.

The book has been adapted to film several times, beginning with a silent version by Georges Méliès, all the way back in 1911. We’ll be listening to music from two subsequent adaptations. The first, “Münchhausen” (1943), is undeniably entertaining and exceptionally well-made. However, undermining one’s enjoyment is a sense of unease in the knowledge that the film was a pet project of Joseph Goebbels, who wanted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the UFA film studio by producing a lavish spectacle worthy to stand toe-to-toe with foreign efforts like “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Thief of Bagdad.”

Considering the source, one would have to look awfully hard to come up with anything resembling Nazi propaganda. The entire exercise comes across as a pastoral escape from the horrors of totalitarianism, total war, and the Final Solution. The elegant music, by Georg Haentzschel, would not be out of place in the concert hall. Haentzschel is regarded as perhaps the last representative of a generation of Middle European light music composers.

More than 40 years later, director Terry Gilliam undertook another production design-driven adaptation that resembles nothing if not a series of Doré illustrations brought to life. Contrary to received wisdom, “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1988) managed to pull in a respectable amount of per-screen capital. The film was a casualty of a management turnover at Columbia Pictures, with the new regime eager to bury the projects of the old. Hence, it was never seen theatrically beyond a very limited release. The score, by Michael Kamen, while in a romantic heroic style, wittily contains abundant allusions to music of the 18th century.

“The Manuscript Found in Saragossa” (1805) is a transitional work, with its ecstatically lurid opening chapter – replete with gypsy storytellers, highwaymen, dueling skeletons, lesbian vampires, and a couple of corpses dangling in a gibbet – dragging the Enlightenment kicking and screaming into the Romantic age. It starts out as a masterpiece of surrealism, by way of Gothic convention, but the spell is eventually broken, sadly, by a large, cold bucket of Enlightenment water, in the form of a perfectly rational explanation at the end. But until then, the author, Jan Potocki, gets an A for effort. The interlocking structure, with stories inside stories inside stories looks ahead to postmodern experiments by writers like Italo Calvino and John Barth, to say nothing of Jorge Luis Borges.

The book was made into an acclaimed Polish film, “The Saragossa Manuscript,” in 1965. Its cult status led to a restoration financed by Jerry Garcia, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola that was released on VHS and DVD in 2001.

Who else could provide the perfect soundtrack to such a hallucinogenic experience but Krzysztof Penderecki? Penderecki intersperses spooky passages with neo-classical and baroque interludes.

Finally, we’ll hear music from one of the many adaptations of Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726). “The Three Worlds of Gulliver” (1960) simplifies the book’s narrative and dispenses with a great deal of the misanthropic humor in favor of children’s fantasy. You won’t catch Gulliver extinguishing a fire in the Lilliputian Emperor’s palace with his urine in this version. What you will find is a good deal of technical wizardry and a delightful score by Bernard Herrmann.

What, you doubt my veracity? Then surely the music must speak for itself. Join me for fantastic adventures in the 18th century, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

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PHOTO: A fancy flight with Baron Munchausen

January 23, 2026
Bramwell Tovey Beloved Conductor Dies at 69

The conductor Bramwell Tovey has died. Tovey was a popular guest in Philadelphia and New York, where he often seemed to conduct programs of lighter music (holiday pops, summer concerts), though he was certainly capable of much more. I first learned of him through his hypnotic recording of Jean Cras’ “Polyphème,” on the Timpani label. The opera is about a forlorn cyclops, unlucky in love, who wanders off into the sea. Beautiful stuff. In 2005, Tovey conducted the world premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Symphony No. 8 – definitely not light music. He was also a composer, who wrote concertos for viola and cello, a work for chorus and brass band, “Requiem for a Charred Skull,” and a full-length opera, “The Inventor.” He was principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Sarasota Orchestra, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. Prior to that, he served as music director in Winnipeg and Vancouver. As a conductor and as a person, he was much beloved. Tovey turned 69 on Monday, the day before his death. The cause was sarcoma. R.I.P.

From “Polyphème”

Conducting Beethoven with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Colorado

Introducing Léhar with the New York Philharmonic

Talking Bernstein, with rehearsal footage of Tovey, Lenny, and the London Symphony Orchestra

July 14, 2022
Krzysztof Penderecki, Avant-Garde Master, Dies

One of the most important composers of the second half of the 20th century has died.

In 1960, Polish master Krzysztof Penderecki rode an atomic blast that leveled Soviet-sanctioned socialist realism in music and propelled him into the forefront of the avant-garde. “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” became an international sensation.

A follow-up, “Polymorphia,” for 48 violins, was creepy enough that it was selected by director William Friedkin for inclusion in the soundtrack to “The Exorcist.” For both works, Penderecki abandoned traditional notation and invented his own system of graphic notation inspired by electroencephalograms. Dense clusters, microtones and glissandi prevail.

Over the decades, filmmakers have been drawn to Penderecki’s early concert works to enhance their own eerie, anxious, and otherworldly visions. His music was used in “The Shining,” “Wild at Heart,” “Twin Peaks,” and “Shutter Island.” He provided an original score for the cult classic “The Saragasso Manuscript” (1965), based on a trippy 1815 picaresque, in itself way ahead of its time, by Jan Potocki. It’s said that “The Saragasso Manuscript” was Jerry Garcia’s favorite movie.

In the 1970s, Penderecki, while still employing avant-garde techniques, began to explore more recognizable harmonic relations, and by 1980, he leveled off into a more widely approachable style. He felt the avant-garde had tumbled too far down the formalistic rabbit hole. The pendulum had swung too wide; the solution had become the problem. It had served its purpose as a big “eff you” to Soviet authoritarianism, but now he was ready to settle down and write music.

He abandoned the undeniably striking stunt compositional style of his youth – on which his fame principally rests – and in the works of his maturity everything is laid bare. There is not much in his later music to frighten the horses, but prolonged exposure might make them a little gloomy.

Critics began to offer comparisons to the works of Dmitri Shostakovich. Penderecki was seldom ingratiating – I am hard-pressed to think of a sunny Penderecki piece – but he was always a master of his craft.

He composed four operas, eight symphonies, concertos, chamber and solo instrumental music, and choral settings of mainly religious texts. His “St. Luke Passion” made a big impression in Rome, though he himself attended a minority Armenian church.

Penderecki was 86 years-old.

The first time I encountered “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” (1960), it was like nothing I had ever heard before. This is not comforting music, but it is unforgettable.

“Polymorphia” (1961), with score in graphic notation:

“St. Luke Passion” (1966):

Symphony No. 3 (1988-95), Penderecki embraces the Romantic tradition:

“Resurrection” Concerto (2002), written in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11:

March 29, 2020

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