Haley Gammon and Luke Howard, Music History

Stefan Kisielewski – writer, publicist, politician, and composer – not only lost many of his
works as a result of the Second World War, but was controlled under Soviet censorship
many years after it. Today there is a current surge of excitement and opportunity to uncover
missing information regarding Kisielewski and his contemporaries, but still huge gaps and
missing links. In an almost endless supply of information waiting to be discovered in Polish
archives, libraries, and personal collections lies the key to knowledge that will help complete
the picture of Polish music in the Soviet era. My project contributes a missing piece to the
puzzle, allowing us to better understand what really went on in post-WWII Poland and how
Stefan Kisielewski worked around those obstacles to give society lasting and memorable
literature and art.

With the ORCA grant, I was completed a three-week research trip to Poland during spring
term 2017 to study the works and life of Stefan Kisielewski, the historical background of
Poland after World War 2, and to view and obtain materials and insight which can only be
found in Poland. Working with Musicologist Dr. Luke Howard and head of Piano Department
Dr. Scott Holden throughout both Fall 2016 and Winter 2017 semesters, I completed
beforehand an extensive study of Kisielewski’s Suita na Fortepian (1955) in preparation for
my studies in Poland. Though the literature on Kisielewski is few and far between in the
United States, I did as much research as means would allow.

My project was made up of two parts – piano performance and musicology. In regards to
piano performance, I learned and memorized Suite for Piano by Kisielewski and was able to
take private lessons from two of the most respected piano professors in Poland: Dr. Anna
Górecka in the Karol Szymanowski Academy in Katowice and Dr. Agnieszka Przemyk-Bryła
at the Chopin University in Warsaw. Both of these lessons were extremely informative and
worth my time. These women were more than willing to help and gave me unique and
personalized information about Kisielewski and other Polish composers, including Chopin
and how I can improve my own playing. Dr. Górecka’s father was personal friends with
Kisielewski, so she had met him personally and told me stories about their meeting. They
helped me find meaning in the Suite , and pointed out the features of Kisielewski in the music
that I would have never otherwise noticed.

In regards to musicology, much of my trip to Poland was made up of looking for any
information I could find on the composer in order to better understand Kisielewski’s life and
compositions, since there is relatively no information available in English. I started in
Kraków, and was able to search the Jagiellońska Library’s archives. There, I saw original
published scores of Kisielewski, and could compare them back to back. Looking at musical
techniques he used, and even specific intervals and musical patterns, I was surprised to find
many similarities in the piano scores. In another department of the library, I was able to
search through the archives of handwritten documents. There, I looked at every document
concerning Kisielewski and was thrilled to find they had multiple letters written by Stefan
Kisielewski addressed to various people – musicians, politicians, writers, and others. In
Warsaw, I met with a student at the Chopin University who took me to the university’s
library, and together we found and checked out every possible book concerning Kisielewski
for me to use throughout the rest of my stay.

The pinnacle of my research in Poland was meeting with Małgorzata Gąsiorowska,
musicologist and author of the book Kisielewski , and Krysia Kisielewski, daughter of the
composer himself. They showed me sites in the city where Stefan would meet with
musicians and politicians over coffee, where his apartment was, and shared with me
intimate stories from a first-person perspective about his life and personality.

Studying the life and legacy of this courageous man has somehow forged a bond between
him and I- one that I want to share with the world. Stefan Kisielewski fought for what he
believed was right, in the face of deep oppression and censorship. Even when everything
was taken away from him, and communist censors banned him from writing or publishing,
he kept writing under pseudonyms and publishing in secret circulations. To him, informing
people of the realities of the social and political state in Poland was worth risking his comfort
and even his life. Today his legacy lives on, and you can see it by simply looking down the
streets of Warsaw, and the progress they’ve made since the end of the war.

I am currently working on writing out my personal research in an article to submit for
publication. Ultimately, I hope this project will last long after I my graduation from BYU by
helping others become more aware of what happened historically in Poland and the
significance that carries. This project is literally filling a hole in a major historical and
musical gap. Kisielewski’s life, works, and writings are still essentially unknown in America,
and this research will make a difference for musicians and society in general in the years to
come.