MONIKA PASIECZNIK POLISH HEROINES OF SOUND Female composers of electroacoustic music In a 2009 issue of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the critic Max Nyffeler noted that Polish contemporary music is strongly represented by women (Nyffeler 2009). Among the fve young Polish composers that were featured, there was only one man. This doesn’t mean, however, that it was always like this. If we look back into the history of Polish electroacoustic music, the statistics are drastically different. I will be focusing on female composers of electronic music, but let me start with a short digression about Grażyna Bacewicz, who throughout the 20th century was the only recognized Polish woman composer, and also a famous violin virtu- oso. She was born in 1909 and died in 1969. After graduating from the National Music Conservatory in Warsaw, Bacewicz continued her studies in 1932 in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Therefore, French neoclassicism had a signifcant impact on her music. Bacewicz’s musical career was unusual considering that women’s rights, and particularly their access to education and public positions, were extremely limited in Poland at the time. In 1918, women in Poland received passive and active voting rights, 1 but they still often needed their husband’s permission to work. The biggest problem was education: Polish girls ended their free and obligatory education at the age of 14, and only the daughters of rich parents could obtain a higher education. Bacewicz, born into a relatively wealthy Polish-Lithuanian musical family, was sent to a private secondary school for girls and received the necessary support for her musical interests. She didn’t have to choose between career and family, and married and had a daughter as well. When Poland became a communist country following the Second World 1 It should be considered that Poland became independent only in 1918, after 123 years of partition. War, equal rights for both genders became an important political aim. Despite pro- found social changes, being a woman composer was still a sensation and cause of distrust among men, which was evident in the words of composer and critic Stefan Kisielewski, an admirer of Bacewicz’s music. He wrote this in 1948 about her Con- certo for string orchestra: ›Here we have at last tasted a red-blooded piece of healthy and tasty music written with male-like creative power‹ (Kisielewski, 1950:5). His comment was somewhat echoed by one American journalist who stated: ›Actually, there was nothing feminine about Miss Bacewicz’s piece. It was vigorous, even virile, with (in the frst movement) a pulsing, throbbing rhythm and bold thematic material‹ (Milton Berliner cited in Gąsiorowska 2009:205). Femininity in music was equated with a lack of expres- sion and seen as a sign of weakness. Nevertheless, Bacewicz’s career fourished, and over the years she was vice-chairman of the Polish Composers’ Union, taught at music conservatories in łódź and Warsaw (music theory, violin and composition), and performed as a violin virtuoso in many concerts. After Stalin’s death, musical experimentation became ac- ceptable again in Poland, allowing a new group of avant-garde composers known abroad as the ›Polish School‹ to emerge in the 1960s. In their pieces, Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Witold Szalonek, and Kazimierz Serocki focused on pure sound and musical texture, developing a new style of Polish contemporary music called ›Sonorism‹. Bacewicz tried to join them at the beginning, but ultimately remained faithful to her neoclassical training. Aside from her, no other women were considered members of the ›Polish Contemporary School‹ of composers, although there was at least one woman who explored ›Sonorism‹, namely Krystyna Moszumańska-Nazar (1924 –2008). Luckily, much changed during the following decades, with more and more women entering the new music scene. The 1970s saw the debut of Elżbieta Sikora, Barbara Buczek, and Marta Ptaszyńska, followed by Grażyna Pstrokońska, Lid- ia Zielińska, and Magdalena Długosz. The generation of composers born in the 1960s features Bettina Skrzypczak and Hanna Kulenty. The more recent Polish composers‹ scene is quite dominated by women: Agata Zubel, Joanna Woźny, Ja- goda Szmytka, Katarzyna Głowicka, Dobromiła Jaskot, Ewa Trębacz, Aleksandra Gryka, Marzena Komsta, Agnieszka Stulgińska, Marta Śniady – all of whom are recognized in Poland and abroad. The history of Polish electroacoustic music starts in the 1950s, a defning moment being the establishment of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES) in Warsaw in 1957. Before it closed in 2004, 93 composers had worked there, in- cluding 59 from Poland and 34 from other countries. All in all, they created roughly MONIKA PASIECZNIK is a music critic, author, columnist, and a curator for festivals and institutions in Poland and abroad. Her areas of interest include Polish experimental and electronic music, new music and new music theater, and music in the context of the digital revolution. 166 167