Whoever has heard Penderecki’s Stabat Mater, motionless and yet always “going forward”, can imagine the style of this Passion. But the Stabat (incorporated unchanged into the Passion) is expanded here to enormous proportions, with all the vocal and instrumental resources at Penderecki’s disposal and developed in his previous works.

It even seems that he has been experimenting in order to be able now to capture, squeeze and, at the same time, expand his “material” to around 100 minutes. He has unfolded it over a huge, calm and unhurried musical time. 

For great epic works have their great and epic time, different from the time of small-scale poetry, nervous dialogue or understated drama. There are not many artists who can take on such a challenge with impunity, without getting long-winded.

I will not try to predict the fate of Penderecki’s Passion. A work using a “new musical language”, especially one originating in Webern’s sonic-acoustic aphorism, might not have been able to withstand a large and elaborate form. If such a point of hearing (not quite a point of “view”) were to be inserted into our ears, then the concept of Penderecki’s latest work returns to what I believe to be “completing the musical thought till the end” – unlike the element of incompleteness the sources of which can be traced back to the first Romantic pieces. 

As we know, Bach’s Passions were almost the last works of this genre, which had been developing since the Middle Ages. After Bach the oratorio, the mass and the cantata survived as a form, but after 1750 virtually no one dared to touch the passion form, with Johannes- and Matthäuspassion remaining its greatest monuments. The rare exceptions only confirm this fact.

Thus I was anxious while travelling to Münster and pondering on the history of this genre of art. Art that had been getting constantly and increasingly “theatrical” since the times of Gregorian chant. For music had been getting increasingly dramatic and theatrical. It had been getting increasingly expressive to the point of individual emotion. The Renaissance was more theatrical than early polyphony, Monteverdi more than Palestrina, Bach more than Schütz. And then came the Romantics, Wagner, Puccini finally...

This process of growing expression and individual emotional moment was superimposed on ritual and liturgical art; it was common throughout several centuries of the history of our music. As we listen to Bach’s Passions, it seems to us that the great Leipzig cantor exhausted the means of expression of the “passion genre”, expressing in the most perfect way this subject, which cannot be contained in the concept of theatre or even oratorio or concert. 

Thus I feared that there would be long-windedness and incommensurability between the means shaped by the musicians today and what Penderecki had already announced in the very title of his work. Anxious, I asked him about this before my trip: what kind of Passion will it be? “A genuine Passion,” he told me, simply and modestly.

I heard it four times. At three rehearsals and an evening performance which was a special ceremony held in the great cathedral of Münster lit by flickering candles and packed with listeners.

There is no doubt that it is, indeed, a genuine and authentic Passion, from the very first call of the chorus: “O crux”. Stretched over an octave, the call makes us quiver like Bach’s call “Herr!” at the beginning of Johannespassion.

From this call, followed by the solo arias, spoken text of the Evangelist, huge number of choral parts and replies of the soloists, everything is an authentic passion, with the words of Christ, crowds, shaking earth and torn veil in the temple. Penderecki has stretched the chord, has thrown it across more than two centuries of our art, has gone far, but has not left the European musical circle that developed this great musical form.

I think that when these words appear in print, many readers will have already got to know the work from a performance in Kraków. So I am not describing its plan, but will only say that the Passion should be listened to with its text on hand, because the word and the music are one.

The whole, comprising so many parts, is a great synthesis of musical elements, from Gregorian chant, through Baroque passion, to the sonic achievements of recent times, achievements which – as I have already noted – Penderecki tested so imaginatively in his earlier works.

What is striking in this music is an element that could be called a “system of seconds”. It provides for the use of various variants and transpositions of the B[B flat]-A and C-H[B] seconds. Thus, after these four notes have been used, we are left with eight steps, which Penderecki employs in both the vertical and horizontal serial movement. We hear a lot of ascending and descending seconds and their seventh or ninth inversions. This makes the Passion both archaic and contemporary.

Among the lyrical passages, I choose the simplest of them all. I managed to note down this example during a break in the rehearsal. It is an aria wonderfully sung by Andrzej Hiolski: “Deus meus, Deus meus, respice in me: quare me dereliquisti?” The boys’ choir sings “Domine”, and then the baritone goes a minor third down and sings “Deus meus, clamabo per diem et non exaudies. Verba mea auribus percipe”, with the choir again following with “Domine”.

I am quoting a fragment of this aria as an example of a five-fold repetition of a figure in which the whole line can be reduced to seconds and their inversions. We will find only one third, A-F sharp, in the soloist’s voice and two thirds in the organ octaves, with the first twelve bars preparing the entry of the voice a third down. Who else dares to use such simple means today? Such “effective” means, I should add!

In addition, Penderecki divides the various syllables between the choirs, as he did at the beginning of Stabat Mater. The words of the Good Friday Improperia, “Popule meus”, are divided as follows: first choir “Po”, the second “pu”, the third “le” etc. In a large church nave this works stereophonically, gives an impression of greatness. The variety of the means used does not break the unity of the work. We are here as if in a forest, where each tree is different, but there is one forest.

  Penderecki’s artistry and rich imagination are at their most evident in the group scenes, in which the crowd makes noise, whistles, shouts, speaks and sings, in which rattles and rattling are heard: I know of no more perfect example of such an organisation of disorder in music. All the more or less aleatory methods I have known so far, methods featuring a division of orchestras and choirs into groups, seem to me like a child’s crawl compared to this essentially simple division and system that Penderecki uses in the Passion. Instead of making things more complicated, he simplifies them.

Are there fragments in this Passion that are too long? No statistics will provide us with a precise answer. We can count the number of vowels or rhetorical figures in the Bible, Iliad or Pan Tadeusz, but what will it give us? 

I will not try to guess what the critics will say. Especially those who think that a work of art is to provide an answer conforming to their own assumptions of the development of musical language, that a new work of art is to confirm their own beliefs. Rather than relying on such criticism, I prefer to rely on my own ears and the understanding of music I have – and do not try to impose on anyone. 

The work exists and we will not change that fact. I cannot yet assess the significance of the event, for I have no objective scale for such an assessment. I have only my own scale. When I use it to judge the Passion, the work eludes me – it cannot be contained within any past or present scale. It seems to me that Penderecki has included in it not just his own experience, but also the experience of two centuries – he limits the means of expression to elements as simple as they are in any masterpiece.

To conclude, a few words about the performance.

Henryk Czyż, presumably in close contact with the composer (but of this I know nothing), was so in control of the whole, was so able to give the whole a shape which I consider appropriate, that I think the performance will remain a source of future tradition for a long time to come. I am thinking here about the proportion of metrorhytmic strictness and a freedom which I will call oratorio-stage freedom. The value of the notes had time to resound, Czyż took this into account and made sure that there would be enough time for “effects” to be linked to music. And the collaboration with the soloists! Woytowicz sang with just the right expression, never exaggerated, her voice never shouted, never vibrated, never added anything tearful, which might have easily happened, if the seconds had been heard chromatically and not diatonically. I have to say the same about Hiolski, I cannot imagine a better choice for the part. Ładysz filled the cathedral space with his voice effortlessly, even when singing mezza voce, and at the same time our vocal trio, for example. in the final psalm, sounded perfectly even, cohesive, like one instrument, attacking the notes with assurance, despite all the difficulties presented by the entries of the voices and the first notes of the phrases.

I find it more difficult to judge the orchestra and the choirs. The latter especially in the a cappella parts, with their extreme level of difficulty, with all those entries with an overlapping E, E flat, C sharp, F, D etc., would slip at times, would have problems in attacking, for example, a major third after a long period of continuous singing.

I have heard that there were twenty rehearsals with the choirs before their final “assembly” with the rest of the performers. It is not difficult to make each choir separately sing precisely. The difficulties begin, when they are together. And then, with all this mass, made even greater by reverberation, the problems multiply more and more.

What remains the test, however, is the final result, which here lies in the nature and mood of this al fresco work, this painting, to which miniature measures cannot apply. And for this reason we can congratulate the soloists, the restrained Evangelist speaker and, above all, the entire Cologne Rundfunk ensemble, and express our gratitude for this wonderful performance.

Penderecki started writing the Passion in 1963. The last page of this huge score features the date 26 January 1966.

It has been 1000 years since the first known date in our history. A magnificent celebration of our millennium!

Premiere at the Münster Cathedral, 30 March 1966. Westdeutscher Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra from Cologne. Three mixed choirs (90 singers) of the Cologne Rundfunk. Boys’ choir (35 singers) “Tölzer Knaben Chor”.

Soprano: Stefania Woytowicz
Baritone: Andrzej Hiolski
Bass: Bernard Ładysz
Evangelist: Rudolf Jürgen Bartsch
Conductor: Henryk Czyż
Broadcast by Westdeutscher Rundfunk.

Zygmunt Mycielski, Postludia, PWM Kraków 1977, pp. 252–260.