The article on the rendering of the arpeggio is a continuation of the cycle devoted to performance topics in harpsichord music in the second half of the 18th century, the first part of which was published in “Notes Muzyczny” no. 2(10)2019. The author’s assumption is that the condition necessary for acquiring a convincing interpretation of works from the period of Classicism on the harpsichord is following the arpeggio mannerism in compliance with the performance style shaped in the 17th century called style brisé (luthé) and characteristic of the forms such as the allemande, tombeau or préludes non mesuré. Despite the arpeggio’s diversity, unlike ornaments, this mannerism has not been thoroughly described. That is why doubts often occur as to whether or to what extent it can be used in instances when it is not explicitly required. In the context of classical music performance on the harpsichord the arpeggio is of special significance as it is a very important mean of expression. In its many shades it is one of the mannerisms the use of which is a performer’s decision. The modern trend of historical performance has updated the approach towards this mannerism for keyboard music from the classical period, allowing the use of performance traditions of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries. While performing arpeggios, one should be guided by the awareness of the historical context, musical sense, but also the instrument’s idiom, and apply them wherever they enhance the sound of the harpsichord and affections of a given fragment of a composition. The article discusses the guidelines on the ways of rendering of arpeggios, mainly based on the Klavierschule oder Anweisung zum Klavierspielen für Lehrer und Lernende by Daniel Gottlob Türk (1789) and its use options in harpsichord music of the second half of the 18th century exemplified by works by W. A. Mozart.

The article presents four chamber violin sonatas for an instrument duo written in the 1970s and 1980s, which in their concept of form and shape combine the elements of the widely understood tradition with innovative means of composition technique. The subject for a closer analysis are the following works: • Witold Rudziński, Sonata pastorale per violino e piano forte, 1978 (PWM, Cracow 1983) • Sławomir Czarnecki, Sonate tragique für Violine und Klavier, 1982 (Tonos, Darmstadt 1988) • Jan Krenz, Sonatina for two violins, 1986 (Brevis, Poznań 1994) • Zbigniew Bargielski, Sonate für Violine und Klavier „The sonata of oblivion”,1987, autograph. Each sonata listed above renders an individual concept for combining paradigms adopted from the tradition (e.g. forms, use of quotation, expression idiom) with selected avant-garde means in sound technique, which mainly derives from the sonoristic trend. What Witold Rudziński’s Sonata pastorale per violino e piano forte draws from music tradition is the thematic character of musical thoughts, and in its sound sphere it introduces the means of mild sonoristic, maintaining a balance between them. Sławomir Czarnecki’s Sonate tragique für Violine und Klavier using the quotation from the sequence of Dies irae refers to the Late-Romantic expression to which it adds unusual methods of sound production and sonoristic middle episode. The function of these innovative means is to contrast it against dramatic expression of the piece’s outermost elements. The third discussed work, Sonatina for two violins by Jan Krenz corresponds with the neoclassical trend from the 20th century and brings out diverse elements of violin technique. It refers to the B-A-C-H sound symbol known from the past and to the variation form and combines them with more recent sound structures. The fourth composition, Sonate für Violine und Klavier by Zbigniew Bargielski, is the most innovative one in terms of its sound layer and formal concept. Its connection to the past is maintained thanks to a quotation from Chopin’s music transformed in an interesting way. The analysis of the sonatas leads to the following final conclusion: the tradition and the avant-garde in the discussed works from the postmodern period are not in opposition one against another in terms of style and aesthetics but they create complementary phenomena, in which the message drawn from tradition is given a new face.

The present text is the third and last part of the cycle of articles devoted to keyboard instruments with hammer mechanism in the 18th century published in subsequent issues of the magazine “Notes Muzyczny”. The first two parts primarily touched on the history of keyboard instrument making in the 18th century: first pianos and other original inventions. The third part is in turn devoted to the changing position of the piano in the musical life of that period, namely – concerts, publications and compositions. The crowning of this part is the chronological and topic-related list (in a form of a reference chart) of the most significant phenomena and events discussed in the whole cycle of articles. The first mentions of a wider presence of keyboard instruments with hammer mechanism on the music market and concert life date back to the 1760s. In the 1770s there was a fast growth in the popularity of these instruments in the life of the high society, first of all in England and France (table instruments), as well as in Germany, even though there it took slightly more time because of the domination of the traditional clavichord. Due to the imprecise nomenclature used as long as until the 1780s and 1790s, it is often hard to decide which keyboard instrument was meant in a given case, hence it is impossible to assess how popular a specific instrument was. Some academics suggest that the presence of instruments with hammer mechanism in the musical life of that period was much greater than in might seem. Probably both hammer and tangent pianos and their other variants were not opposed to harpsichords but were treated as a special type within the same group of instruments. In the 1780s musical pieces written for both keyboard instruments, i.e., “for harpsichord or piano”, became the norm. Despite the increase in popularity of pianos (as compared to harpsichords) in the 1790s, such designation would remain on title pages of compositions until the end of that century. The period between the 1780s and 1790s was also the time when the first piano playing textbooks appeared. Expanding expressive capacities of keyboard instruments was the response to the changing needs of the galant and Empfindsamkeit styles. On the other hand, the presence of pianos had a significant influence on the styles of specific compositions. In order to illustrate these processes, the annex presents the analyses of two representative cycles of works from the 1760s written for the new instrument: Sonatas op. 1 by Johann Gottfried Eckard and Sonatas op. 5 by Johann Christian Bach.

Cadence (ending) formulas are one of the most intriguing phenomena in music. They occur in works of all historical periods and styles and they have a variety of forms: from melodic and harmonic turns to rhythmic or even dynamic ones. However, this issue is important not only from the perspective of theory of music or composition technique but also performance practice as the way how a singer or instrument player understands the functioning of separate elements of a piece will impinge on the sound shape of the work presented to the public. Reading the extramusical message hidden in the structure of a piece should be regarded particularly significant for the interpretation of pieces written in times when adding precise performance guidelines in the score was not practiced. In case of compositions written in the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries, the way how ending formulas functioned was a result of the specificity of that time’s modal system and the principles of polyphonic composition, in which the role of melodic (horizontal) thinking prevailed over the harmonic (vertical) one. The issue of cadences gains special importance while analysing instrumental works in which the absence of verbal text hinders the division of the piece into segments. It only becomes possible thanks to analysing the structure of the piece, including the allocation of modal ending formulas in separate voices of the composition. Howsoever the topic of cadences in music of the 16th and 17th centuries has been discussed many times in the literature on the subject, it has had no satisfactory presentation related to that time’s instrumental repertoire. The present article is an attempt to elaborate on the deliberations on the topic of modal cadence formulas in instrumental works from the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries. Its first part has an introductory character and it touches on the notion of cadence in modern theoretical-musical and encyclopaedic texts compared to composition theory and practice in the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The second part of the article is an analysis of selected instrumental works from the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries meant for different types of line-ups – the four-voice canzona by Florentio Maschera, canzona by Girolamo Frescobaldi for solo instrument with basso continuo and one of the ricercati by Giovanni Bassano meant for solo melodic instrument without accompaniment.

Wanda Landowska – klawesynistka i kompozytorka, przyszła na świat w Warszawie 5 lipca 1879 roku, zmarła 16 sierpnia 1959 roku w Lakeville w Connecticut w Stanach Zjednoczonych. Ze względu na okrągłą rocznicę zarówno jej urodzin, jak i śmierci, rok 2019 jest rokiem jubileuszowym, poświęconym tej wielkiej artystce. Jej wybitna osobowość muzyczna, miłość do muzyki „dawnych mistrzów1” zacięcie badacza, upór i silna wola zmieniły bieg historii muzyki i pozwoliły na rozwój ruchu, współcześnie zwanego wykonawstwem historycznie poinformowanym. Jak długa była to droga dziś doskonale to wiemy, a bez Wandy Landowskiej trudno ją sobie wyobrazić. [...]

The article touches on Polish harpsichord pieces written between 1936 and 2016, dividing this time into three periods. The first of them is connected with the renaissance of harpsichord music, the second one focuses on the activity of Elżbieta Chojnacka and avant-garde works expanding the harpsichord playing technique, whereas for the third period the article presents compositions written for modern and historical harpsichord featuring the new media, as well as for other early instruments. An addition to the article are two annexes containing a list of academic publications on the discussed topic discussed, and a catalogue of CDs entirely devoted to harpsichord pieces written by contemporary Polish composers, which were released by Polish recording companies.

The article was based on a fragment of the author’s doctoral dissertation entitled The birth of cello as a solo instrument – instruments, practice, and selected literature examples (Academy of Music in Łódź, chapter The evolution of cello in the 17th century) and consists of two parts. The first part outlines of the evolution of cello from its birth in the 16th century to the 18th century (the text is supplemented with illustrations), whereas the second part describes the role and use of cello in music of that period. The introduction to the article includes a critical reference to the list of academic and popular science publications therein, in Polish and other languages, touching on the cello issue in the 17th and 18th centuries. The historical part touches on the circumstances of how the violin family emerged with a special attention paid to bass representatives of that group of instruments. Following a detailed analysis of preserved instruments, their reliable copies, luthier publications, illustrations and treatises from that period, the author discussed the construction of the earlies cellos. Apart from data concerning sizes and scale length of these instruments, the article includes information about their body, neck, fingerboard (with slope angle), bridge and tailpiece, materials they were made of, and types and gauge of strings used at that time. It also describes cello tuning methods. Moreover, the author mentions different types of cello (piccolo, da spalla, basse de violon) and different ways of how it was held. A separate issue are the bows, especially types of bows, their evolution and ways of holding. This part of the article is concluded with a list of different names of bass variants of the violin used in the 16th and 17th centuries before the name cello/violoncello finally settled. The second part of the article elaborates on the most important functions of cello: as a consort instrument, a universal continuo instrument or a solo instrument. Cello (along with viola da gamba or dulcian/bassoon) managed especially well as a melodic instrument co-rendering the continuo parts, and the result was that the basso continuo became the most important domain of cello in the Baroque, having a significant influence on the shape of playing technique and performance practice of that instrument. As one of melodic bass instruments, cello performed an important role in shaping the concertante style, along with the violin, shawm/oboe, cornet or flute. It was that practice combined with the improvisation practice developed simultaneously (which also influenced the development of the instrument itself) that the idea to write first autonomous compositions for the cello (solo, chamber or with basso continuo) emerged from at the end of the 17th century. Continuation of this article, which shall be devoted to Baroque works for the cello and their composers, will be published in the following issue of “Notes Muzyczny”.