Occupied Memory: Polish Composers and German Music after the Second World War

The occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War had profoundly negative impacts on Polish cultural life. Although conflict ostensibly ended in 1945, the ensuing four decades of communist rule proved just as devastating. Until now, much of the discourse on Poland has concentrated on the effects and legacy of Communism, while consideration of the ‘German question’ has largely been neglected. Using the composers Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) and Henryk Górecki (1933–2010) as case studies, this thesis focuses on the web of musical interactions between Germany and Poland in the decades following WWII, tracing how these composers came to terms with the music of their occupiers. The investigation is driven by questions intersecting with issues of memory, aesthetics, and national identity: what were Lutosławski and Górecki’s attitudes toward pre-war German music? Did they have similar responses to post-war German music? How were they able to face these problems against the backdrop of Soviet hegemony? Above all, the fundamental debate over music’s ineffable, abstract qualities persists: to what extent is music (and art in general) able to transcend messy cultural concerns, and remain untainted by political events? In asking these questions, I probe the complex artistic landscape of mid-century Eastern Europe, along with music’s specific role in this process of negotiation. Both composers responded quite differently to Poland’s cultural landscape after 1945. Lutosławski retreated into abstraction and sought refuge in realms of music deemed absolute, while Górecki, on the other hand, moved in the opposite direction toward a musical style grounded in the here-and-now, and tethered umbilically to concerns of the everyday. Also telling are the similarities between them: a shared love of Bach and Viennese Classicism, a more equivocal relationship with Schoenberg and his followers, and an underlying, deeply wrought humanism