Zofia Lissa, Wartime Trauma, and the Evolution of the Polish “Mass Song”

Abstract

Scholars have primarily seen the musicologist Zofia Lissa (1908–80) as a communist ideologue and key instigator of the Sovietization of Polish musical culture after World War II. An examination of materials 121 See, for example, the exchange of letters between Chybiński and his student Józef Chomiński. Adolf Chybiński and Józef M. Chomiński, Korespondencja 1945–1952, ed. Małgorzata Sieradz (Warsaw: PAN, 2016), 122–26. 122 BUAM, 803 III/3, 172, Lissa to Chybiński, July 21, 1949. “Mam bardzo trudną rolę: Muszę im wykazać, _ ze ja nie jestem ‘formalistą.’” 123 Zofia Lissa, “O metodzie marksistowskiej [1950],” Muzykologia na przełomie (Cracow: PWM, 1952), 25–94, at 78; and Lissa, “Raz jeszcze o polską pieśń masową [1950],” 214. 124 For an overview of common topics of mass songs during this period, see Tompkins, Composing the Party Line, 36–39. pierce