Tales of PRES

The text was first published in Polish in a book Czarny pokój i inne pokoje. Zbiór tekstów o Studiu Eksperymentalnym Polskiego Radia (The black room and other rooms, series of texts about the Polish Radio Experimental Studio) (Łódź, 2018), published by the Museum of Art in Łódź, Automaphone Foundation, and Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Courtesy of the Automatophone Foundation in Warsaw. Translated into English by Kamil Sznajder.

Creative play with sounds inside the PRES.

Krzysztof Knittel in conversation with Michal Libera and Michal Mendyk

What was your knowledge about the Studio like, before you started working there? When starting, were you more interested in the broad idea of electroacoustic music, or the Polish Radio Experimental Studio itself?

I owe my first encounter with the Polish Radio Experimental Studio to professor Krzysztof Szlifirski. Before studying composition, I have been granted a title of a Master of the Sound Design faculty, at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Poland. Szlifirski taught electroacoustic music of the faculty, and used the infamous Black Room of the experimental studio as a classroom- those were my first experiences with sound effects achieved via changing the playback speed of tape recorders, filters and ring modulation. In other words, Szlifirski was teaching us all the methods used for music-making in the PRES. Some of this equipment was already familiar, due to the earlier lessons at the university, such as filters, delays, or echo chambers. Since my first encounters with the studio, PRES for me was an extended musical instrument, that allowed working with all the possibilities of electronic apparatus. My attempts at analogue music processing and realising experimental music started on my home tape player Tesla. The sounds I have recorded there were later used in fun street performance, perhaps in 1971, during a student-run festival in Wroclaw, Poland.

All of this happened before I started my composition studies. I knew the names of creators working within the PRES, they were also my professors. such as Andrzej Dobrowolski, who has been teaching me contemporary techniques of composition. Another one was Włodzimierz Kotoński, that I have met as a great dean, as well as a professor of composition. At the very beginning, the composition studies were lead by Tadeusz Bairda, and after he left, I was assigned to great and international composition classes by Dobrowolski, where lessons were guided in the presence of all the students and foreign interns, and we all learned from each other, together with reading every score. After the departure of prof. Dobrowolski to Graz, Austria, where he also taught composition, he was replaced by Wlodzimierz Kotoński, with whom, similarly to Dobrowolski, I have become great friends. This way artists known for their work created within the 1 of 6 Tales of PRES

PRES became my teachers, friends and people of mutual trust. Numerous times, that I have helped Kotonski with the realisation of his works, also as a musician playing on a synthesiser. We have also travelled together, to the World Music Days in Paris, in 1975, where the famous French clarinettist and composer Michel Portal, in the Theatre de la Ville, performed punkty/linie (1973), my composition on clarinet, electronic sounds (released in the PRES), with slideshow. Afterwards, together we travelled to Buffalo, where Kotoński was teaching composition at the State University of New York in Buffalo, while I played piano in a group titled The Center of the Creative Performing Arts, established in 1964 by notable composers, including Lukas Foss. During my stay in Buffalo, the group was lead by Morton Feldman and Lejaren Hiller and managed by Renee Levine Packer. This trip, however, I owe to Józef Patkowski, that acquainted me with Hiller while his 6 months stay in Poland, filled with intense concerts, working at PRES, and teaching at the music school. Similarly, as with Kotonski, I have helped Hiller with his concerts.

Back to the Experimental Studio - everything in there was different: the work atmosphere, friendship between workers, creative spirit, and also the look of the office, ruled by Grażyna Karasiewicz, Michal Birstiger’s wife (the first women working within the small team of the PRES, later joined by two young sound engineers- Barbara Okoń and Ewa Guziołek). She [Karasiewicz] was a good spirit of the Studio, taking care of all the paperwork and contracts. Her workplace was located in a room with Józef Patkowski and Krzysztof Szlifirski on one of the higher floors, in the building located at Malczewski street [in Warsaw]. Entering this “command centre” I always had an impression, despite the grey surroundings of the Polish People's Republic in the 70s, that I am entering a room of the Austrian or the French studio. Everything there was different than anywhere else- colourful decorations, books, desks, and, what is the most important, the atmosphere, that was nice, friendly, and without, then omnipresent, mistrust. I knew that the studio was a highly appreciated institution in the circle of music composition in the world, but for me, it was, most importantly, a great electroacoustic workshop, that, thanks to the friendship and personal relationships, quickly became my place for creative work, a second home, where I have spent many busy nights, as the building was then empty and quiet. During the day the studio was usually occupied by Eugeniusz Rudnik and Bohdan Mazurek.

My first steps within the walls of the PRES were made already during my composition degree at the PWSM [now known as The Chopin University of Music]. I have had the awareness of the value that electroacoustic music has brought to the world of music, and how important for Polish music was the activity of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio. Moreover, as a beginner composer, I took the invitation to work in the Studio, given to me by Patkowski, as a huge privilege and honour.

Yes- privilege and honour… Interesting that today broadly understood electronic music seems to have become a synonym for artistic egalitarianism. But then, in the 70s, access to technology was still very much limited…

It was quite a pleasant feeling of affiliation to an elite, creative club, that, in the place of financial contribution, the duty was to constantly expand your knowledge about electronic technologies, accomplishments of other studios in the world, as well as working as a composer within the new and young field of music art. The problem was, of course, a lack of ability to work from home, shortage of electronic instruments. Access to PRES was limited due to the political circumstances- radio has been used as a medium of socialist propaganda, and, to access the studio, a permit was needed. Luckily, Grażyna Karaśkiewicz took good care of young composers, so I could enter the studio quite often. When in 1978 I departed to Buffalo for a 6 months apprenticeship, I have received a set of keys- one to the computer studio, and one to the main building, so I can use the studio on Sundays when everything is closed. I have then gotten a nice feeling of social trust and freedom- after all, I was a person from behind the Iron Curtain… Today,

2 of 6 Tales of PRES access to electronic devices and computer apps is common, but it does not mean that everything has changed, because, just like before, the key is in knowledge, skills and talent.

Don’t you think that it’s the other way? That the quality of electronic music in its first decades was higher, due to its elitism?

It is not for me to judge, however, I think that in the first years of the existence of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, many remarkable compositions were released, such as those of Kotoński, Dobrowolski, Scheffer, Rudnik, and François-Bernard Mâche.

How did you find the works of PRES in an international context when you entered PRES? Was it just a local answer to composers from Germany, France and America? Or was it a specific phenomenon, with its own aesthetic and identity?

In my opinion, the works of the Polish Experimental Studio did not depart from the quality of electronic and concrete music of the West. Certainly, the character of Polish works has been influenced by the political system of the times, no free speech, difficulties in travels, and inaccessibility of the world’s newest musical scores and experiments. I think that the invaluable persona of Krzysztof Patkowski was doing everything he could to fill in the gaps, such as in newly recorded music, that he was ordering to the studio and presenting during his show The Horizons of Music. Scores have been available to the library of the Union of Polish Composers, which were thoroughly collected after each edition of the Warsaw Autumn Festival. Another serious problem was the unawareness of western institutions about what was being created in Poland. The Polish Radio did not share works created within the studio, and there was no one to take care of sharing the legacy of the studio. None of the Polish compositions found themselves on the big collection of electroacoustic music, of the years from 1937 until 2001.

At the very beginning of your career- were you then looking at the field of electronic music as an untamed land? Or had it already have some tradition, conventions and limitations?

When I started creating my first autonomous composition in the Studio (and it was made from the tapes that consisted of electronic sounds and processed sounds of a clarinet from the Punkty/ Linie), it was like working in an unknown for me area. Of course, I have been listening to an array of electronic and concrete compositions, made by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Bruno Maderna, Luciano Beria, Luigi Nono- those were already classics of European studios from Cologne, Paris and Milan. I also knew some compositions by Kotoński, Dobrowolski and Boguslaw Schaeffer, however, what was created in the 70s was arriving in Poland with a fair amount of delay, so my sense of convention and genre was based mainly on the compositions I listened to, and my own experiences. And of course, my knowledge was constantly expanding by musical pieces presented by Jozef Patkowski during occasional concerts organised by PRES, and night gigs organised by the Warsaw Autumn Festival. It is also worth mentioning, that everything that was happening during the Warsaw Autumn was an important addition to my music studies at the PWSM, and it has not changed to this day, as to this day, music students share a similar approach towards the festival. Naturally, from today's point of view we could differentiate many various conventions and genres of electronic music, but, in my days, the main identifiable division were those between electronic music, concrete music, environmental sounds, soundscapes (that I have been recording myself under the influence of Raymond Murray Schaefer), electroacoustic music, and live electronics.

It is interesting to juxtapose electronic music, concrete music and soundscapes, as often the creators of such doctrines were involved in deep arguments regarding the aesthetic, and even the ideology of the genres. Had those disputes have any meaning to you, when you, in your 3 of 6 Tales of PRES compositions, referred to more than one of these streams simultaneously, and sometimes even combined them in one musical piece?

I had a feeling that these ideological arguments did not concern me. Perhaps I even did not understand them and did not share, for example, Schaeffer’s view on high-fidelity in regards to soundscapes, and his theories on noise. I have always sympathised more with John Cage’s views on sound, who enjoyed sounds coming from the open window of his New York apartment on the 5th street. I also think that, what influenced my approach to musical sounds, were my few years spent studying sound design at the film department, and a few soundtracks I have realised for animations, documentaries, and later music for a couple of feature films. Moreover, in the KEW group, that I have formed with Elzbieta Sikora and Wojciech Michniewski in 1974, I have not spotted any ideological differences in our views on the world of electroacoustic music. What was most important, was our agreement on the initial idea of the composition and the form of the piece, its individual phrases, the timbre of the overall piece, and the realisation technique.

Yes, however you were not the only one in the Studio, even if it comes to KEW- it also had their sound designers. Maybe in such context, it is worth asking the question of how the day-to-day work in PRES looked like?

As I mentioned previously, such a novice like me was not granted strict working hours in the studio. Usually, it was late afternoon or evenings that were often dragged until the very morning, as it was a fascinating and experimental work that brought great discoveries, and even more failures, but I had to learn somehow, and what is better than learning from your own mistakes?

Could you stay in the Studio by yourself, without the help of the sound engineer?

Often I stayed in the Studio at night and, if I could, worked until the very morning. I stumbled upon a technical problem, I gave up working on this part of the composition and worked on others until I asked for help the next day. Due to my experience in sound design, I could handle some of the gear, but there were situations when I had to ask Wojciech Makowski or Tadeusz Sudnik for support. Sudnik and I later became friends, as we shared a passion for live electronics. There was a tradition of composer-engineer cooperation in the studio, and this way, in the 70s, Barbara Okoń- Makowska was invited to work with me as an onboard engineer of PRES. Together with Barbara, we worked on and realised a composition titled Robak Zdobywca (1976), and seven miniatures for a string quartet and tape titled Dorikos (1985). Later, after a similar cooperation with Ewa Guziołek-Tubelewicz, we have realised a tape composition- Iapis (1985), as well as Utwory w Starym Stylu (1985). Our collaboration was mainly based on dividing the workload in moments, where one person would have to spread the process onto several stages- an extra pair of hands, in these moments, usually solved the problem. Sometimes one person worked as a performer of a certain track, and the other was responsible for maintaining the volume levels, sound spatialisation, timbre, etc. It was a natural and friendly collaboration, in which we both learned studio technologies, their good and bad sides.

And what about the KEW group, which was a collective idea?

KEW was a creative group working together on clear and democratic principles- all the decisions were made together, together we all worked in the studio. Since both I and Elżbieta [Elżbieta Sikora] previously graduated from a sound design course, we had no problems using the equipment. Moreover, Elżbieta graduated from music concrete courses in Paris, organised by Pierre Scheffer, so we all profited from her experiences while working on compositions titled Drugi Poemat Tajemny (1974), W Tatrach (1975), or Strefy Przylegania (1975) that was born from a collective piano improvisation. 4 of 6 Tales of PRES

Collective and performative work in the field of electroacoustic music is essentially a discovery of the second wave of composers. Do you have any theory on why the first generation of composers did not partake in such endeavours?

We were good friends before, but we became best friends after we started working together. That eases the connection. Furthermore, we felt an urge to create a dialogue in the dimension of electronic music- a common improvisation, but without the jazz roots. More and more groups were emerging in the world, maybe even it became a fashion- also during the Warsaw Autumn Festival, where more and more groups performed every year. Perhaps it was also influenced by social transformations of the West- the appearance of hippie culture, and new cultural phenomenons.

Have these actions distanced you from the first generation of PRES?

What we have been doing in the studio was far from the work of our professors. We were not creating any artistic manifestos, nor we were referring to previously known music genres or creative techniques. We worked without initial plans or scores, there were no goals to achieve, nor a method that we had to use. We have been applying our own knowledge of the field of aesthetic and technology, informally. Compositions were shaped throughout the process of creating them. To be honest, there was more creative fun with sounds, limited by our sense of form and artistic taste, than an urge to create a collaborative “opus magnum”.

Józef Patkowski, when speaking about the studio, very often described it as an instrument, on which composers are creating their pieces. That is an interesting point to make not only in regards to composers but also to instrumentalists that you also were…

I agree with this statement. As previously mentioned, since the very beginning of my journey with the studio, I have been treating it as a workshop, a technologically advanced instrument. Józef Patkowski’s views on the studio were very familiar to me, as I have spent more than a year living at his house with my wife on Kaliska street. My wife Weronika was a great violinist and a performer of modern music. Many dinners with Józef, hours of conversations about art, aesthetic, listening to music together were all a part of my learning. One day I and Józef decided to start doing morning exercises together, so every morning I came to his room and we started stretching. We all remembered some things from school times and saw some exercises on a TV. Such sessions lasted a year until we finally got our place. Sometimes I could spend the whole night on writing scores, that was the time of my intensive studies in composition, while at the same time attending Fortran programming courses, learning logic at the Warsaw University, and some lessons of applied mathematics at the Polish Academy of Sciences. The time for score writing was during the night. One of such nights, when Józef saw me in my room at sunrise, he said: “Krzysztof, put a dot where you just finished, sometimes it is the best you can do for the music”. I do not remember if it was good for the music, but it certainly was great for me, as it gave me some time to rest before the day started again.

What was Patkowski’s approach to the NSME? [Niezależne Studio Muzyki Elektroakustycznej/ Independent Studio for Electronic Music] And was it different than the one to the PRES?

There was no intention to create something competitive to the PRES during the martial law. It was our decision, mainly mine and Andrzej Bieżan’s, to create a team that did not belong to any authority, nor have ties with the Ministry of Culture, nor any other institution. What we wanted was the opposite, we wanted to form an association of independent creators and musicians. We also wanted to say this with our name- the Independent Studio of Electroacoustic Music, referring to 5 of 6 Tales of PRES independent workers’ unions. When one of the members, Leszek Woźniakiewicz, called me once when the phone lines were on again after the martial law, and a message: “this is a controlled call”(for younger readers- that is not a joke, it was real), he asked me- “is this the Studio of Independent Electroacoustic Music?”, as a joke. Such a small change gave a name equally serious to the original one. Józef Patkowski supported our studio in the spirit and financially, as well as through lending us an AKS synth, that he received one time as a gift from its maker- Peter Zinovieff. The agreement was, that, due to the political situation in Poland, we will not appear on any regime media, and all our concerts will take place in private places and churches, where, during martial law, artistic life started to bloom. Our activity lasted for two years, and our last concerts took place in institutional places, such as at the “Inventionen” Festival in West Berlin (this is also thanks to Patkowski), at the French Institute in Poland, and finally, at the chamber hall of the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, where, together with Akademia Ruchu- a theatre group, we organised a performative installation.

There is a paradox in the existence of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, since its very beginning. The studio was a space of creative freedom, but also an institution serving orders to the authoritarian regime. How did your, and your colleagues approach towards PRES change in the 80s, after the martial law was implemented, and Józef Patkowski’s forced dismissal from the studio?

I do not know any works of the Experimental Studio, that served as an order from the authoritarian regime! It was quite the opposite- couple compositions, in a subtle but clear way, criticised the communist regime. And if it comes to Patkowski’s dismissal, it was, in my opinion, the authorities’ revenge for his decision, as the head of the Union of Polish Composers during the martial law, cancelled the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1982. The authorities were only waiting for him to step from the head position of the union, so they could immediately dismiss Patkowski from the PRES as well.

The 80s and 90s is the time of your big involvement in groups promoting the broadly described electroacoustic music: NSME, Go-Go, Beuys-Band, Pociag Towarowy. Was it due to personal growth?

It was mainly my need for contact with other musicians, free improvisation, looking for new inspirations and creative sources. Since the very beginning of my journey with PRES, I have been working both in teams and by myself. Drugi Poemat of the KEW group was shown at the Warsaw Autumn, even before my solo debut at the festival. Collaborative work is a rest from working alone and vice versa.

Have you ever thought that the mission of PRES is long gone, given the political and technological changes?

I have never thought that the Experimental Studio was unnecessary. I consider it as a very important place for creative meetings, also in an educational sense. It could still function in this way until today, for younger creatives. But yes, the radio is more and more miserable, with much of its functions emerging to computer studios. The instruments and computer software is getting cheaper, and one could easily build their own home studio. What has changed is the size of things and ways of interacting with instruments. My Yamaha DX7 synthesiser, which I still own, can now be played on iPhone. Same with multichannel mixers and recorders- everyone can get an app on their phone and compose multichannel compositions… only the size of the screen, but we got iPads for that! It is a fact, everyone can realise electronic compositions at home, outside, or at the beach, but the key is in value, talent, imagination and a soul for music.

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