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 Michał Breńko

Affects of the electronic music from PRES. Jan Topolski

Opening remarks: creators, topics, genres

One of the main reason of existing, and financing Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES) was the audio production of radio plays, broadcasts, cinema movies, and later, television movies. Regarding to second field, within the first two decades of the existence of PRES, the number of films adds up to at least one hundred fifty, twenty of which are full-length. How to describe this wealth, which is co-created by few composers and a dozen of producers? We can follow the genres, which will lead us to the fundamental division between animation, documentary and drama. First one creates a fairly numerous collection, in which it is worth to distinguish the repertoire for kids and the experimental one, in between surrealism and abstraction (although there are titles that belong to both subsets). In the second one it is not possible not to notice a quite big group of movies about artists (mostly contemporary), history (mostly tragic) or sports (a certain surprise). Finally, science fiction and fantasy dominates in the third one, although one can also find some drama and others choices. Close relationship of the PRES and cinema starts from the very beginning of the Polish electronic music. In 1958, Włodzimierz Kotoński created the sound setting to Albo rybka (1958), directed by Hanna Bielińska and Włodzimierz Haupeg. A year later, Kotoński assembled the legendary Etiuda na jedno uderzenie w talerz, from the unused movie-sound scraps. Already in 1961, Zofia Lissa

1 of 16 Tales of PRES was writing about film and music in her article Muzyka w polskich filmach eksperymentalnych, which remains relevant to this day:

Here, the prepared sound material is the equivalent of a completely unrealistic, also peculiarly "prepared" layer of presented objects, with pseudo-human mutual relations, and such pseudo- human "emotions" (...). The music, emphasising on their pseudo-emotions, only increases the monstrosity, not to mention the monstrosity of the "moral thesis" of the entire movie (the beloved one sold for a fish). Music for film was a safe training ground for many composers and engineers, who were just at the beginning of their adventure with electroacoustic music, on which they could try out new techniques. Cut-out, collage and puppet film gained a significant importance, with achievements like Dom by Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica (1958, music by Włodzimierz Kotoński), Słodkie rytmy by Kazimierz Urbański (1965, music by Krzysztof Penderecki) and Zupa by Zbigniew Rybczyński (1974, music by Eugeniusz Rudnik). A series of grotesques by Mirosław Kijowicz and Jerzy Kalina with music by Eugeniusz Rudnik and Bohdan Mazurek also stands out, as well as a tribute paid to Mazurek by Julian Józef Antonisz in Polska Kronika Non-Camerowa nr 8 (1985), or the one-time, but an impactful intersection of trails with The Film Form Studio (Prostokąt dynamiczny by Józef Robakowski, 1971).

In the field of documentaries, in addition to the aforementioned themes, we can notice: historical (war and jewish), journalistic (agrarian, cybernetic, informative) with gems such as Komputery (1967) by young Krzysztof Zanussi, or advertisements by Maria Kwiatkowska. Short films about twentieth-century artists, such as Abakany (directed by Kazimierz Mucha, music by Bogusław Schaeffer, 1970, or concerning the ills of communist architecture, like Środek drogi (by Piotr Andrejew, music by Eugeniusz Rudnik, 1974), often become autonomous works of art. In regards to the full-length movies, electroacoustic music was the most eagerly used in science fiction, including co-productions: with the East Germany (Milcząca gwiazda, directed by Kurt Maetzig, music by Andrzej Markowski and Krzysztof Szlifirski, 1960), or the Soviets (Test pilota Pirxa, directed by Marek Piestrak, music by Arvo Pärt i Eugeniusz Rudnik, 1978). Symbolic story lines and imaginative staging also stands out, such as in Docent H. by Janusz Majewski (1964, premiere in 1968), System (1971) with music by Bohdan Mazurek and Eugeniusz Rudnik, the fame gained by Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie (directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has, music by Krzysztof Penderecki, 1965) and Wesele (directed by Andrzej Wajda, music by Stanisław Radwan and Eugeniusz Rudnik, 1973).

Music plays a number of roles in these films, beginning with purely formal ones, such as synchronisation of audio and video in Podróż (directed by Daniel Szczechura, music by Eugeniusz

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Rudnik, 1970), augmentation of sounds in Spacerek staromiejski (directed by Andrzej Munk, music by Andrzej Markowski, 1958), or slowing down movements and sound in Pojedynek (directed by Janusz Majewski, music by Eugeniusz Rudnik, 1964). Concerning the content, music sometimes takes over the narrative function, in the absence of dialogues and commentary (Kosmogonia, directed by Danuta Adamska-Strus, music by Eugeniusz Rudnik, 1974), but it can also suggest various connections, including those related to specific sounds (Nowy Janko Muzykant, directed by Jan Lenica, music by Włodzimierz Kotoński, 1960), symbols, or a form of quotes (Don Juan, directed by Jerzy Zitzman, music by Krzysztof Penderecki, 1963). In movies of cosmic themes, in the sphere of emotions, we usually deal with the exciting, or alienating function of the sound (Wielka, większa, największa, directed by Anna Sokołowska, music by Andrzej Markowski, 1963), or sharply counterpointing the image (Życie jest piękne, directed by Tadeusz Makarczyński, music by Andrzej Markowski, 1957). Andrzej Chłopecki beautifully summed it up in his article concerning Krzysztof Penderecki’s film work in 1974: Basic musical operation exists in a form of a naturalistic illustration. We come across it in Scyzoryk, and it is realised by means of electronic, concrete and, to a large extent instrumental, transformed music. (…) some acoustic effects accompany sawing of the tree, piercing of a ping pong ball, or chestnuts falling out of the bag, all in a naturalistic way. In addition to naturalistic illustration, there is the unreal illustration, consisting of the exaggeration of natural sound, emphasising on grotesque situations, or reflecting the character of the phenomenon, rather than the phenomenon itself. This is the case in the illustration of the train ride or the bath in the aquarium in Scyzoryk, it escalates even more in the battle scene, in the Koncert Wawelski, where the crisscrossing images of a knightly armor are accompanied by crunches and grumbles, reflecting, in a deformed way, the characteristic colour quality of the events, their tone, rather than their acoustic fidelity. What happens here is that character of the sound and rhythmic qualities that adhere to the phenomena of visual movements.

Towards the affects

This article is not going to be another thematic review, functional analysis, chronologic description or set of anecdotes. I propose to look at the topic with the double-anachronistic approach, and refresh, stylish in the baroque times, theory of affects and its new embodiment in the age of the silent cinema accompaniment. Initially music philosophers used to outdo each other in creating compendiums that consisted of the music affect theory, just to mention Sententiae de Musica St. Isidor from Sevilia (VI/VII c.) and Complexus viginti effectuum nobilis artis musices by Johannes Tinctoris 3 of 16 Tales of PRES

(XV/XVI c.). In addition to the obvious task of promoting faith, both treaties also speak of alleviating hardship, healing of the sick, encouraging to fight, stimulating of love (and other states), cheering people up, lifting up earthly minds and souls. Baroque went one step further in elaborating this type of action, not without referring to ancient philosophers and their distinctions in scales and instruments (Platon and his successors). This consideration was implemented on the thriving fields of harmony and melody. Researchers and practitioners, like Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Enric Fubini, share similar opinion, that this type of affect theory, mentioned in meticulous descriptions by for example Johann Mattheson in Der vollkommene Capellmeister in 1739, has been a determining thought for artists of that time, and decided about opera accompaniment techniques.

Although the later periods have significantly weakened the consensus about the importance of individual sounds, chords or intervals, some elements remained in tonal music. When the avantgarde began to attack the old harmony, these elements moved to silent cinema music. Publishers of sheet music were racing in printing the sheet music of anthologies of the photoplay albums, for tapers who were accompanying new pictures on piano, organs or in different setups. The key to the track layout, often copied carelessly from the classics, was the affect, which was meant to be felt within the audience. For example, in Motion Picture Moods, compiled by Ernö Rapé in 1925, for a scene with an airplane, it is recommended to use Rondo Capriccioso by Mendelssohn, while for a scene with the storm - Powrót Peer Gynta. Burzliwy wieczór na morzu by Grieg. Frederick Noyes wrote various varieties of the Light (for anxiety, agitation, fear), Heavy (for fights) and Agitato (for rebellions, fights and escapes), for The „Hawkes” Photo-Play Series in 1922. From the standard affect procedures, we can name arpeggios with basso ostinato from a wind instrument, or frequently repeated tremolos, with an accompaniment of a bass pizzicato, frequent crescendos, and decreasing passages.

What has is it all got do with the experimental and innovative electroacoustic music from the second half of the XX century? Well, I dear to claim that it has a lot of in common, and that directors from the films’ most diverse genres used to come to PRES if they needed very specific affects, to accompany images and stories they invented. Of course, there have been agreements where both, the composer, and the engineer, searched for autonomously interesting sounds and waveforms. However, in most cases, it was all about quite simple results, which becomes clear as you listen to soundtracks that were increasingly, routinely assembled in the Studio. Although these desirable moods can most generally be described as terror, alienation, unusualness, for the purposes of this article I would suggest listing, even if slightly speculated and never explicitly expressed, a more detailed list of potential affects of electronic music. Each time I will give

4 of 16 Tales of PRES numerous examples of titles, and for the sake of detail, also individual scenes, sounds and quotes from soundtracks.

Fantastic visions

I don’t understand... At such a short distance, the radar rays should penetrate the densest clouds! Meanwhile, only strange flashes have been visible for an hour. There is one explanation: the air layers in this area are ionised. Radiation? Of course! Are they trying to attack us? What about Brinkmann? I can't help it ... If we want to find Brinkmann, we have to go lower - under the clouds!

In the background, there are mysterious hues and noises that even give way to chirping, increasing pulsation, and a processed voice. Under the cloudy atmosphere of Venus, without communication with the mother ship named Kosmokrator, it is the lone cosmonaut Brinkmann, and the self-propelled robot Omega who struggle with increasing radiation ... At some point there is some noise, some crackles, and next, live-modulated glissandos and ascending series of straight tones emerged, that seem to be coming from mysterious jumping objects. Could it be the inhabitants of the planet Venus? The sounds somewhat recall the soundscape of a jungle, with chirps of birds, and shouts of monkeys, but are definitely synthetic in nature. As the rest of the crew lands, the seemingly static, but still pulsating, ambient and the echo that surrounds the dialogues returns. In the next scene, the cosmonauts see a mysterious white sphere accompanied by a growing, harmonic multi-tone. You can imagine the electrifying effect on the audience of the Eastern Bloc in 1959 such peculiar music. To this day these sounds remain exotic, disturbing, weird, in one word: fantastic. Somewhat crude in its internationalism, The Silent Star by Kurt Maetzig based on Stanisław Lem's Astronauts was the first in a series of his film adaptations, from which not every film was approved by the author. Next appeared Wycieczka w kosmos (1961) and Pułapka (1962), short animations for children by Krzysztof Dębowski and Krzysztof Penderecki, but, unfortunately, they are quite forgotten today. Then the cinema asked for hits - Ijon Ticheg in a TV etude (Przyjaciel by Marek Nowicki and Jerzy Stawicki with music by Eugeniusz Rudnik, 1965), and a fragment of Cyberiada in a visually interesting form (Jerzy Zitzman's Trurl Machine, 1975). The soundtrack was composed - unknown in the context of the Studio - by Antoni Mleczko, who already did commercials for big companies like ELWRO and PKO, then Pampalini's series adventures. The film adaptations of Lem include the medium-length comedy “Przekładaniec" (1967), based on the

5 of 16 Tales of PRES short story Czy pan istnieje, Mr Johns?, a great festival success directed by Andrzej Wajda himself, with music by Andrzej Markowski: usually jazz, but not without electronic pulsations.

Finally, the iconic Pirx Pilot Test (1978) by Marek Piestrak, who, under the pressure from the co- production with Tallinnfilm, hired a truly exotic duo: Arvo Pärt and Eugeniusz Rudnik! Most of the time, the division of tasks between the gentlemen seems clear: first one is of course responsible for the orchestral-percussion theme of the opening lines and major fanfares, and the latter for all the squeals and knocks that are provided by a routine flight with an unusual crew of androids. The disco scene, that Commander Pirx visits before departure (juicy electro swing!), and all the general shots of the ship (motors illustrated with amplitude modulation), and its risky passage through the rings of Saturn (a very refined string of noise), are particularly remarkable.

Underlines the uniqueness and strangeness

It can be said without exaggeration that the fantasy theme was dominant in feature films with music from PRES in the 1950s and 1960s, and its subsequent lack is only due to the disappearance of this genre in Polish cinema production. In this area, the attention is drawn to the story of an artificial man, which runs through Przekładaniec and Przyjaciel, and comes to the foreground in the, lesser-known, No. 00173 (directed by Jan Habart with music by Eugeniusz Rudnik, 1966). His mysterious-comedy edition can be seen, as he returns in Docent H. by the master stylist, Janusz Majewski, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story takes place in an unspecified time, in the run-down house of Professor Foss, who is urgently looking for an assistant, but when his former student Traumer shows up, he does not seem to be fully mentally capable. He does not read cultural codes, is surprised by obvious objects and he tangles up in encyclopaedia and dictionary definitions:

Do you remember when I visited you for the first time? You were holding some strange object in your hand ... wooden, I guess. It consisted of two parts, you were making some sounds of different pitches with it. I do not understand! You mean the violin !? Violin !? Traumer, what's the matter with you? Well, I was playing the violin. [off] A moron! What a moron! Substantially. Jan Sebastian Bach, 1685–1750. Asymmetrical polyphony, sonata for solo violin, concert, allegro, larghetto, modulation fugue, harmony phrase -... Sorry, professor. It is... the exhaustion.

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The voice from outside the frame turns out to be, the titled assistant-humanoid, Docent H., who carries out his plan to exterminate and transplant the professor's mind. As soon as the word "violin" is spoken, soundtrack turns into squeals and impulses from the command centre, resembling those of jamming machinery. The professor's figure is seen in the monitor, we hear the voice from a distance. As the assistant begins to recite Bach's biography, the situation calms down, and the Toccata d-moll emerging from the record on the piano in the next scene becomes a kind of summary. Traumer listens to it, but Foss hits the shoulder of the camera, causing it to jar. Then, as if provoking the assistant for another collapse, the professor invites him to sit by the fireplace, spreading a vision of home and safety, that a burning fire offers. The humanoid begins to recite the chemical composition of the wood, but when he realises that it is "inhumanly sad", strange sounds begin again: echoes from the reverberation camera, repeated pulses and murmurs. At first, their source seems familiar, something like a piano stretched in time and distorted pianoforte, but soon it resonates. Similarly, music distorts seemingly realistic or believable situations in other films on the verge of drama and fantasy, even if the sound lasts for a short time. These are, for example, Czułe miejsca (1979), a dystopian story about a contaminated world of perishable devices directed by Piotr Andrejew with sounds by Lech Brański (orchestra) and Eugeniusz Rudnik (electronics). The main character is a kind and skilful contractor, that gets into random relationships with women, after his girlfriend abandoned him for a more viable TV producer. In the finale, she is supposed to be naked in a big show, but the obsession of an abandoned lover, driven by electroacoustic murmurs, leads to misfortune. In Kocham cię, kocham cię (1968), a somewhat confusing story of a failed experiment with time travel, directed by the new wave master Alain Resnais, is accompanied by fragments of Penderecki's choral music, sometimes only delicately processed in the Studio. For sure his name became famous in the West by the soundtrack to Saragossa Manuscript (1964), a box-case adaptation of Jan Potocki's novel, where the composer combined historicising and electronic music.

Electronic music accompanies the scenes around the gallows, which act as a kind of gate between the dimensions and levels of the story, taking Alons van Worden into many adventures and time loops. In one of the tracks, Penderecki uses a careful amount of sound drops, based on simple tones; in another he plays with the resonances of quasi-acoustic sounds; in the third, the echoes of voices and laughter. In all these cases it is precisely about emphasising the extraordinary nature of seemingly ordinary, simple sounds, which character is clearly concrete; the composer proceeds similarly with the orchestral overture, in which he smuggles a quotation from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. This strategy of deforming a known material is common to composers as diverse as Włodzimierz Kotoński (Nowy Janko Muzykant, 1960) and Eugeniusz Rudnik (Bing Bang, 1986). This last path, accompanying Andrzej Kondratiuk's peculiar comedy

7 of 16 Tales of PRES about a UFO visit in the Polish countryside, is dominated by synthetic sound planes. Their character contrasts with the dynamic dialogues and sounds, making them even more strange, as do the humming repetitions accompanying the flashes of eyes in the photographs of dictators in Witkacego wywoływanie duchów (directed by Kazimierz Urbański, mus. Ryszard Szeremeta and Krzysztof Szlifirski, 1989).

Fear-awakening

This uniqueness can easily turn into terror. Both parts of the scenes from Milcząca gwiazda and The Saragossa Manuscript, where electroacoustic music resounds, are the beginning of a horror film. This happens much less frequently than in Hollywood cinema, which since the 1970s, designated William Friedkin's Exorcist and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, liked to use contemporary music for this purpose (also by Krzysztof Penderecki). There are even PhDs about the modern embodiment of the theory of affects in music evoking a sense of horror, where specific features are mentioned, such as extreme registers, contrasting editing, glissandos, or sound planes. Interestingly, the few Polish film horror films - if we take the tries of Marek Piestrak in Wilczyca or Jacek Koprowicz in Medium seriously - did that without modern soundtracks. One exception is Janusz Majewski, who, year after year, directed the feature-length Lokis, Rękopis profesora Wittembacha (1970), a gothic story about a werewolf from Samogitian swamps, and a medium-length one System dla telewizji (1971, premiered 1981). The music for the last one was written by Bohdan Mazurek, but unfortunately it sounds remarkably like snapshots, although electronic sounds seem to have a considerable potential for causing discomfort - how relevant to the history of a reporter getting involved in an ambiguous situation in a psychiatric hospital. The sense of danger can be found in the children's animation Bazyliszek (1962), directed by the experienced duo, Leokadia Serafinowicz and Wojciech Wieczorkiewicz, with music by Penderecki. Although the topic suggests a mirthless story, and the sight of black and white puppets in a plasticine world does not make you feel optimistic, everything is conquered by obsessive repetitions, high whistles, rhythmic twittering, percussion cascades and a crescendo of noise. Young heroes roam the city at night, encountering various spooks, animating statues, flying signboards, and opening secret passages. All of this is illuminated by a spotlight and accompanied with intense, dissonant sounds of frenetic, irregular rhythms. It awakens the soul for adventure, it makes you laugh It must be admitted that from the 1960s to the 1980s, electronic music in general made a dizzying career in Polish cinematography for children and youth. This phenomenon can be observed since the two films by Leszek Lorek with the music by Krzysztof Penderecki – Scyzoryk (1960) and Pikusiowe figielki (1961) – two illustrations by Bohdan Mazurek to the animated Dziwnych dziwów, in other words „Baśni o Korsarzu Palemonie” by Jan Brzechwa (Krzysztof Dębowski, 8 of 16 Tales of PRES

1986), and a future film Pan Kleks w kosmosie (Krzysztof Gradowski, 1988). The latter is probably the most popular film with music from the PRES, although it is only a spicy addition to Andrzej Korzyński's musical numbers. The first scene with its use is the appearance of the MBM computer in a children's home and the impulses, simple tones and hums it generates that begin this extraordinary memory of the future. The sounds take us to the deck of the Argo 1417, but soon to turn into the accompaniment of ostinato, and background noise, in the palace following the ship. The repetitive rhythm fades once and then reappears to explode in the alert signals of an intercepted freighter, or an amplitude modulation, as it steals its cargo. In general, electronics in Pan Kleks are ubiquitous: from processed voices, through synthesised tracks of Korzyński's songs, to all the background sounds of the command centre, spaceships, and numerous robots. In one of the most interesting scenes, in terms of sound, children from the robot cemetery go to the nature reserve, using the plankton train. There are ambient murmurs and oscillations, crackles smeared with reverberations, pretending to sync to the driving sequence and giving way to the synthetic soundscape of the forest.

This thread of a fantastic journey towards new, exciting adventures is the common theme of many youth films with electronic music, it appears for the first time in 1962, in the screening of Jerzy Broszkiewicz's book. Wielka, większa i największa, directed by Anna Sokołowska. The epithets in the title refer to the subsequent holiday adventures of siblings Ika and Groszek, who get on board a spherical spacecraft and land on an unknown planet, whose spectacular scenery was created by Bolesław Kamykowski. At this point, electronic music comes into play, replacing the earlier orchestra, although both are the responsibility of one Andrzej Markowski. Although the means at his disposal here were much more limited than those used by Bohdan Mazurek. A quarter of a century later, no limitations are heard at all. The ship itself appears on the beach, as so electronic modulations smoothly emerge from the white noise of the sea (a great idea!)

The flight sequence is accompanied by vast sound planes of harmonically arranged straight tones and delicate reverberations. When Ika and Groszek finally reach the "empty as the Parade Square" planet, under Vega's two suns Orioxa, there emerge more enclosed crashes and pulses placed in spatial pallet sound. To emphasise on these fantastic landscapes, important roles are in lot of echo, enveloping, strange noises - kind of breaths, knocks and murmurs, harp and percussion - in a kind of warp.

The entire adventure takes nearly twenty minutes of minutes and in most is accompanied by its intense sound path, which is one of the most ambitious illustration from the beginning of the action of PRES. Luckily, in the end Ika and Groszek, appearing in a kind of reality show, convinced seven thousand delegates of the Extraordinary Congress of Vegans that Earth is a "planet of hope"...

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Underlines the tragedy

Trzeba zabic tę miłosc (1972) is a realistic, and sometimes even documentary, melodrama directed by Janusz Morgenstern, with music by Bohdan Mazurek. The main plot is the adventure of a young couple, not admitted to university and coping in various ways with the need to rent a private accommodation, earning money and maintaining their relationship.

As a kind of refrain, there is the theme of the guardian of one of the numerous socialist construction sites, as interpreted by the unfailing Jan Himilsbach, to whom persistently comes a trusting mongrel. It is these sequences that are accompanied by Mazurek's heavily noisy electronics, with their sweeping planes and reverberations, creating an unreal space, in contrast to the rest of the story. It is particularly sharply marked in the middle of the film, when an exceptionally happy character, played by the young Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak, dances to Mozart’s overtures. At its end, there is a dissonant barking of a dog, which carries the action into the said construction site. A problem arises, when the caretaker, who earns his living by helping his mates steal public property, is disturbed by a four-legged friend. Finally, Himilsbach, with an unmissable cigarette in the corner of his mouth, runs into a solution: ties a ring of dynamite, found in the storeroom, around the dog's neck and light the fuse. Of course, the function of this refrain is a metaphor for the toxic love between the two main characters, with all the dialectic of devotion, fidelity and betrayal, which conquers the abstract, and a-documentary, electronic music.

If you trace its use [electronic music] in other realistic or historical films, then some equally tragic themes will come to the fore. The precursor to this was undoubtedly Życie jest piękne (dir. Tadeusz Makarczynski, mus. Andrzej Markowski, 1957), where an ironic collage of hits accompanies scenes of war, in accordance with Chion's principle of dissimilation. Then the subject of the Holocaust appeared in films such as Stacja Oświęcim (dir. Maria Kwiatkowska, mus. Krzysztof Szlifirski and Józef Patkowski, 1960), and Pożegnanie z Maria (dir. Jerzy Antczak, mus. Eugeniusz Rudnik, 1966). The tragic story will appear also in the subsequent films, musicalised by Rudnik: Akademia zbrodni (Waldemar Karwat, 1994) about Gulags on the Solovetskiy Islands, Tama 1984- 1991 for Popiełuszko (Jerzy Kalina, 1993) and Jorcajt on the Jewish Tzadik (Zuzanna Solakiewicz, 2012). In all these cases Rudnik stood to the challenge of the themes of terror, suffering and extermination, solitude, resulting in wide and low ambient landscapes of Akademia Zbrodni and the disturbing interventions in Pożegnanie z Marią. In contrast, probably, extra-musical sympathies and convictions prompted Bohdan Mazurek to illustrate the television film Łupaszko (Mariusz Pietrowski, 2000) about one of the outlawed soldiers, Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz. Its soundtrack here is extremely discreet, often accompanying as an unusual accompaniment of statements by participants in the document, with considerable involving concrete sounds.

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In this area of documentary cinema, there are numerous interventionist mediums Grazyna Kedzielawska's poems about people with disabilities (e.g. Bezdomna miłość, 1997), Jaroslaw Kusza's film about young nurses (Panienki, 1980), as well as an etude about the inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh by a prominent contemporary documentary filmmaker Marcin Sauter (Rodnik, 2014) - all with music by Eugeniusz Rudnik. In turn, a modest "artistic impression on the subject of man's struggle with the elements", the first the work of animator Krzysztof Raynoch (Ludzie, 1968) was illustrated by the inseparable duo - Kazimierz Szlifirski and Józef Patkowski. Sometimes you have to admit that electronic music was only an ornament of the soundtrack, in the dominant part instrumental and composed by another artist. Such a tandem Lech Branski - Eugeniusz Rudnik often cooperated with Piotr Andrejew, also on Klincz (1979), his feature film debut. The film was part of the cinema of moral anxiety, telling the story of an idealistic boxer discovering a world of already-set fights.

Awakens existential reflections

Film scholars distinguish in the Polish animation of the 60s. and 70s. as a strong philosophical and reflective current, manifesting itself in aphoristic films with an expressive point, usually visually sparse, and at the same time grotesque in their expression. At first, by Mirosław Kijowicz, Daniel Szczechura and then Jerzy Kucia and Jerzy Kalina, although not all of them cooperated regularly with the Polish Radio Experimental Studio. Most of the soundtracks were created, as usual, by Bohdan Mazurek and Eugeniusz Rudnik, with the exception of Mały… Duży… największy by Stefan Janik from 1966 (Włodzimierz Kotonski) as well as Jerzy Kalina's Ptaszyzm from 1978 (Krzystof Knittel). The main character of these animated metaphors for adults is usually the individual in clash with a system or society, and imposing on them more or less absurd and oppressive rules. In Kartoteka (The Card Index) (Witold Giersz based on Tadeusz Rózewicz, 1966) are entries for each letter, while in the Chart (Daniel Szczechura, 1965), scheme is spreading throughout the world; in both music full of impulses, samples and onomatopoeias were composed by Eugeniusz Rudnik. Three more Kalina's films with electronics by various composers - Ptaszyzm, Obrabiarka and Esperalia - these ask questions about the meaning of life, in the face of the domination of machines, and confrontation with death. In turn, Miroslaw Kijowicz is fond of pulling out essences and anecdotes from life scenes in Miniatury (1968), Panopticum (1968) and A-B (1975), looking in particular at cruelty and hypocrisy.

For the latter, the music was created by Mazurek, similarly to Ręka (1974), where specific whispers appear as if in the head of the cartoon character, and drive him crazy. Rudnik had a special relationship with Szczechura, and for the surrealistic, short movie Hobby, he has created a soundtrack based on high frequencies, quite different from its other productions. The main character here is a monstrous woman, usually crocheting on a chair, and sometimes catching on the tangle of flying men, like butterflies. In the initial phase of the film, this is accompanied by a

11 of 16 Tales of PRES composition based on the intrinsic chirping and pulsating base, and the incoming pulses and clicks. It turns out that the captured men are kept in birdcages, and when a woman visits them, the bourdon is overlaid by the rhythm of their hitting the preteens. Halfway through the film, there is an uneasy silence, and a rhythm reminiscent of bass pizzicato, which then is turned into an electronic flapping of wings of released prisoners, that smoothly turns into a glitchy, and complex noise. The overseer is left alone in a world of empty cages, and then on a crochet chair, what is accompanied again by a chirpy sound, though this time in decidedly higher register. Rudnik hardly uses concrete or onomatopoeic effects here- except perhaps for the aforementioned blows protesting prisoners, and the scene where one of the men notices an abandoned convertible, he flies by it and gets in, folding his wings with a flutter. All the music remains ascetic, even minimalist, very serious and solemn.

Warning against the future

There are also tangles of affects, overlaps of meaning - as in this group of films which combines pessimism or tragedy, with a vision of the future, or a current manifesto. Sometimes this was done as a preventive measure, as in the animated "poster intervention against the scourges of alcoholism" by Jerzy Kotowski (Brzytwa po szkle, 1974). Other times, for educational purposes, as in a series of short scenes (Troche..., 1975) on politeness, diligence, thriftiness, punctuality and other virtues in the view of Krzysztof Dębowski, known for his numerous animations for children. In both, the music of Eugeniusz Rudnik gains on sharpness and disharmony, highlighting dissonances in social life and proves to be more powerful than any orchestra.

An interesting group of intervention films are those devoted to ecology, from which ideas both Mazurek and Rudnik probably agreed with. The most direct results can be found in the documentary Umieranie rzeki (Stanislaw Trzaska, 1990) about the polluted Narew River and the animation W trawie (Jerzy Kalina, 1974), about garbage gradually eating all the green. The latter is accompanied by the music of Bohdan Mazurek, sometimes dangerous, and sometimes recycled from for e.g. noises of communication, or old melodies. Similar ecological animations were also directed by filmmakers who are not usually involved in this subject, such as Stanisław Lenartowicz, known for his formal experiments (Martwa natura z ptakiem / Still Life with Bird, 1992, music. Eugeniusz Rudnik). Grzegorz Skurski is different, in the 1980s he specialised in documentary-portraits, looking for opportunities for existential reflection in everyday life. His Po górach, dolinach (2003), opposing the tendencies of global and mass communication, refers in its title to a Marian song, which Bohdan Mazurek also used.

Sometimes the confrontation of the old and the new, the village with the city, becomes the main theme. For example, Sad (1982), one of the many animations by Bogdan Nowicki and music by Bohdan Mazurek, can be read as an ecological, but satire warning against the harmful effects of chemical fertilisers. The clash of traditional and innovative techniques is also the subject of Pan 12 of 16 Tales of PRES

Polny (1975). An early documentary by Piotr Andrev with a soundtrack by Lech Branski and Eugeniusz Rudnik. Also in the animated Agrotechnika (1982) by Leszek Marek Galosz, the health of the crops is in decline, watched over by macabre robotic devices, one of which finally reads the manifesto of... the Agricultural Revolution. A small masterpiece on this subject is undoubtedly Nowy Janko Muzykant (1960) by Jan Lenica, with music by Włodzimierz Kotonski, a collage with processed concrete sounds and a pipe song. Electronic deformations become a warning here, through their blatantly anti-natural character, exposing the temptations to the current model life with all its negative consequences. The most readable is the aphoristic Manhattan (1975) by Mirosław Kijowicz, where a frustrated inhabitant of tall blocks of flats, builds a small hut next to it, and synthetic sounds give way to instrumental ones.

A similar dialectic between two types of sounds can be found in the fascinating and multidimensional film Słodkie rytmy (1964) by Kazimierz Urbanski, with music by Krzysztof Penderecki. Here it all begins with a slowly unfolding, yearning clarinet melody, while we watch an old beekeeper, images of fields, hives, and bees themselves. While more and more elements are scratched onto the tape by an animator, in the music there appears a vibraphone, and finally the electronics, not coincidentally, with an image of a swarm. Penderecki, here, clearly experiments with dense clouds of sounds, oscillations, vibrations, and textures that are not exactly typical for the PRES in these times. Squealing and swarming the chirps, juxtaposed with the "filth" inside the picture, introduce the unrest into the, initially idyllic, world, but also work as a playful take on electronic onomatopoeias. In the finale, when the time comes to harvest and process the honey, instruments take us back to reality, as if after some miraculous journey.

Evokes the past

Electronic music performed by true virtuosos can not only shape the sounds of the future, but can also evoke the past. Erudite SEPR composers not infrequently did so, often suggesting quotations, such as Kotonski in the aforementioned Nowy Janek Muzykant or Rudnik in Szychta, ingeniously produced by Jerzy Kalina and Janusz Skora (1988). The animations bring to life images and patterns from Polish banknotes, such as the planets from a thousand Zlotys [old money], with an image of Nicolaus Copernicus, or the proletariat from a hundred Zlotys, which is accompanied by a rhythmic track composed of sliding, and resonant sounds. When the authors come to the five-thousand, and the on the obverse of the score of the Polonaise in F minor Op. 71 No. 3, the corresponding fragment the acoustic piano is accompanied by fiery glances of the figures on the back of banknotes. An interesting case is Penderecki's illustration to Don Juan (Jerzy Zitzman, 1963). The whole thing opens with an instrumental overture, then passing into a dialogue between the hero and one of his chosen ones. Both the voices are increasingly processed, the speed of rotation and the pitch change of sound. Then there is a fight, and specific

13 of 16 Tales of PRES sounds of weapons and a quotation from Dancing with Sables from Khachaturian's ballet Spartacus.

Praises on The Polish People's Republic

The Polish Radio Experimental Studio existed as part of the state-funded radio, with a fairly defined ideology. On the one hand, composers and engineers could work for months on autonomous works, on the other, to justify the existence of the organisation, they sometimes had to make some emergency sound preparations. The People's Republic of Poland called on them for the 25th anniversary of the state (Żeby rosła, zeby piękniała), or the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution (Tak hartowała się stal), or rights to of the sea (Bałtyk... a sprawa polska) or the "reclaimed lands" (Skąd nasz ród). The director of these titles is Krzysztof Debowski, who has made both short films for children as well as social films; the last three feature music by Bohdan Mazurek and Eugeniusz Rudnik.

Of course, other artists did what they could to develop the themes in their own way, like Jerzy Kalina, bringing to life, in the above mentioned Szychta, figure of miners. From today's point of view, of a particular the significance, and of who knows if not the first in the history of the Polish film, the commercials - telephone (Hallo hallo), and light bulb (Swiatlo i dzwiek) realised in 1965 by Marie Kwiatkowska, with the support of the duo Józef Patkowski and Krzysztof Szlifirski. Thanks to the electronic music and its abstract colours, lack of easy associations, basic themes such as the opencast mine in Konin (Czas przemiany), or the report about the country (Polska - czlowiek - ekonomia), gain an aura. This was fully exploited by Petr Andreev, one of the most interesting directors of the 70s and 80s, associated with the cinema of moral concerns (Klincz, Czułe miejsca). His Srodek drogi [Middle of the Road] (1974), a short documentary about the ills of construction and logistics is a true discovery of the film archives associated with the Studio. It shows a trivial problem in a truly epic perspective, thanks to the editing and Rudnik's quasi- synthesiser sounds.

The middle episode of Nowa Muzyka from the Polish Non-camera Chronicle no. 8 1985 Edition A by Julian Józef Antonisz, is a moving a tribute to experimental music - not only in the context of Polish cinema. Sinusoidal and square wave diagrams flow through the screen, behind the knobs, the animated Bohdan Mazurek emerges, and the narrator from off the screen says: "The age of steam has ended, the age of electronics has began. Transistors, resistors and transformers everywhere. Now the basses, trombones and saxophones are going down, because electric synthesisers appeared". Similarly, Solo na ugorze (Jerzy Kalina, 1981) in a raw, black-and-white in the line, t a simple farmer is confronted with pathos a mass song on a soundtrack, intelligently processed by Mazurek. At a certain point, it turns out that ploughing is done on a huge vinyl record with parallel grooves, and its slowing down and stopping simultaneously affects the

14 of 16 Tales of PRES playback of a musical sample. Here it is, the discovery of hip-hop scratch on the ground of Polish animation and electronics!

Shows the beauty of the body and the machine

Documentaries and sport features, with electronic music, is one of the more unexpected clues you may come across while exploring the list of films produced in cooperation with the SEPR. No less surprising is the plethora of directors celebrities who made those films: Bogdan Dziworski, Janusz Majewski and Kazimierz Urbanski. For whom music was created by the inseparable duo Patkowski and Szlifirski. In a beautiful glider flight over the Tatra mountains (1963), sun reflections in glass and on camera are counterpointed by ethereal, electronic sounds. Pojedynek (The Duel) (1964), on the other hand, begins with video of a normal pace, realistic noises, but shortly becomes a fascinating study of the movement of single grains of sound. The great animator Kazimierz Urbanski, in his documentary impression Diabły (1963) focuses on the dynamics of movement and the relationship between man and the machine, taking as example a superbly photographed speedway race, with the accompaniment of Andrzej Markowski.

Emphasises on movement and rhythm

At the end of the list of affects and effects of electronic music it is necessary to mention a few of the purely formal ones announced in the introduction.

In some cases, it was the music itself that gave rhythm to the image, as it happened in the barely two-minute-long and legendary Prostokąt dynamiczny (1971). Eugeniusz Rudnik's early pulsating music enlivens the movements of the titular red figure by Józef Robakowski. A similarly close rhythmic link prevails between sounds and action of a bizarre popular is action screen adaptations of Bruno Schulz's prose (Niebo bez słonca, Jan Rybkowski,1966) or the apparently educational story of the origin of the world (Kosmogonia, Danuta Adamska-Strus, 1974). Daniel Szczechura's and Eugeniusz Rudnik's Podróż (1970), all the elements of the landscape seen behind the train window is rhythmically sounded. Finally, it is worth mentioning Allegro vivace (1964), one of only three independent films by the esteemed stage designer Anatoly Radzinovich, realised in the cut-out technique, and telling about the traditions placed by mechanisation. Significantly, the theme appears in many other animations from that period, including in Nowy Janko Muzykant, Lenica, Kronika fabryki fajansu by Papuziński, or Obierarka by Kalina.

Reflects structure and shapes, magnifies the world

.Electronics from the Studio, like no other means, made it possible not only to return the texture and shape of objects from the real world - which has also been mentioned on the occasion of Lenica's films - but also to enlarge its sound structure. This happened in two film-trips: a noise journey around Lodz, shot in one shot titled Oj! Nie mogę się zatrzymać! (dir. Zbigniew

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Rybczynski, mus. Janusz Hajdun, 1975), and the earlier and kinder Spacerek staromiejski(dir. Andrzej Munk, music. Andrzej Markowski, 1958). The girl cannot focus on her violin lesson, because outside the window she hears much more interesting construction noises. After school, she goes for a walk in the newly rebuilt Warsaw's Old Town: everything interests her, and everything sounds, making up to an extraordinary symphony of everyday sounds: the murmur of water, the clatter of shoemakers' workshops. The usual sounds change smoothly into synthetic, and back again, indistinguishable, the soundscape goes into concrete music, and this into electron music. The topic of augmentation of sound was revisited on Rybczynski's own Soup (1974), an almost erotic film filled with the segregated sounds of everyday life, in which one can see the hand of the master of anecdote, Eugeniusz Rudnik. Rhythmic synchronisation, textural analogies and augmentation of the audio-sphere are, of course, the most direct and often banal effects of electronic music production in the PRES for Polish cinema. It is a different matter for the various affections aroused by its careful, even if only brief, placement in an appropriate visual, textual or narrative context. From evoking the past, highlighting the tragic and fantastic visions, to stimulating adventures and arousing the sense of the extraordinary and danger. As in the Baroque, a whole set of figures - such as ambient sound planes, various modulations, simple tones and multi-tones, noise and pulses - shall be included into a new rhetoric in the service of cinema, however experimental.

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