The European Workshop for Contemporary Music (EWCM) was set up in 2003, on the eve of Poland’s accession to the EU, with two main ideas in mind. The first, artistic aim was to create a platform for young musicians to practise new music performance, and thus to help this music gain new supporters and experts. The second was the one expressed by Schiller in his Ode to Joy, and later emphatically by Beethoven, whose setting has been taken up as the official anthem of the European Union: LET ALL HUMANS BECOME BROTHERS. 

When composing a piece for the EWCM’s twentieth anniversary, I decided to refer to that double inspiration, that is, to the concept of people’s harmonious cooperation for a mutual understanding and of dedicated effort to create and support a noble and profound, inventive and innovative contemporary musical art. 

This idea comes, of necessity, with a pinch of bitter irony, since the European anthem’s call for “all people to become brothers” seems – at a time when brothers are invading their brothers’ country on this very continent – unfortunately highly premature. The demand to create a “noble” and “high” musical art may appear rather frivolous, on the other hand, in a world where we are made to think that “noble” and “base,” “high” and “low” – are all illusions, and that in fact music can only be “good” or “bad.” Whatever the context, it is my belief that these aims and ideas must not be given up. I therefore wish all the EWCM members a continued and rewarding artistic experience and prosperity, and venture to present them with a piece of music that comes complete with, among others, a bucketful of good faith, a ladleful of hope, and a saucerful of fine humour. 

Tadeusz Wielecki 

The publisher of Poster by Tadeusz Wielecki is PWM Edition.