Scored for an unaccompanied choir of children and teenagers,  Hori(you)zons is dedicated to the Choir of the Jan III Sobieski Secondary School no. 75 in Warsaw and its conductor, Liliana Bach. The piece was inspired by Horizons (1974), Magdalena WięcekWnuk’s outdoor sculpture, now on display at Królikarnia Park in  Warsaw (krolikarnia.mnw.art.pl/o-krolikarni/park-rzezby/oryzonty/). Central to my conception of the work was its educational  dimension: introducing young performers and listeners both to  the dialogue between the arts and to contemporary choral music,  with its rich palette of extended vocal techniques and compositional procedures.

The sculptor’s abstract treatment of her subject prompted me to  explore a broad, multivalent field of reference. Unconventionally  notated, the score specifies no fixed pitches. Rather than a conventional “poem,” the work takes the word “horizon” as its verbal  matrix, together with the field of associations it opened up for me  during composition. This material undergoes a range of transformations—from rhythmically patterned repetitions to processes of  derivation and syllabic structuring, which break words down into  their constituent speech sounds. Yet as the form unfolds, the text  takes on a quasi-semantic dimension, with a distinctly social  inflection. The question that rings out at the close—“he—or  you?”—asks where the younger generation stands on such matters as community and inclusivity. The horizon at stake, then, is  (also) a horizon of thought…

Anna Ignatowicz-Glińska