Monodia e Sequenza for flute and piano (1966)

Monodia e Sequenza per flauto e pianoforte (full title) is a short, two-part work with a duration set in the score between 3’ and 4’30’’. The composer uses here an original and quite surprising device: each part is given to a different instrument. Monodia is played only by the flute, while Sequenza is played only by the piano.

The piece was written in 1966, but had to wait six year for its premiere, which took place in Braunschweig. On 30 November 1972 Monodia e Sequenza was presented by the flautist Andrzej Wojakowskiego and the composer. One of the surviving photocopies of the manuscript score bears a mysterious dedication:

To my dear Kabaś on his name day, Tomek. Warsaw, 4 March 1972.

The addressee of this dedication should be easily deciphered by anyone who knows that 4 March is the Feast of St. Casimir. “Kabaś” was the name used by Tomasz Sikorski to refer to his father, Kazimierz.

The two-page score (not counting the instruction page) is full of various musical phenomena, though the entire progression of the piece is noted down by means of a system using just one stave (also in the piano part). What comes to the fore are issues relating to the nature of sound, its sustain as well as silence, issues characteristic of Sikorski’s entire oeuvre. In addition, the composer uses strong dynamic and agogic contrasts, with which he seems to be breaking the continuity of the slow rhythm of long notes in Monodia and the twelve-note sound “glow” in Sequenza and silence. The work combines two seemingly contradictory elements: constancy (continuity) and variability. One the one hand we sense a desire to reach a state of equilibrium: long notes, as if stemming naturally from the shape of the melody, produce a “monodic” impression of cohesion and homogeneity. On the other hand staccato fragments as well as sections composed only of seventh semiquaver leaps disrupt the equilibrium, crushing the foundations on which the structure of the piece is based. The changing nature of long flute notes played increasingly quietly clearly reveals the fundamental dialectics of Sikorski’s oeuvre, which indicates the polarity or rather potential of each note.