According to renowned Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020), his orchestral composition The Awakening of Jacob, premiered in 1974, defines a decisive breaking point in his musical style. However, despite its undeniable artistic and historical relevance, there are no musicological studies that approach this work analytically and, as a result, reveal which technical and stylistic aspects might define the new creative path that began in Penderecki's music back then. The current study intends to address these questions, by exposing some of the idiosyncracies of the aforementioned work from an analytical angle, while focusing on dominant musical aspects of Penderecki's artistic production from the 1960s and 1970s, namely the specific use of textural elements, sound masses, harmonic/vertical structures, and use of drones/pedal points.
Following a brief historical context, The Awakening of Jacob will be presented through a comparative analytical study with works from the preceding period, such as Anaklasis (1960), Polymorphia (1961), Fluorescences (1962), De Natura Sonoris 1 and 2 (1966, 1971), and the 1st Symphony (1973), allowing several of the affiliations with The Awakening Of Jacob to emerge.
The main purpose of this paper, and its expressive contribution to the field of Penderecki’s studies, is to present a genealogy of this composition, revealing which specific aspects are inherited from Penderecki's creative past—from the so-called sonoristic period— and how it contains the seeds of what would become known as his neo-romantic phase.

Authors:
Luís Raimundo, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - NOVA FCSH, Portugal

About the Presenter(s)
Luís Raimundo is an integrated researcher at CESEM, NOVA University - Portugal). Main interests: late orchestral music (20th and 21st centuries); Musical Texture, Musical Theory & Analysis. Other interests: 19th-Century Opera; Musical Composition.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lu%C3%ADs-raimundo-58231823a/

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luis-Miguel-Da-Raimundo

Additional website of interest
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1712-6358

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