3 minute read
ANNA GRANAT-JANKI
ANNA GRANAT-JANKI
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Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław, Poland anna.granat-janki@amkl.edu.pl
Discussions of genres are an important aspect of music semiotics. A genre plays a significant role in social communication, being a powerful code that connects the composer with the listeners. This also refers to the opera genre, which underwent profound transformations in the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, as it no longer satisfied the expectations of composers and audiences. After the Second World War, the opera became an area of numerous experiments, as a new preference for mixed genres and hybrid, ambiguous forms developed. Genre transgressions are also a characteristic feature of the operatic oeuvre of Agata Zubel, an outstanding Wrocław-based composer and vocalist of the middle generation.
Her output includes three operatic works. The most recent one, Bildbeschreibung, set to a text by Heiner Müller (2016), is the subject of the paper, the aim of which is to discuss the individual way in which Zubel interprets the principles of the long-established genre. The starting point is the analysis of Müller’s dramatic work, which the composer used in its entire form to construct the libretto. This is followed by the discussion of the structure of Zubel’s opera and the relations between the music and the dramatic text, which significantly affect the constituent elements of the operatic work.
The analysis of word-music relations has shown that the music complements the text, which in turn determines the dramaturgy of the work. The composer tries to bring out the expression of the word and to enhance the ambiguity of the text. Sometimes she underscores single words which carry specific meanings and senses. Her music harmonizes perfectly with the whole complex sphere of thoughts and emotions that Heiner Müller wished to convey, marking its presence where the message cannot be expressed by words.
Agata Zubel’s opera form offers new genre, thematic, structural, and aesthetic solutions. It is an example of a genre hybrid combining elements of instrumental music genres, such as the symphony or concerto, with those of experimental theater forms, for example, instrumental theater or installation. Thanks to the inter-genre nature and hybridity of the opera, Agata Zubel was able to free it from restraining patterns and conventions. Bildbeschreibung is an attempt to modernize the genre in order to bring it closer to today’s audience.
Keywords: opera genre, polish contemporary music, Agata Zubel, social communication, musical signification.
Anna Granat-Janki is a professor, doctor habilitatus, music theorist, and musicologist. She studied music theory at the State Higher School of Music in Wrocław (1976–1981). In 1985, thanks to a scholarship from the French government, she lived in Paris, where she conducted research on Alexandre Tansman’s music. In 1992 she was granted the scientific title of Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology by the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, in 2006 the title of Doctor Habilitated in Music Art with a specialization in music theory by the Cracow Academy of Music, in 2014 the title of Professor in Music Art. Since 1981 she has been working at the Academy of Music in Wrocław, where from 2006 she was the head of the Unit of the History of Silesian Musical Culture, and since 2010 she has been the head of the Chair of Music Theory and History of Silesian Musical Culture. She has organized a series of conferences on musical analysis, Silesian musical culture, and the patron of the Academy of Music in Wrocław, Karol Lipiński. Her scientific interests focus on the history and theory of twentieth and twenty-first century music; the output of twentieth and twenty-first century Polish composers with a special emphasis on Alexandre Tansman, Marta Ptaszyńska, Wrocław-based composers, and the history of music culture in post-war Wrocław; and music analysis (especially semiotics analysis). She has published two books: Form in the instrumental works by Alexander Tansman and The works of Wrocław composers in the years 1945–2000, numerous articles in Polish and foreign collective monographs and in scientific journals as well as entries in the PWM Music Encyclopaedia, Encyclopaedia of Wrocław, and the Polish Biographical Dictionary. She has participated in a number of scientific conferences both at home and abroad (Paris, Los Angeles, Imatra, Rennes, Banská Štiavnica, Canterbury, Kaunas, Cluj-Napoca, Athens, Svätý Jur). She is also the editor-in-chief of eleven collective monographs from various series: Musical Analysis. Historia-theoria-praxis, Traditions of Silesian Musical Culture, Wroclaw Musicians (Ryszard Bukowski, Tadeusz Natanson), Karol Lipiński – life, activity, epoch. She is a member of various societies: Les Amis d’Alexandre Tansman in Paris, the Polish Composers’ Union in Warsaw, the Polish Music Analysis Society in Warsaw, the Academy of Cultural Heritages in Helsinki, and the Athens Institute for Education and Research in Athens.
