The article aims to examine the ways in which selected variation techniques are used in Maria Szymanowska’s Nocturne in B-flat Major. The author discusses both conventional thematic modifications and collage-like transformations of brief motifs. By comparing the composition to selected works of John Field and placing it within appropriate historical contexts, the author seeks to illustrate how such an approach to variation not only enriches the conventional form of the nocturne as a genre, but also highlights the possibility of programmatic intent being present.

The second half of the nineteenth century is a neglected period in the history of Polish music, in the aspects of both research and performance. Works by many composers from this period have unfortunately been forgotten. One such composer is undoubtedly Aleksander Zarzycki (1834–1895), also a teacher and piano virtuoso, the author of more than 40 opuses, including many solo songs with piano accompaniment, which have frequently been compared to the songs of Stanisław Moniuszko. Similarly as Poland’s most famous song composer, Zarzycki created two songbooks that belong to the trend of egalitarian songs. He was also renowned for his short piano pieces, written in the salon style with virtuoso elements. One of his most famous works is the Mazurka in G major, popularised by the Spanish virtuoso violinist Pablo Sarasate. Also of note is his Piano Concerto in A-flat major Op. 17, drawing on Fryderyk Chopin’s Piano Concerto in A minor and Józef Wieniawski’s Concerto in G minor. Zarzycki’s works are characteristic of his era, and contain elements of folklore, national style, virtuosity, and the so-called ‘Romantic mood’.

Polish musicologist and author Danuta Gwizdalanka titled her publication Mieczysław Wajnberg: kompozytor z trzech światów [Mieczysław Weinberg: Composer from Three Worlds] (Poznań, 2013). Weinberg (1919–1996) was a Polish composer with Jewish roots who spent most of his life in the USSR. Without any doubt, he can be called ‘a composer from the borderland’ due to his ‘hybrid identity’, which was one of the most important reasons that affected the appreciation of Weinberg’s output both during his lifetime and after death. The main ideas of this paper centre on the category of ‘borderland’ and its representations in Weinberg’s biography and oeuvre. According to the typology proposed by Krzysztof Zajas, Weinberg’s life and works can be considered in terms of the following types of borderland: interdisciplinary, spatial, psychological, existential, sociological, and mythological. Through the prism of the category of ‘borderland’, Weinberg’s creative work manifests itself as a highly individual and invaluable testimony of his times, Far from eclectic and epigonic in relation to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, his oeuvre is unique in the world’s music literature.

The subject of this article are the composition strategies employed to represent the past in animated films produced in the integrated cultural space which Central-Eastern Europe constituted during the communist era. Productions made in two countries, the Soviet Union and in Poland, have been considered. Film examples have been discussed in approximate chronological order, according to the time of production of individual cartoons. By selecting specific movies I do not intend exhaustively to analyse these audio-visual works. I have limited myself to reviewing thematic threads related to the past and, in this context, ideas and tendencies in film music composition.

The process of digitising archives, a universal trend in the last decade, also concerns music resources, thus offering new functionalities to their users. Its effects can facilitate researchers’ work since digital material is readily available and easy to locate. The questions that remain open concern the status of oral history contained in those audio-visual documents, its value and durability, the current results and possible consequences of making these materials accessible on a mass scale, as well as the effectiveness of multidimensional grassroots initiatives, such as cooperation on building virtual collections of materials. What possibilities open up for the musical folklore archives that are currently being discovered? Can digitisation suddenly make them more valuable in the eyes of the society? In this paper, I attempt to diagnose the problem of musical archive digitisation on the example of the ethnomusicological collection of Adolf Dygacz. I stress the importance of local history, which is a common subject in the humanities and has always been part of folklore studies but was not considered in the light of memory studies until very recently.

The aim of this paper is to analyse stylistic changes in Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s output on the example of four selected chamber music works: Quartettino, Op. 5, Concerto for Five Instruments and String Quartet, Op. 11, Little Music 4, Op. 28 and Aria (‘operatic scene’), Op. 59. By applying the methods of structural and auditory analysis as well as style criticism, I discuss the diversity of composition techniques found in these compositions. Additionally, my methodology has allowed me to represent the idiomatic, idiosyncratic features of Górecki’s style and study the ways in which Górecki approached chamber music.

The article attempts to summarise the work of Simon Steen-Andersen and describe his composition titled Black Box Music in the context of fusing visual and musical experiences. I have examined how modern technology influences the composer’s creative process. His achievements and understanding of audiovisuality and the music object have also been compared with Pierre Schaeffer’s concept of acousmatic listening.