Authors
HANNA KULENTY
Composer, born on 18th March 1961 in Białystok. She studied composition with Włodzimierz Kotoński at the Warsaw Academy of Music (now the Chopin University of Music) and later with Louis Andriessen in The Hague. She perfected her musical abilities at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music and as part of the DAAD artistic exchange in Berlin.
She has worked as an independent composer since 1989, receiving scholarships and completing numerous commissions. In 2003, she won the first place at the International Rostrum of Composers for Concerto for Trumpet and Symphony Orchestra. She has conducted composition courses, including in Apeldoorn, Radziejowice, and Munich, and was a visiting professor at Missouri State University. Since 2015, she has lectured at the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz.
In her works, Hanna Kulenty has developed a highly individualised musical language based on her own original techniques known as the ‘polyphony of arches’ and the ‘polyphony of time dimensions’ derived from the former. This polyphony concerns primarily the organisation of musical form, and depends on the coexistence in one composition of many energy sources called ‘arches’ (emergence — climax — fading away) or ‘time dimensions’ (conventional ‘short’ time as opposed to hypnotic ‘longer’ periods). The attempts to bring out the latter are related to the sense of metaphysical trance, represented in her music by a reduction and simplification of the means of musical expression, by consistent inhibition of the development of form, and the persistence of rhythmic ostinati. The album title Arcs and Circles can serve as the best description of the composer’s sound language.
Phot. Bartek Barczyk
She has worked as an independent composer since 1989, receiving scholarships and completing numerous commissions. In 2003, she won the first place at the International Rostrum of Composers for Concerto for Trumpet and Symphony Orchestra. She has conducted composition courses, including in Apeldoorn, Radziejowice, and Munich, and was a visiting professor at Missouri State University. Since 2015, she has lectured at the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz.
In her works, Hanna Kulenty has developed a highly individualised musical language based on her own original techniques known as the ‘polyphony of arches’ and the ‘polyphony of time dimensions’ derived from the former. This polyphony concerns primarily the organisation of musical form, and depends on the coexistence in one composition of many energy sources called ‘arches’ (emergence — climax — fading away) or ‘time dimensions’ (conventional ‘short’ time as opposed to hypnotic ‘longer’ periods). The attempts to bring out the latter are related to the sense of metaphysical trance, represented in her music by a reduction and simplification of the means of musical expression, by consistent inhibition of the development of form, and the persistence of rhythmic ostinati. The album title Arcs and Circles can serve as the best description of the composer’s sound language.
Phot. Bartek Barczyk
