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Andrzej Panufnik's Music and Its Reception.

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Andrzej Panufnik's Music and Its Reception. Edited by Jadwiga Paja-Stach. (Acta Musicologica Universitatis Cracoviensis, 11.) Krakow: Musica Iagellonica, 2003. [274 p. ISBN 8-7099124-6. Z160.] Music examples, analytical charts, indexes.

In his 1987 autobiography, Composing Myself (London: Methuen, 1987) Andrzej Panufnik made the following observation about the significance of geometry in his compositional technique:

I felt that geometric shapes could provide my compositions with an unseen skeleton within which my harmonic, melodic and rhythmic concept could be bound together as a cohesive whole: an organized framework out of which both spiritual and poetic expression could freely flow. (p. 327)

The geometric designs used by Panufnik in composition preoccupy the attention of the authors of the studies that appear in Andrzej Panufnik's Music and Its Reception. Indeed, one of these essays, by the world's foremost Panufnik expert, Beata Boleslawska, was originally called "Geometry in Panufnik's Oeuvre" in its first version, presented at the International Andrzej Panufnik Conference held in Cracow, Poland, on 23-25 November 2001. In my "Andrzej Panufnik-Bibliography," I noted that this volume of conference proceedings would be published in Polish by Musica Iagellonica and in English by the Polish Music Center (PMC) at the University of Southern California (Polish Music Journal, vol. 5, no. 1 (summer 2002), online, http://www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music/PMJ/archives.html [accessed 30 August 2004]). The volume's editor and conference organizer, Jadwiga Paja-Stach (professor of musicology at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow), had submitted her book proposal to the...

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