Пасионът по Лука от Кшищоф Пендерецки като Weltanschauungsmusik (Част I: Социокултурният контекст)
St Luke Passion by Krzysztof Penderecki as Weltanschauungsmusik (Part I: Social and cultural context)

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the first part of a study of St Luke Passion (Passio et mors Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Lu­ cam, 1966) by Krzysztof Penderecki, a key work to the formation of the composer’s individual style, marking the beginning of a new period in his work, which includes large-scale sacred works that have become emblematic of him. Tracing the changes in the compositional technique of the Polish author is one of the main goals of the study. It also explores the question of writing a sacred work in the twentieth century and one, too, employing avant­ garde techniques. Moreover, the work in question is in a liturgical genre, which has gradually disappeared from the horizon of compositional interest since the mid-eighteenth century. Hence, the issue of reconsidering the Passion genre and its relevance to Western culture in the second half of the last century. By turning his attention to the traditions of church music, Penderecki not only implemented a change in his individual compositional style. In his ambition to achieve a synthesis of innovative means of expression and historical compositional techniques, the composer offered an artistic alternative to the leaning towards fetishism obsession of the avant-garde for the self-referential ‘radically new’. Penderecki’s creative solution is seen not only as a kind of artistic confession of personal religiosity, but also as a way of claiming a social and moral stance through art in the context of the post-war political status quo in Poland as part of the Eastern Bloc. Also dis­ cussed are the specific problems of composing a liturgical work in a situation of socialist ideology, restrictions on religion and aesthetic tenets for realism in the arts. In this light, the St Luke Passion is interpreted as Weltanschauungsmusik, music, revealing the composer’s moral and artistic world view, founded in church tradition and proclaiming the intransience of Christian philosophy as an ideal valid also in modem times. According to Penderecki, in his own words, the restoring of the sacred dimension to reality is the only method of saving man.

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