Heft 03 / Juli 2015

Zusammenfassung:

-

Summary:

Imitation – Adaptation – Amalgamation? On the Problem of Genre Preferences in Polish-American Musical Relations – While current musical life in America’s Polonia is dominated by traditional and also individually historizing dance groups performing Krakowiak and Mazurka, the composers belonging to a later than 2nd generation of Polish immigrants mostly turned away from accomodating their musical roots. Nevertheless, the great influence of Polish musical practice teaching or scholarship held by The Curtis Institute, and now also the Thornton Polish Music Centre, keeps alive these efforts as made and set out in details by the great pianists, piano teachers, arrangers and symphonists Leopold Godowsky, Zygmunt Stojowski and – with the exception of a further modernization in style – Jerzy Fitelberg. It can be said that there is a stream of self-confident composers such as William Basinski or, in a more common classical vein, Robert Muczynski, who even neglected American and Polish-European sources and have followed their own aesthetical ways. A further special aspect of Polish-American music is a far-reaching avoidance of subjecting their native country’s music to avant-garde experiments.

Résumé: