Church and State

Meyer's incorporation of familiar patriotic and religious melodies in his ‘Polish’ Sixth Symphony (see Chapter 11) was occasioned by the imposition of martial law on 13 December 1981. The gesture was not uncommon in the early 1980s and formed part of a continuum stretching back many decades (Ex. 12.1). In the post-war years, the patriotic song ‘Song of Warsaw’ (‘Warszawianka’, 1831) had been a source for Woytowicz's Second Symphony and Panufnik's Heroic Overture, works which commemorated Polish heroism during the Second World War. Even further back, Paderewski had radically adapted the opening phrases of the folk melody to the Dᾳbrowski Mazurka (1797) – later to become Poland's official national anthem – and secreted it in the finale of his Symphony ‘Polonia’ (1909) as part of his contribution towards the fight for Polish independence. It might well have seemed, to the outside observer, that such struggles in the sphere of cultural affairs had been resolved once the thaw had begun in the mid-1950s. This was far from the case, because the societal problems under the PZPR had not been resolved and would not be until an acceptably democratic system was established in 1989. During the intervening decades, there were several major crises in Poland that involved both the independence of cultural activity, religious expression and the common well-being of ordinary citizens (Appendix 4 charts a selection of events for the twenty-five years between 1966 and 1990).