Tadeusz Baird

Baird was born in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, in Poland. His father Edward was Scottish, while his mother Maria (née Popov) was Russian. In 1944 at the age of 16 he was deported to Germany as a forced labourer, and after a failed escape attempt was imprisoned in a concentration camp. After liberation by the Americans he spent six months recovering at the military hospital in Zweckel before returning to Poland.[1] Between 1947 and 1951 Baird studied composition and musicology in Warsaw under Piotr Rytek and Kazimierz Sikorski, and piano with Tadeusz Wituski.[2] In 1949 he founded Group 49 along with Kazimierz Serocki and Jan Krenz. The aim of Group 49 was to write communicative and expressive music according to socialist realism, the dominant ideology in the Eastern Bloc at the time.

After Stalin's death in 1953 he increasingly turned to serialism.[3] In 1956, along with Kazimierz Serocki, he founded the Warsaw Autumn international contemporary music festival. In 1974 he began to teach composition at the National College of Music (currently the Music Academy) in Warsaw. In 1977, now a full professor, he was offered a post to teach a composition class at the Warsaw Academy of Music, and also a membership of the Academie der Künste der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik – Berlin in 1979.

Baird died in 1981, aged 53.[4]

He wrote both large scale symphonies and chamber music, however, of great importance in his output are numerous vocal cycles inspired by poetry. He was also a composer of film and theatre music. Baird's music is usually melodic, lyrical, very expressive, and intensely subjective. It is often rooted in the post-Romantic tradition, despite the use of serial techniques. Alistair Wightman identifies Baird as "a late Romantic lyricist and successor not only to Berg, but Mahler and Szymanowski". Like Berg, his use of serialism was always very free and expressive, as in his String Quartet (1957).[5]

But the later works, starting with the 1966 one-act opera Jutro ("tomorrow", based on the short story by Joseph Conrad)[6] become darker, particularly in the orchestral piece Psychodrama (1972) and in his final work, the song cycle for baritone and orchestra Głosy z oddali (‘Voices from afar’), which sets a bleak text by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz on the subject of death and personal extinction.[2] This change in perspective was a result of the traumatic experiences he faced during World War II and on into the early 1950s. Barbara Literska sees him as "a prophet of the future of music (postmodernity)".[7]

• Eastern Discoveries. MSR MS1517 (2015). Four preludes for bassoon and piano
• Epiphany Music. Olympia OCD 312 (1989). Epiphany Music for orchestra, Elegia For orchestra, Four Love Sonnets, Symphony No 3
• Film Music, Volumes 1 and 2. Olympia OCD 604 (1994) and OCD 607 (1995)
• Günter Wand: The Radio Recordings. Profil PH13038 (2016). Four Dialogues for oboe and orchestra
• Orchestral Works. Koch 3-6770-2 (2001). Psychodrama, Oboe Concerto, Scenes for cello, harp and orchestra, Conzona for orchestra, Concerto Lugubre for viola and orchestra
• Polish Piano Concertos. Dux 0651 (2009). Piano Concerto
• Polish Songs. Acte Prealable APO 274 (2013). Trouveurs’ Songs
• Psychodrama. Olympia 326 (2000). Psychodrama, Tomorrow
• Songs and Orchestral Music. Olympia OCD 388 (1993). Voices From Afar, Goethe-Briefe, Scene For cello and harp With orchestra, Canzona for orchestra
• Streichquartette. Colosseum 0648 (1986). Play for string quartet, Variations on Rondo Form, String Quartet No 1
• Szymanowski, Gorecki, Baird. EMI 5 65418 (1995). Colas Breugnon Suite

• Polish School (music)

• Baird page at the Polish Music Center
• Tadeusz Baird at PWM Edition
• Tadeusz Baird Page at the Polish Music Information Center