New
compositions
for carillon
Since 2019, the City of Gdańsk and the Museum of Gdańsk have been commissioning works from outstanding Polish composers (the idea originated with and is being piloted by Filip Berkowicz). In 2019, Aleksander Nowak’s Trzy wezwania (Three Callings) premiered, and since 2020, two pieces have been created each year for each of Gdańsk’s tower carillons. This has already resulted in a large collection of 13 pieces by composers such as the aforementioned Aleksander Nowak (2019), Elżbieta Sikora and Paweł Mykietyn (2020), Agata Zubel and Zygmunt Krauze (2021), Hanna Kulenty and Dariusz Przybylski (2022), Marta Ptaszyńska and Krzysztof Meyer (2023), Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa and Krzysztof Knittel (2024), Paweł Szymański and Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil (2025). Each of the works is accompanied by a dedication referring to events important in the history of the city and beyond, such as the 40th anniversary of the August Agreements, the 50th anniversary of the Museum of Gdańsk, Lech Wałęsa’s 80th birthday, 700 years of the partner city of Vilnius, etc. (detailed dedications and comments by the composers below).
The commissions are financially supported by the GIWK waterworks company.
5 The first five pieces were recorded in 2021 in the Anaklasis series by the Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne (available here: CONTEMPORARY CARILLON / ANAKLASIS) and the next six in 2025 in the same series (CONTEMPORARY CARILLION II / ANAKLASIS)
The pieces are written for both Gdańsk tower carillons, which differ considerably. The carillon of St. Catherine’s Church has 50 bells in equal temperament, i.e., four full octaves with the lowest note Bb, and does not transpose. It is located inside the tower, which makes the tower itself the resonator of the instrument. The much smaller carillon of the Main Town Hall, on the other hand, has 37 bells (three octaves, without the lowest C# and Eb), is tuned in mean-tone and transposes a fifth upwards, and the bells are suspended outside, much higher than in St. Catherine’s.
As you can easily guess, for most composers this was their first encounter with this instrument. Probably only Hanna Kulenty, who lived in Arnhem for many years, and Marta Ptaszyńska, associated with the University of Chicago, had any previous experience with carillons (like many American universities, the University of Chicago also has a carillon – one of the largest in the world). Nevertheless, neither of them has written a piece for carillon to date.
List
of compositions:
Aleksander Nowak (*1979)
Three Callings
This work was composed in 2019 for the carillon of Gdańsk Town Hall, to a commission from the City of Gdańsk and Gdańsk Museum, to mark the eightieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War.
Premiered: 1 IX 2019 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
The work Three Callings refers to the traditional function of tower bells, which was to announce or mark important events and moments during the day, year or liturgy, or call to assembly or prayer. The subject of the titular callings is not unequivocal; they can be regarded as a suggestion to critical reflection in general.
This composition was written in 2019 to a commission from the City of Gdańsk and the Gdańsk Museum to mark the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.
Paweł Mykietyn (*1971)
STOP
This work was composed in 2020 for the carillon of Gdańsk Town Hall, to a commission from the City of Gdańsk and Museum of Gdańsk, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Gdańsk Agreement.
Premiered: 30 VIII 2020 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
The work STOP was written to a commission from the City of Gdańsk and Museum of Gdańsk to mark the 40th anniversary of the Gdańsk Agreement. The title expresses the beautiful, if perhaps somewhat naive, dream of the victory of good over evil. May that dream ring out from the carillon of the Town Hall in Gdańsk – a city that has experienced both great good, with the creation of Solidarity, and great evil, with the murder of its mayor.
Elżbieta Sikora (*1943)
Running North
This work was composed in 2020 for the carillon of St Catherine’s in Gdańsk, to a commission from the City of Gdańsk and Museum of Gdańsk, on the occasion of Museum’s 50th anniversary
Premiered: 30 VIII 2020 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
To flee from one’s fate, from oneself, from plague, war, enslavement and all forms of evil. To the north. There, where the sea opens out, beyond which lies freedom, the lure of the unknown. Gdańsk, 14th century. The city is in the grip of the plague. To flee from the city or shut oneself away, in quarantine? Gdańsk, 21st century. A new virus has arrived from China. A new quarantine. No panic, but fear. The Baltic lures you with its vanishing horizon. You just have to run there, immerse your feet in the sea’s gentle waves. Rest, wait for more storms.
This work consists of an introduction, five episodes, an interlude and an epilogue. It was written in Paris in 2020 to a commission from the City of Gdańsk and Museum of Gdańsk, on the occasion of the Museum’s 50th anniversary, for the carillon of St Catherine’s in Gdańsk.
Zygmunt Krauze (*1938)
Reveille
This work was composed in 2021 for the carillon of the Main Town Hall. It was commissioned by the City of Gdańsk and the Museum of Gdańsk to mark the addition of carillon music in Gdańsk to the Polish National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Premiered: 5 IX 2021 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
The reveille is a morning song, a wake-up call. The French word réveil, meaning ‘awakening’, is of crucial significance for me in this work. It is an appeal for caution, but also for change, for sobering up and taking a fresh look at ourselves and the world around us. Remaining too long in a cosy arrangement, although it may seem convenient, is actually ineffective. Reveille for carillon is a work in three
movements, the first and third of which represent a cry, a wake-up call, while the middle movement is calm. It includes a quotation from a sixteenth-century Protestant hymnal with words by Mikołaj Rej: ‘Let us all the reveille sing, praise to God our lord and king’.
Agata Zubel (*1978)
Memory of Bronze
This work was composed in 2021 for the carillon of St Catherine’s church. It was commissioned by the City of Gdańsk and the Museum of Gdańsk to mark the addition of carillon music in Gdańsk to the Polish National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Premiered: 5 IX 2021 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
Sound is an allegory of passing. A sound occurs. Importantly, it occurs in time. Not only is it a narrator representing a composer as a guide to emotions or states, but above all it surrounds and penetrates space… and time! At every moment of its existence, a sound is passing into history; it lasts only as long as the listener manages to capture it and remember it.
For a composer, an encounter with a carillon is something out of the ordinary. Like few other instruments, the carillon is predestined to proclaim. Emitting sounds from a place which itself is a unique witness to history, and emitting them in such a very physical way, it assumes the role of a protector of history, the history that has played out all around and that is created – for how long, we don’t know – in the sounds of a new work.
Dariusz Przybylski (*1984)
Visions
This work was composed in 2022 for the carillon of the Main Town Hall, to a commission from the City of Gdańsk and Museum of Gdańsk, to mark the 425th anniversary of Gdańsk Library.
Premiered: 4 IX 2022 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
For some time now, I have been interested in the phenomenon of hallucinations – products of our imagination that are usually symptomatic of disorders of various kinds. But that is not the only cause of hallucinations. Individuals of a certain sensitivity, such as artists, may experience visions when encountering something out of the ordinary. And that is precisely what occurred with Visions for carillon.
My first contact with this instrument came in March 2022, in the tower of the Main Town
Hall in Gdańsk. The instrument’s unusual location, as well as the remarkable space through which its music resounds, aroused my imagination in such a way as to trigger visions or hallucinations in sound, which in turn inspired the work presented here.
Hanna Kulenty (*1961)
Cristal en cristal
This work was composed in 2022 for the carillon of St Catherine’s church, to a commission from the City of Gdańsk and Museum of Gdańsk, with a message of peace for Ukraine.
Premiered: 4 IX 2022 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
Cristal en cristal is another work in which I forge musical surrealism out of resounding bitonal harmonies in various bi-resonances, bi-spaces and bi-times. Bizarre… – just like this remarkable instrument, which should lull us into a sort of trance of infinity.
I wrote this work in 2022, in France, recalling the sound of the instrument from St Catherine’s in Gdańsk and the carillon sonosphere of the Netherlands – a country I have been linked to for many years.
Krzysztof Meyer (*1943)
Memento
A work commissioned for the carillon of the Main Town Hall by the city of Gdańsk and Gdańsk Museum. The city of Gdańsk dedicates Krzysztof Meyer’s Memento to Lech Wałęsa on his 80th birthday.
Premiered: 9 IX 2023 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
I wrote Memento for carillon at the end of 2022. The title expresses anxiety and fear in the face of what is happening all around us – both in Poland and across the world. This work consists of three separate episodes, which are based on shared material with an unambiguous dramatic structure, beginning with simple chords and progressing to increasingly complex sonorities. Those note complexes appear irregularly, unexpectedly at times, and form a soundworld that unfolds as unpredictably as the reality around us.
Marta Ptaszyńska (*1943)
Bells of St. Catherine
A work commissioned for the carillon of St. Catherine’s church by the city of Gdańsk and Gdańsk Museum. The city of Gdańsk dedicates Marta Ptaszyńska’s Bells of St. Catherine to the city of Vilnius, celebrating its 700th anniversary, on the silver jubilee of our two cities’ partnership
Premiered: 9 IX 2023 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
The work Dzwony św. Katarzyny [Bells of St. Catherine] was written in 2023 specially for the carillon at St. Catherine’s church in Gdańsk.
I owe my great fondness for the carillon to the instrument in the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at Chicago University, where for more than 20 years I listened to the carillonists’ concerts every day on my way to teach. Bells of St. Catherine was inspired by a beautiful sequence by St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) entitled O Ignis Spiritus [O fire of the Spirit]. This work comprises two contrasting movements and a coda. The first movement is of a motoric, dynamic character, while the second, based on St. Hildegard’s sequence, is more static and meditative.
Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa (*1949)
Ciacona
Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa’s Ciacona for the carillon in the Main Town Hall was commissioned by the City of Gdańsk and the Museum of Gdańsk to mark the 35th anniversary of Poland’s fi rst partially free parliamentary elections after World War II.
Premiered: 7 IX 2024 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
I wrote Ciacona to be performed on the marvellous carillon in the tower of the Main Town Hall in Gdańsk. It assumes the form of Baroque polyphonic variations, while the design refers to works by Pachelbel and Buxtehude – hence the spelling of the title as employed by those composers.The main theme, basso ostinato, appears in the pedal, but it is also shown several times in the upper voices, and also in inversion and in mixtures. It is designed along dodecaphonic lines, rising over six whole tones and falling in similar fashion over four notes, with a fi fth serving as a question mark. This antecedent is followed by a similarly built consequent, but which ends with the missing twelfth tone.
In order to refer to the dance pedigree of the ciacona, the work is in 3/4, with dotted rhythms appearing in the variations. The coda is a chorale take on the opening lines of the Kashubian hymn ‘Nigdy do zguby nie przyjdą Kaszuby’ [Kashubia will never be lost]. The melody and message of that work are close to my heart, as my grandfather hailed from that region, and my father devoted one of his first books to the rebuilding of Gdańsk (Włodzimierz Wnuk, Wiosna nad Motławą [Spring on the Motława], 1952).
Krzysztof Knittel (*1947)
Gdańsk Nostalgia
Krzysztof Knittel’s work Gdańsk Nostalgia, commissioned for the carillon of St Catherine’s Church by the City of Gdańsk and the Museum of Gdańsk, dedicated to the heroic defenders of Westerplatte and the Polish Post Office on the 85th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War.
Premiered: 7 IX 2024 by Monika Kaźmierczak
On the composition:
Gdańsk Nostalgia is a work dedicated to Monika Kaźmierczak that was written within a week of my first visit to the tower of St Catherine’s church, filled to the rafters with bells. I was captivated by their beautiful sound, and also by my guide’s fascination with the sounds of the carillon. I am pleased that she will be the first performer of this work. What about the title? Well, if any visitors, like me, walking around the streets of Gdańsk and familiar with its remarkable and often dramatic history, have felt the spirit and atmosphere of this city, they will always want to return…
Paweł Szymański (*1954)
Viderunt
We dedicate the work Viderunt, commissioned from Paweł Szymański for the carillon of the Main Town Hall by the City of Gdańsk and the Museum of Gdańsk, to the memory of Professor Franciszek Duszeńkoon the centenary of his birth, in the Duszeńko Year decreed by the Polish Sejm to commemorate this outstanding sculptor associated with our city, who helped make the monument to the Defenders of the Coast on the Westerplatte Peninsula.
On the composition:
The chorale prelude Viderunt is based on the melody of the gradual Viderunt omnes fines terræ, from the Christmas Day Mass. The text of the gradual is derived from Psalm 97 (Vg) Cantate Domino canticum novum. Thanks to famous settings by composers of the Notre Dame school, Viderunt sends us to the heart of the musical tradition. Hence it is for me an important point of reference, though its text, unfortunately, sounds bitter and sarcastic in the world of today.
This work was written in 2025 to a commission from the Museum of Gdańsk to be performed on the instrument of the Main Town Hall by the municipal carillonist Monika Kaźmierczak. The actual compass of the town hall’s carillon is raised by a perfect fifth, which means that the work sounds a fifth higher than is written in the score while played on that instrument. The work can be performed on any instrument with a manual keyboard with the compass C3-D6 and a pedal keyboard ranging from C3 to G4.
Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil (*1947)
Fractals of Water Crystals
May Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil’s work Fractals of Water Crystals, commissioned for the carillon of St Catherine’s church by the City of Gdańsk and the Museum of Gdańsk, resound in honour of the Gdańsk Water Supply Trail.
Fractals of Water Crystals is a composition inspired by the Phenomenon of subdividing sea waves in a transparent coastal layer of water (the littoral zone), illuminated by sunlight, occasionally disturbed by a sudden squal… The most beautiful fractals appear in Gdańsk Bay in the autumn.
This work was written to a special commission from the Museum of Gdańsk and the City of Gdańsk for the carillon in St Catherine’s church and the virtuosic talent of the municipal carillonist, Dr Monika Kaźmierczak.