Labowa Jesień: Pięknienie/ Beautification

Pięknienie/Beautification is a con­cert of solo and cham­ber instru­men­tal music com­posed by Jago­da Szmyt­ka, accom­pa­nied by an exhi­bi­tion of sketch­es and draw­ings that the com­pos­er cre­at­ed in par­al­lel with the musi­cal works. 

Four of the six com­po­si­tions pre­sent­ed were writ­ten espe­cial­ly for this event for three out­stand­ing artists — vio­lin­ist Mar­ta Piórkows­ka, cel­list Leo Morel­lo, and gui­tarist Samuel Toro Pérez — and in their inter­pre­ta­tion will be per­formed on the stage of War­saw’s Hash­tag Lab and Vien­na’s Klangth­e­ater (1 Octo­ber 2025). In addi­tion to the four new works, Mar­ta Piórkows­ka, Leo Morel­lo, and Samuel Toro Pérez will per­form two old­er, though recent­ly revised, com­po­si­tions by Jago­da Szmytka.

The event Pięknienie/Beautification is one of the first pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tions of the results of artis­tic research con­duct­ed by Jago­da Szmyt­ka between 2021 and 2025 with­in the Doc­tor Artium pro­gramme under the super­vi­sion of Pro­fes­sor Johannes Kretz, Pro­fes­sor Gesine Schröder, and Pro­fes­sor Tasos Zem­by­las at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Music and Per­form­ing Arts Vien­na. Work on the musi­cal scores, visu­al sketch­es, and the artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion between the com­pos­er and vio­lin­ist Mar­ta Piórkows­ka, cel­list Leo Morel­lo, and gui­tarist Samuel Toro Pérez was realised with the sup­port of MDW, the Tokyo Foun­da­tion, and the Pol­ish Insti­tute in Vienna.

Programme:

fan­taz­ja o pięknie­niu (2025) for solo elec­tric gui­tar*
f* for music (2012/2024–2025) for elec­tric gui­tar and cel­lo
kanon (2025) for elec­tric gui­tar and cel­lo*
fig­ury i emoc­je (2025) for solo vio­lin*
wari­ac­je na tem­at Forsythe’a (2025) for solo cel­lo*
kör­per­wel­ten (2008/2025) for ampli­fied string instru­ment with audio and video pro­jec­tion
*world pre­miere

Performing:

Samuel Toro Pérez elec­tric gui­tar
Mar­ta Piórkows­ka vio­lin
Leo Morel­lo cel­lo
Woj­ciech Błaże­jczyk sound direc­tion, AV projection

Production:

pro­gramme con­cept and text: Jago­da Szmyt­ka
pro­duc­tion: Mar­ta Piórkows­ka
visu­al iden­ti­ty: Alek­san­dra Ołdak
sound direc­tion: Woj­ciech Błażejczyk

The pub­lish­er of Jago­da Szmytka’s works is Pol­skie Wydawnict­wo Muzyczne.

The Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is co-financed by the Cap­i­tal City of War­saw.
The media patron of the Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is POLMIC​.PL.

Jagoda Szmytka on the works:

fan­taz­ja o pięknie­niu
The com­po­si­tion open­ing the con­cert is fan­taz­ja o pięknie­niu (2025) for solo elec­tric gui­tar, which I com­posed for the vir­tu­oso of con­tem­po­rary gui­tar Samuel Toro Pérez. The idea of writ­ing a piece for Samuel arose after our meet­ing dur­ing prepa­ra­tions for a con­cert at Stift Vik­tring in Kla­gen­furt, where he per­formed the duet f* for music togeth­er with Roland Schuel­er. Our first rehearsal gave rise to mutu­al inter­est in fur­ther artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion, and we were soon for­tu­nate to receive an artist res­i­den­cy at the Pol­ish Insti­tute in Vien­na. Dur­ing our joint ses­sions at the Insti­tute I was redis­cov­er­ing and learn­ing the idiom of the elec­tric gui­tar, as Samuel put it, “through his hands”. In turn, I brought to our stu­dio ses­sions an inter­est in poly­phon­ic struc­tures and an ini­tial con­cept for a work in which each “voice” would be defined by a spe­cif­ic and unique type of sound mate­r­i­al. Then, in the phase of inde­pen­dent work in my home stu­dio at the pre-com­po­si­tion­al stage, I decid­ed that the most appro­pri­ate form for this com­po­si­tion would be that of a poly­phon­ic fan­ta­sia, in which the voic­es would engage in a debate on the diver­si­ty of beauty.

f* for music
The sec­ond work in the con­cert pro­gramme is the afore­men­tioned duet for elec­tric gui­tar and cel­lo, f* for music, which I com­posed in 2012 for gui­tarist Stef­fen Ahrens and cel­list Niklas Sei­dl (duo leise dröh­nung), and which I sub­se­quent­ly revised in 2024/2025 in col­lab­o­ra­tion with gui­tarist Samuel Toro Pérez, cel­list Leo Morel­lo, and music edi­tor Moni­ka Korus of Pol­skie Wydawnict­wo Muzyczne.

I wrote this work bar by bar from begin­ning to end, fol­low­ing an inner hear­ing of the flow of fan­tas­ti­cal musi­cal shapes. Although the score is a record of what I heard in pure musi­cal imag­i­na­tion — I notat­ed only what I imag­ined through inner hear­ing — my audi­to­ry imag­in­ings were made pos­si­ble by pri­or col­lec­tion of sound mate­r­i­al dur­ing impro­vi­sa­tion ses­sions with the instru­ments. I played cel­lo myself. In the case of the elec­tric gui­tar, I worked with Stef­fen Ahrens to col­lect sound mate­r­i­al. The char­ac­ter­is­tic aes­thet­ic of the musi­cal vocab­u­lary of f* for music was achieved by apply­ing com­po­si­tion­al meth­ods based on a com­bi­na­tion of con­ven­tion­al instru­men­ta­tion with ges­tur­al shap­ing. f* for music is not, how­ev­er, the first com­po­si­tion writ­ten using this com­bined method. Ideas for cor­re­lat­ing con­ven­tion­al musi­cal foun­da­tions — such as rhythm, har­mo­ny, tem­po — with ges­tur­al para­me­ters such as ener­gy, shape, speed, and pres­sure arose a few years ear­li­er in work­ing on three com­po­si­tions: per ._o (2007), kör­per­wel­ten (2008), and ¿I? study of who, where, when (2008).

I worked on the title of the duet in a sim­i­lar way to the musi­cal mate­r­i­al: I reduced the ver­bal mate­r­i­al to sim­ple lin­guis­tic par­ti­cles whose mean­ing is based on ety­mol­o­gy and com­bined it with mean­ing out­lined in the visu­al lay­er. The first ele­ment of the title, the let­ter “f”, giv­en the com­po­si­tion’s instru­men­ta­tion, may evoke the f‑holes of the cel­lo. Think­ing of the work’s form based on impro­vi­sa­tion, “f” might also stand for fan­ta­sia. In the Ger­man-speak­ing world, the let­ter “f” com­bined with an aster­isk can evoke the word “Frau” (woman), or more gen­er­al­ly a fem­i­nine form, since in con­tem­po­rary Ger­man the aster­isk is used to form gen­der-inclu­sive forms, such as “Komponist*innen”. The aster­isk, because of its star-like shape, can on one hand open up mean­ing to, for exam­ple, astron­o­my. On the oth­er hand, giv­en the cus­tom­ary use of aster­isks to replace cer­tain let­ters in offen­sive words, it may con­jure in the read­er’s imag­i­na­tion a pro­fan­i­ty. For those famil­iar with com­put­er pro­gram­ming lan­guages, the aster­isk may be asso­ci­at­ed with the sym­bol for retriev­ing data, where the wild­card can sum­mon any­thing at all. Many more inter­pre­ta­tions of this title could be found. My inten­tion was to cre­ate a puz­zle, a play­ful ambi­gu­i­ty that stim­u­lates the lis­ten­er’s imagination.

kanon
The title of the new com­po­si­tion for elec­tric gui­tar and cel­lo — kanon — in a gen­er­al musi­cal con­text points to a con­tra­pun­tal com­po­si­tion­al tech­nique that cre­ates a lay­ered, inter­wo­ven tex­ture. In rela­tion to the con­cert pro­gram­me’s theme of beau­ty, kanon refers to a cod­i­fied cri­te­ri­on of pro­por­tion or a set of oth­er rules that deter­mine whether a work of art may be per­ceived as harmonious.

fig­ury i emoc­je
Why did I com­pose this work? Every­thing relat­ing to fig­ury i emoc­je began when I first met Mar­ta Piórkows­ka. That was in the sum­mer of 2024 at War­saw’s Hash­tag Lab, dur­ing a rehearsal before a con­cert at the AżTak fes­ti­val, where the fol­low­ing day Mar­ta per­formed my work kör­per­wel­ten togeth­er with Woj­ciech Błaże­jczyk. I was very moved by Mar­ta’s inter­pre­ta­tion of that piece. My impres­sion was that she played it with del­i­ca­cy and courage. She brought a wide spec­trum of colours to it and exe­cut­ed all the pas­sages that I con­sid­er tech­ni­cal­ly very demand­ing in an absolute­ly effort­less style. That day we also had time to talk about cor­po­re­al­i­ty (which was the guid­ing theme of the fes­ti­val), the aes­thet­ics of sound and sound pro­duc­tion, and instru­men­tal tech­niques. We also dis­cussed the tab­la­ture nota­tion used in that work. Mar­ta sug­gest­ed that I tran­scribe it using more con­ven­tion­al musi­cal nota­tion. When I returned from War­saw to Offen­bach am Main, I under­took this task. How­ev­er, in the course of attempt­ing the tran­scrip­tion I realised that the work can­not be reno­tat­ed with­out los­ing its true iden­ti­ty. And so the tran­scrip­tion attempt became sim­ply the sketch for a new work. All of this led me to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of future col­lab­o­ra­tion and of writ­ing a new work specif­i­cal­ly for Mar­ta. When I was devel­op­ing the con­cept for the Pięknie­nie project, I asked Mar­ta whether she would be inter­est­ed in col­lab­o­rat­ing on a new work that I would write espe­cial­ly for her for this occa­sion. And so I began to write fig­ury i emoc­je. Accord­ing­ly, the new work for solo vio­lin was con­ceived as a musi­cal response to kör­per­wel­ten from 2008. What con­nects both works is emo­tion. In the case of kör­per­wel­ten, emo­tion is rep­re­sent­ed by rhyth­mic changes in heart rate in the audio pro­jec­tion lay­er, sub­se­quent­ly tran­scribed into the instru­men­tal part. In the case of fig­ury i emoc­je, my artis­tic research focused on select­ed his­tor­i­cal rhetor­i­cal fig­ures.

wari­ac­je na tem­at Forsythe’a
Wari­ac­je na tem­at Forsythe’a (2025) for solo cel­lo, which I com­posed for Leo Morel­lo in the sum­mer of 2025, is a work inspired by sev­er­al sources: William Forsythe’s bal­let in the Mid­dle Some­what Ele­vat­ed, Leo Morel­lo’s play­ing — an extra­or­di­nary com­bi­na­tion of inten­si­ty, pre­ci­sion, and ele­gance — con­ver­sa­tions about con­tem­po­rary cel­lo tech­niques in the con­text of the instru­men­t’s con­struc­tion with luthi­er Fer­di­nand Sei­dl at Kro­n­berg Acad­e­my, and the beau­ti­ful per­for­mance of Thier­ry Escaich’s Sec­ond Cel­lo Con­cer­to by Gau­ti­er Capuçon at the Alte Oper. After these expe­ri­ences I sim­ply began to hear the musi­cal con­tours of a work for solo cel­lo in my imag­i­na­tion. I then asked Leo whether he would like to receive a new work from me. He said yes. And so I began to com­pose. Although I heard the work in my musi­cal imag­i­na­tion from the out­set, I felt that I had not yet iden­ti­fied its germ, its cen­tral idea. Sketch­ing the work was a dif­fi­cult task because of the vari­ety of its inspi­ra­tional sources: I was unsure how to com­bine them all with­out on the one hand los­ing some­thing impor­tant and on the oth­er over­load­ing the con­cept and los­ing clar­i­ty. In my com­po­si­tion diary I jot­ted short notes on each source of inspi­ra­tion and decid­ed to look more close­ly at each ele­ment in turn. Hav­ing done this work, my pri­ma­ry inten­tion was to rethink the musi­cal form of theme and vari­a­tions and to con­struct the theme on the basis of a chore­o­graph­ic sequence of cel­lo posi­tions, their exten­sions, and displacements.

kör­per­wel­ten
The final com­po­si­tion in the con­cert pro­gramme is kör­per­wel­ten (2008/rev. 2024–2025) for ampli­fied string instru­ment. kör­per­wel­ten is a study of the worlds of the body in their dimen­sion of vital­i­ty: an inves­ti­ga­tion of the cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem of the liv­ing human body, an analy­sis of the acoustic cor­pus of a bowed string instru­ment brought to life through the per­for­ma­tive inter­ac­tion of a human being, an inquiry into the func­tion of com­po­si­tion­al inter­pre­ta­tion of acoustic space realised through ampli­fi­ca­tion dur­ing live per­for­mance, and a study of how these ele­ments com­bine and become one. The struc­ture of the work’s instru­men­tal lay­er was inspired by a med­ical pal­pa­to­ry exam­i­na­tion of my car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem. The audio and video lay­ers con­sist exclu­sive­ly of mate­ri­als record­ed dur­ing an echocar­dio­gram of my heart. The start­ing point of my work was the con­ver­gence of the fol­low­ing cir­cum­stances. The first was the emer­gence of thoughts about the phe­nom­e­non of move­ment — more pre­cise­ly, the sen­sa­tion of amaze­ment at the fact that a human being is capa­ble of move­ment, which I then inter­pret­ed as a sign of vital­i­ty. I then focused on the inter­nal impuls­es of the body that I expe­ri­enced by touch­ing my chest with an open hand and sens­ing the heart­beat. The final fac­tor was the cre­ation in my imag­i­na­tion of a log­i­cal mod­el rep­re­sent­ing the process of the prop­a­ga­tion of the body’s inter­nal ener­gy — mate­ri­alised in the form of the rhythm of the blood pulse — through acoustic space by means of the hand move­ments exe­cut­ing musi­cal ges­tures dur­ing the play­ing of a bowed string instru­ment, which I regard­ed as signs of life. This “redis­cov­ery” of the most fun­da­men­tal sign of life led me to reflect on the human heart and on the cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem more broad­ly, which togeth­er became the con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tion of the com­po­si­tion. Final­ly, I would like to men­tion that I remem­ber how hear­ing and see­ing for the first time, with com­plete clar­i­ty, the sounds and images of my own heart­beat and blood cir­cu­la­tion dur­ing a car­diac exam­i­na­tion was an intense expe­ri­ence for me. I thought then about the pow­er of a liv­ing organ­ism man­i­fest in its cease­less work, and about the nat­ur­al har­mo­ny between my emo­tions and my inner pul­sa­tion. This thought and feel­ing accom­pa­nied me in mind and heart from the begin­ning to the end of work on this com­po­si­tion. Ulti­mate­ly, work­ing on this com­po­si­tion led me to the reflec­tion that mak­ing music means, for me, an engage­ment with the foun­da­tions of life and with life itself.

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