Kazimierz Piwkowski (1925-2012) pro memoria

The historically informed performance of early music on period instruments or their reproductions has been for the last few decades an obvious part of the European and worldwide musical life. In Poland, however, the wide-ranging development of this movement, referred to by some as ‘novelties from the West’, didn’t take place until after the so-called Iron Curtain had collapsed in 1989. Since then there have emerged many early music ensembles, quite a considerable number of festivals have been organised and young musicians have gained access to professional training in playing historical instruments at universities and music academies, both at home and abroad.

Few could now recall, how the origins of the early music revival movement in Poland looked like in the years of the Polish People’s Republic. One might even think, according to the common opinion of young musicians, that early music was simply non-existent in the ‘rightly forgotten’ post-war period.

One of the half-forgotten, outstanding personalities connected with the beginnings of this movement in Poland in the sixties of the last century was Kazimierz Piwkowski. A bassoonist and a multi-instrumentalist, a chamber and orchestra musician, an academic and the establisher of the first Polish professional ensemble playing on historical wind instruments, a builder of reproductions of period instruments; he was, to sum it up, a highly unusual person, a true Renaissance man, who lives to the present day in reminiscences of his friends and co-workers as a great enthusiast, always ready to make sacrifices for his ideals, always looking for new solutions, endowed with an extensive imagination, and at the same time a charming talker in the type of an Old Polish ‘Sarmatian’.

Kazimierz Piwkowski was born in 1925 in Żnin, an old town lying in central Poland, between Wielkopolska and Cuiavia, in a cultural region called Pałuki. Till the end of his life he was very fond of his homeland, which, as he used to tell, was not only placed near the famous archaeological site Biskupin, but also surrounded by villages Wenecja, Rzym and Paryż (which names are the same as those applied in Polish for well-known European capitals Venice, Rome and Paris). According to him, such a noble neighbourhood was bound to have influenced his future interests and passions.

He was an offspring of a large family of musicians. His grandfather was an organist in Gorzyce, his father Paweł for more than thirty years was hired as the organist in St. Florian’s in Żnin, directing at the same time the parochial choir of St. Cecilia’s and a male vocal ensemble, known today under the name of ‘Choir Moniuszko’. His uncle also was an organist, and his mother was remembered as a music-loving person, gifted with a beautiful voice.

Kazimierz had his early experiences with music as a three years old boy, when he was helping his father to pull out stops during organ-accompanied masses in the parochial church. As a six-year-old he already tried to harmonise church hymns by himself. Paweł Piwkowski desired his son to become in future a military bandmaster. According to his plan, the boy was to start attending a school preparing for this career. The scheme was abandoned after the outbreak of World War II. The time of the Nazi occupation Kazimierz spent in Żnin, working in the former printing house of Alfred Krzycki, then taken over by Germans. After many years he still used to jokingly boast about ‘printer’s papers’. This job – and he was a good professional – probably saved him from being transported to forced labour in Germany. The time of the war didn’t mean for him a complete separation from music – there was an upright piano in the house, so he was devoting every minute of his leisure time to making music. There occurred even some small quarrels about whose turn it was to sit by the instrument – the father’s or the son’s?

After the war had ended, Kazimierz Piwkowski left for Warsaw, where he finished a secondary music school. In 1949, already a student of the Higher State School of Music in Warsaw, he started to work in the Polish Radio under Władysław Szpilman, quite well-known today thanks to Roman Polański’s movie ‘The Pianist’ (2002). Since 1951 he was employed as the first bassoonist of the National Philharmonic, conducted at the time by famous Witold Rowicki. He graduated from the Higher State School of Music in 1953, having completed his studies in the class of professor Benedykt Górecki, one of the most outstanding Polish bassoonists. In the same year together with the oboist Janusz Banaszek and the clarinettist Józef Foremski they established Warszawskie Trio Stroikowe (‘The Warsaw Reed Trio’). Even as he was still studying in the Higher State School of Music, Kazimierz Piwkowski won a two-year scholarship provided by the Ministry of Culture and Art, which enabled him to study in Paris with professor André Rabot. In consequence, he perfected his playing technique and was charmed by the sound of the French bassoon, decidedly dissimilar to the used in Poland bassoons of German construction. Afterwards, the National Philharmonic bought two French bassoons especially for Kazimierz Piwkowski and for quite a long time he was the only one bassoonist in Poland using this type of the instrument.

A wind quintet, Kazimierz Piwkowski second from the right.
.

During his residence in Paris Kazimierz Piwkowski not only was refining his skills as a bassoonist, but he also acquainted himself with the finest musical monuments of French libraries and museums of art. His enthusiasm often made curators allow him to touch historical instruments kept in glass cases. A crucial discovery for him was the encountering the second volume of the treatise ‘Syntagma Musicum’ by Michael Praetorius, titled ‘De Organologia’ (Wolfenbüttel 1619), where he found construction, sound and application of musical instruments of the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries meticulously described. The contents of the appendix ‘Theatrum Instrumentorum’ proved to be singularly inspiring. In fact, Kazimierz Piwkowski was scrutinising the appendix in search of some information about construction and disposition of old pipe organs, but eventually it was the drawings minutely presenting Renaissance wind instruments (chiefly crumhorns) that fascinated him to a great extent and for his whole life. He was later to observe, that measurements of these instruments, given by Praetorius in Brunswick ells, their outside proportions and the position of finger holes – it all corresponded with the measurements of preserved historical instruments.

All those experiences kindled in Kazimierz Piwkowski a desire to reconstruct early instruments and perform on them the music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and early baroque.

After his return from Paris, Kazimierz Piwkowski worked in the National Philharmonic as the first bassoonist till 1968. Moreover, 1958-1979 he was connected to the Higher State School of Music in Warsaw, at first as a lecturer, then a professor, a faculty dean and a pro-rector.

Independently from these activities, his ardent passion for the early music induced him to search constantly for preserved in Poland early instruments, musical iconography and other relics and monuments of this kind. He did it in cooperation with musicologists, including Mirosław Perz, a distinguished scholar, conductor and humanist, a researcher of the history of Old Polish music. Mirosław Perz remembers Kazimierz Piwkowski as ‘a pioneer of revival of the European early instrumental music’ and ‘a man of enormous abilities and imagination’. These last qualities decided, that Kazimierz Piwkowski undertook an almost crazy at that time task of reconstructing Renaissance instruments; at first crumhorns, then other wind (cornetts, sackbuts, pommers, shawms, dulcians and recorders), string and keyboard instruments, known him from museums, the drawings of Praetorius and Polish iconographic materials. Amongst his ‘craftsman’s’ achievements, besides wind instruments, we may find a medieval three-stringed viola constructed after the polyptych of St. John the Merciful in Kraków (1500), a portative organ after the triptych of St. Trinity in Wawel, Kraków (1464) and a regal built after the original instrument kept in one of museums in London.

The bell of the sackbut built by Kazimierz Piwkowski..

The ‘Fistulatores et Tubicinatores’ ensemble playing on the instruments from the workshop of Kazimierz Piwkowski (1975). From the left: Jacek Piwkowski – portative organ, Eugeniusz Sąsiadek – vocal, Marcin Piwkowski – medieval viola, Leokadia Piwkowska – bells, Leon Piwkowski – crumhorn, Maciej Piwkowski – recorder, Kazimierz Piwkowski – psalterium..

In order to realise his plans, Kazimierz Piwkowski had to acquire specific craftsman skills as well as construct, all by himself, needed machine tools. Chronic difficulties with supplies in the times of the People’s Republic of Poland didn’t make this task easier. To obtain required materials, e.g. tin for casting of organ pipes, or components for machines, it was necessary to walk for many days through bazaars or to make use of personal contacts to procure strictly rationed goods. After many years, Kazimierz Piwkowski was recollecting that for construction of a special kind of a lathe (for drilling bores in woodwind instruments) he had used a steering wheel found in a junkyard in Żnin and a chain from a combine harvester.

His first workshop was situated in the little kitchen of his 50-square-meter flat in Warsaw. Professor Mirosław Perz, a friend of the family, stresses the part played by Leokadia, the wife of Kazimierz, who supported her husband and later joined his ensemble. ‘In the tiny kitchen there were chisels and grinders, used for manufacturing of crumhorns, bassoons, recorders and shawms’, relates Perz. ‘Those instruments, made by trial and error, were constantly being perfected. Kazimierz’s instruments have the quality of masterpieces. He knew how to build them, had learnt to play them and taught it other people.’ Leokadia recalled, how the kitchen walls had kept changing colours according to the kind of wood in which her husband had been presently working. When he was building crumhorns of pearwood, the kitchen was all pink, and if he was using boxwood or sycamore wood, the walls took on a creamy shade of white. If the lady of the house wanted to make a meal for the family, she had to do some dusting before. Under all the beds Kazimierz Piwkowski used to store his supplies of wood, so, by force of circumstance, the whole family was from the very beginning really close to the idea of reconstruction historical instruments.

In 1964 Kazimierz Piwkowski founded the consort ‘Fistulatores et Tubicinatores Varsovienses’, which, after a year of rehearsals, gave its first concert of Old Polish music in the National Philharmonic in Warsaw (24th November 1965). The name of the ensemble which may be translated as ‘the Pipers and Trumpeters of Warsaw’ alluded to medieval and Renaissance traditions in Poland, when a term ‘fistulator’ was applied to a musician playing any woodwind instrument (Latin ‘fistula”), and a word ‘tubicinator’ – to a musician using a brass wind instrument (Latin ‘tuba’). The ideological principle of the ensemble was the return to common medieval and Renaissance practice of versatile and free performing in fraternities of musicians, when everyone practised the art of playing various instruments and was able to easily change them even during a piece of music. The original members of the consort included eminent players of the National Philharmonic, such as the flautist Jerzy Chudyba, the oboist Emilian Werbowski and the trombonist Jerzy Karolak. Soon they were reinforced by the trombonist Leon Piwkowski (brother of Kazimierz), and they often cooperated with such well-known vocalists as Krzysztof Szmyt, Eugeniusz Sąsiadek and Wojciech Śmietana and with the violist Włodzimierz Tomaszewski. Leokadia Piwskowska performed on percussion instruments, working at the same time as the manager of the ensemble. Two sons of Kazimierz (Jacek and Marcin) and his nephew Maciej also joined the consort; as young boys they singed higher vocal parts, than started to play instruments – so after some years the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses became in fact a family business; all the more so because not all of the philharmonics had enough enthusiasm and conviction to induce them to sacrifice their time for study of historical instruments, which activity was commonly considered rather an interesting hobby than a professional work.

Very close collaboration of Kazimierz Piwkowski with renowned musicologists resulted in the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses often having in their repertoire some newly-discovered compositions of Polish early music. In this way many well-known today, most precious medieval and Renaissance musical treasures (including oeuvres of Mikołaj z Radomia, Mikołaj z Krakowa, Mikołaj Gomółka, Krzysztof Klabon, the organ tablature of Jan z Lublina) emerged from oblivion and made Polish culture famous in the world. The Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses since the very beginning of their activity displayed a high level of music performance, and their presentations greatly impressed the audience – till then nobody in Poland played such a music and, what’s more, nobody did it on reproductions of period instruments.

The Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses (1976, the cellars of the Royal Castle in Warsaw) – consort of recorders and a triangle. From the left: Kazimierz Piwkowski, Jacek Piwkowski, Maciej Piwkowski, Leokadia Piwkowska, Marcin Piwkowski, Leon Piwkowski.

The Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses very soon made themselves known on the world music scene – what was not so easy in the political situation of those times. All the international contracts of Polish artists had to be accepted and managed by the Polish Artistic Agency ‘PAGART’, an institution of a very dubious reputation in artistic society. A renown Polish singer Maryla Rodowicz stated after many years it was an organisation infiltrated by Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). The financial aspects of those contracts were also supervised by PAGART, which meant of course exploitation of Polish musicians. Nevertheless, as early as in 1966, the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses participated in the early music festival ‘Ambroser Schlosskonzerte’ in Innsbruck, Austria (now the ‘Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik’). The vocalist Krzysztof Szmyt relates: ‘I started my cooperation with the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses, when I was still studying singing. My adventure and being in love with early music dates back to the journey with the ensemble to this early music festival in Innsbruck in Austria. After our performance, the organiser of masterclasses given in the same place by René Jacobs, suggested that I should attend them. By this occasion I learnt things which it was then impossible to acquaint with in Poland – about realisation of recitative and singing of the da capo aria, about baroque embellishments.’

The ensemble was performing in Poland and all over the world, giving about 500 concerts in 20 years, warmly applauded by the audience. They played in London, Paris, Montreux, Moscow, Berlin, Stockholm, Tokyo and other places. There has been preserved a typed list of chosen, more important concerts of the consort in years 1965-1984:

The list of the most important concerts of the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses in years 1965-1984.

In the artistic output of the ensemble we may also find music for Polish history movies (‘Pan Wołodyjowski’ 1965, ‘Hrabina Cosel’ 1968, ‘Kopernik’ 1972, ‘Czarne chmury’ 1973) as well as the following three recordings:

Professor Kazimierz Piwkowski continued his scholar, artistic and teaching activity in Saarbrücken, where he came invited by the rector of the Hochschule für Musik Saar as an outstanding specialist in the field of historical wind instruments. This happened to coincide with the politically inflicted worsening of his situation in the Higher State School of Music in Warsaw. In his remembrances he described this situation with the diplomatic phrase: ‘When the Higher State School of Music had enough of me, or maybe the other way round…’. When martial law was introduced in Poland in December 1981, Kazimierz Piwkowski was still remaining in Saarbrücken. He decided then to stay permanently in Germany with his family. He worked there for more ten years, tirelessly popularising amongst student the art of playing historical wind instruments. In 1989 he retired and moved to Lübeck, but he purchased a real estate in Żnin, so to have a possibility of returning with Leokadia to his home town for as long a time as they wanted. There he made himself a workshop, inside which he could still cultivate his passion for building early instruments. In 2015 he celebrated in Żnin his 80th birthday and the 60th anniversary of his artistic activity, and in 2007 was distinguished with the title of the Honorary Citizen of this town. Kazimierz Piwkowski died on 3 April 2012 in Lübeck and was buried in the family vault in Żnin.

We may learn the history of his life and of the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses thanks to the television documents, made by Polish TV:

If we look backwards at the beginnings of the early music revival movement in the years of the activity of the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses and compare it to the present-day situation on the Polish musical scene, we may (and should) be amazed with enormous changes, which took place there in the last fifty years. In the sixties of the last century, the performance of early music on historical instruments was in Poland an absolutely marginal phenomenon. On the one side, as something new and ‘exotic’ it attracted the audience, on the other side, it was perceived as a pastime activity, carried on at the periphery of the professional work of a musician. There wasn’t almost any possibility of professional training in this field, and any access to historical methods, treatises, scores and instruments was very limited. Nowadays young adepts of art are welcome to study playing historical instruments in eight higher music schools in Poland (in Warsaw, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, Kraków, Katowice, Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz) and to participate in numerous early music master classes and workshops conducted by Polish and foreign specialists. There are many early music associations and foundations, as well as scores of, more or less important, festivals dedicated exclusively to the music of past eras (including Festiwal Bachowski in Świdnica, Szczeciński Festiwal Muzyki Dawnej in Szczecin, International Festival ‘May with Early Music’ in Wrocław, Forum Musicum in Wrocław, Festiwal Muzyki Dawnej ‘Pieśń Naszych Korzeni’ in Jarosław, ‘Muzyka w Raju’ in Paradyż, Ogólnopolski Festiwal Zespołów Muzyki Dawnej ‘Schola Cantorum’ in Kalisz). On the Polish music scene we may encounter not only numerous small consorts playing early music, but also quite big, regular ensembles, including Capella Cracoviensis, Wrocław Baroque Orchestra and the orchestra of the Warsaw Chamber Opera.

All that wouldn’t be possible if not for those magnificent pioneers of the early music revival movement, who began their activity in that difficult and unwelcoming time behind the Iron Curtain – such as the hero of this article, professor Kazimierz Piwkowski. As it is, we are glad to notice some new publications commemorating their struggles. Amongst these we should indicate ‘Andrzej Szwalbe i jego dziedzictwo’ (‘Andrzej Szwalbe and his heredity’, ed. Marek Chamot, Stefan Pastuszewski, Aleksandra Kłaput-Wiśniewska, Bydgoszcz 2018), a monography presenting Andrzej Szwalbe, the director of the Pomeranian Philharmonic, thanks to whom an early music formation ‘Zespół Muzyki Dawnej’, established in 1960 by the Philharmonic, was two years later turned into the regular ensemble ‘Capella Bydgostiensis Pro Musica Antiqua’. Personalities connected with pioneer times of early music in Poland have been described also on pages of the ‘Notes Muzyczny’, the semi-annual periodic of the Grażyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź, in the articles of Małgorzata Łyczakowska (‘Postać Emmy Altberg 1889-1983 w świetle zachowanej korespondencji. Przyczynek do biografii łódzkiej klawesynistki’, in: ‘Notes Muzyczny’ No. 2/6 2016 – ‘Emma Altberg 1889-1983 in aspect of preserved letters. A contribution to the biography’) and of Jolanta Smolska-Kempińska (‘U źródeł działalności Zakładu Muzyki Dawnej. Początki i historia’ in: ‘Notes Muzyczny’ No. 1/7 2017 – ‘At sources of the Early Music Department. Origins and the history’). Amongst some new, not as yet published writings we should mention ‘Wpływ kaliskiego festiwalu Schola Cantorum na rozwój amatorskich zespołów fletów prostych w Polsce (‘Influence of the festival Schola Cantorum in Kalisz on development of amateurish recorder ensembles in Poland’, a master’s thesis written at the Academy of Music in Łódź 2014) by Emilia Kinecka. Very interesting, though an older and nowadays virtually unreachable paper is a master’s thesis written in Academy of Music in Wrocław by Krzysztof Górski, titled ‘Polskie zespoły muzyki dawnej i historyczne podstawy ich tendencji wykonawczych’ (‘Polish early music ensembles and historical foundations of their performing tendencies’, 1996), supplemented by an extensive bibliography, where we may find numerous articles about the beginnings of performing of early music in Poland, published in seventies of the last century in the periodics ‘Ruch Muzyczny’ and ‘Zeszyty Naukowe’ of Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław.

Magdalena Pilch