The Sixth Commandment

Suffering, suffering, suffering. Without end.

The title of the work refers to the Sixth Commandment in the Talmudic tradition: "thou shalt not kill". In my piece, the words of witnesses to what happened in the Nazi concentration camp Majdanek near Lublin during World War II are reflected in the poems of Grzegorz Kwiatkowski and echo in Ekhmetjan Osman's Uyghur poetry.

Simple testimonies of the everyday violence of that time become a warning against the cruelty of our time. At different latitudes, human beings are still persecuted: women, men and children are dying in our eyes. And yet we know: thou shalt not kill is a commandment which must not be forgotten.

The Sixth commandment was commissioned by Les Métaboles and is composed for almost identical line-up as Luigi Nono's Quando stanno morendo. Diario polacco n. 2 with the intention of performing both pieces during one concert. In my work, the percussion replaces the electronics present in Nono's piece.

The simple melodic lines of the fragments sung solo contrast with group of sequences in which female voices are treated instrumentally, as well as with the spoken, whispered and even shouted parts. The instrumental cadences, full of anger and  energy, comment on fragments of the text in their own way, creating, together with the voices, a dense sound tissue of the piece.

The piece is dedicated to the victims of any kind of violence.

This work was commissioned by Les Métaboles on the initiative of the SONORA music agency.

Financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland
as part of the Multi-annual Programme NIEPODLEGŁA 2017–2022

With the friendly support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, SACEM, Polish Institute in Paris and le Centre National de la Musique

Publisher: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne