Depending on the relations with a given individual, Tadeusz Baird is said to have varied character traits. Many thought him to be shy, oversensitive and withdrawn, a contemplative man. Others point to his egocentrism, independence, uncompromising and determined nature. To his closest friends he was warm, kind, empathic, and, above all, very sociable and cheerful. For them he often arranged more or less official get-togethers in his flat. As Alina Baird recalls:
There were often get-togethers and with quite a lot of people at that [...]. In addition, there came various performers, not necessarily to discuss some specific piece, but simply to make a social call. For example [Andrzej] Hiolski would often visit us; Lothar Faber would come from Cologne. My husband was friends with Kurt Masur, also with [Aleksander] Bardini, of course with [Witold] Rowicki, for some time also with Serocki and Krenz, but when Group 49 ended, the ties became gradually loose [...]. Even the Lutosławskis, the Wisłockis came here [...]. We were friends with the Kotońskis, with the Turskis, and Stefka Woytowicz once sang Gypsy romances here [...]. There were various actors – Woszczerowicz, for example. I wasn’t present there, but apparently he gave a whole show, in front of the piano. And it lasted a few hours.
Although the composer was fascinated primarily with the Mediterranean culture, the South of Europe, he himself was – as he said – a man of the North in all respects. Also with regards to his mentality, customs and type of relations with people. He added that withdrawing was his natural trait. This was confirmed by Krzysztof Meyer:
There was something tragic and lonely in this artist – devoting so much time to community work, playing an important role in the Composers’ Union and for a long time in the organisation of the Warsaw Autumn, in various committees, he was by nature a great loner.
Baird’s actions and statements revealed a strong, tenacious character, but also understanding with regard to others:
I don’t really care that my behaviour may seem outrageous. Life is possible also because people are very different.
Although the composer seemed haughty to many, he never, as Jerzy Kornowicz stressed, was haughty with his students despite the “schoolboy pranks” they sometimes played on him. His reactions were very warm, wise and understanding.
Tadeusz Baird seemed rather haughty to many people. I didn’t feel that at all as his student; it’s strange, because he could have easily shown me this haughtiness, he had the right to do so. We were separated by light years [...] of experiences, awareness, stage of artistic development. I could talk very easily with the Professor about everything, despite my sometimes juvenile pranks, which – if I had had to suffer them in his position – would have ended in some “student slaughter”. [...] I want to apologise to Tadeusz Baird for the fact that, knowing he had classes with me on Mondays at 9am, that we was commuting from Saska Kępa, I sometimes called the secretary’s office [...] and said that tragic circumstances prevent me from attending the classes. [...] And I know that the Professor waited for two hours for the next class, because he could do nothing else. [...] I wish so much I hadn’t wasted all those hours [...]. I find it difficult to associate this warmth with which he tolerated this kind of behaviour with the “haughty Baird”.
Krzysztof Knittel interprets Baird's quite cool and distanced attitude towards the environment as a kind of defense, a kind of mask for the very sensitive nature of the composer:
Jerzy Artysz, too, disagrees that Baird was haughty, stressing other interesting traits of his character instead:
It seems to me that Tadeusz was authentic, that you can’t pigeonhole him as a haughty man [...]. He was, in my opinion, very emotional, bluntly emotional [...]. He had all these layers of relations in life that conditioned him in a way. He wasn’t a cardboard character, that’s for sure. Besides, he knew the value of his artistic ideas [...]. His was a very rich personality. As a result, no side of life was alien to him [...]. He was an excellent driver, had his favourite car types, changing them [...] with passion [...]. Pigeonholing or cataloguing are not for him – no way [...] His emotions were sincere, true and very dynamic.
When describing the composer’s personality from the point of view of a performer Jerzy Artysz says that
Tadeusz Baird was not a character that would embrace anyone wanting to become interested in his music. His was a very defined personality, very classy, with great manners [...]. Not that he was aloof, but he wouldn’t chum up with you immediately only because you would perform his work [...] But this became deeper during the rehearsals.
Jacek Kaspszyk emphasizes that certain traits of Baird's personality is typical for most artists:
In Grzegorz Michalski's memoirs general, "old-fashioned" cultural formation of Tadeusz Baird and his reactions are compared to those, that characterize Witold Lutosławski:
Baird’s uncompromising nature and absolute honesty did not make life easier for him. As his wife recalls:
There were people whom he disliked, with who he quarrelled [...]. It usually happened in the Conservatory. There were people with different political views – this was the basis, but it also happened, when someone did something wrong and wouldn’t admit it [...]. Then he would bring it to light and talk about it, which people held against him. Because they could be people he usually adored, and then it turned out that they were guilty of various misdemeanours.
This complexity of the composer’s character undoubtedly stemmed from his wartime experiences and his complicated family situation after the war. Baird’s exceptional nature earned him a large number of friends and associates. According to Izabella Grzenkowicz:
Baird had this sense of self-esteem and it would have been difficult to believe, if he hadn’t had it. [...] He was by no means a conceited man; he was very approachable and warm in his contacts with people. Warm and kind. [...] He was a well-mannered man and undoubtedly capable of showing empathy. Sometimes he would be moved by someone’s misfortune or, for example, by students’ poverty. He got annoyed by great [...] professional failures, not his own, but generally – those of Polish musical culture, which in his lifetime went through various, sometimes very difficult periods.
Above all:
He was an incredible man. First of all, very wise, with broad humanistic horizons [...]. He had this extraordinary gift [...] for quickly discerning the right values, not only musical ones. [...] he was a dynamic man.
- K. Meyer, Kilka myśli o muzyce Tadeusza Bairda [Some reflections on Tadeusz Baird’s music], Ruch Muzyczny 1982 no. 7, p. 7.
- Ponad codzienność. Rozmowa z Tadeuszem Bairdem [Above mundanity. A conversation with Tadeusz Baird] (E. Kofin), Odra 1973, no. 4, p. 91.
- A. Skulska, Szkic do portretu: Tadeusz Baird [Tadeusz Baird: a Portrait] [sound doc.], Second Programme of the Polish Radio, 2007.
Baird’s flair for teaching was revealed very early, when, still a teenager, he taught music in a German camp and conservatory. Life in the camp also revealed his organisational talents; as he himself said, he was a “manager of a village club” at the time. Another important factor was his considerable experience as a leader of the Youth Club at the Polish Composers’ Union, when he acted as a “tutor” of young Polish composers. In addition, he was honoured, much to his great pleasure, by membership in the Honorary Board of Pro Sinfonika – Young Music Lovers’ Movement from Poznań. Baird cultivated his organisational passion in Poland as an adult man, becoming actively involved in the organisation of successive music festivals. There also came a moment when he took up institutional teaching of composition at the State School of Music in Warsaw. He began teaching there already in September 1972, but resigned after two months because of a lack of agreement concerning the conditions of his employment.
But a year after receiving his MA, he was again employed by the School as a contractual professor on the initiative of Tadeusz Wroński (the then rector). He worked in this post for three years (from April 1974 till September 1977), and on 1 November 1977 the Minister of Culture and Art appointed him full professor. In his work he focused not only on teaching the principles of composition, but also on making sure that this teaching had the right profile and that opportunities would be created for graduates making their debuts. On many occasions he called for a friendly atmosphere surrounding young artists:
I’d like to be well understood: I’m not for making things easy in life, for anyone. But young artists, more than anyone else, need help, kindness, care at the beginning. Artists’ life seen only from the outside, by television viewers and by readers of popular magazines and evening papers seems easy, simple and pleasant. In fact, it is a hermetic and complex world with its own, hard rules. Artistic professions require people to have not only talent but also character. [...] at least at the beginning these young composers, conductors and soloists need to be given more opportunities than they have now, they need to be assisted more effectively in their first, hesitant steps on their own. [...] Later they will have many opportunities to sink or swim in deep waters in any case.
In his actions he was guided by one idea: “[...] Helping young Polish artists today is our duty to the future of Polish art”.
Baird’s cultural work as a teacher was appreciated by the academic community: the Senate of the State School of Music awarded him its prize in 1978. Achievements that earned Baird this prize included his paper entitled Reflections on the methodology of educating young composers delivered at the 10th Congress of the Association Européenne des Conservatoires et Académies de Musique.
Tadeusz Baird liked to work with students. He treated them with respect, maintaining a distance appropriate for a professor. At the same time he was very kind to them. One of his students, Paweł Buczyński, remembered him in the following manner:
[...] not for a moment did I ever notice him trying to impose anything. If he interfered, he did so in purely technical matters, respecting what is given to each of us who begins to write. It’s the idea that is particular to every individual, that is unique and just needs to be clothed, shaped, given the right form, and this was his role, which he played magnificently. Often he referred to his own experiences from rehearsals with orchestras, from concerts, rehearsals with soloists, and said what would be easier to perform, how better to express what I wanted to express.
Another student, Jerzy Kornowicz, stressed his Professor’s great personality:
[...] I felt crushed, dwarfed by this man who surpassed me with his awareness, with his life experience. I can say that despite that and perhaps because of that I experienced a lot of caring gestures. They were not effusive but they were concrete. A lot of warmth for my ignorance.
This is how Kornowicz recalls his choice of this particular teacher of composition and relations with his from the beginning of his studies, in 1978:
Why Tadeusz Baird? Because for me – a young man at the time – it was a well-known name. At the same time Baird’s music had this ability to communicate, which simply [...] was getting through to me. [...] It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast. A young, hot-headed boy, ignorant to a large extent, it has to be said, and, on the other hand – a polymath, a man with such experiences that sometimes lead to silence rather than excessive talk, and if there is some talk, the pronouncements are rather significant. [...] I remember that once we started to talk about Prokofiev, whom I didn’t like, didn’t know at the time [...] I began to criticise Prokofiev [...]. Silence fell. Tadeusz Baird said, “Jerzy, I envy you your bold views”. There were many such punchlines, comments. The older I get, the better I realise how discreetly they were said.
Baird’s methods and mode of work as a teacher are described in the following manner by the current president of the Polish Composers’ Union:
Tadeusz Baird had a very thorough, we might say classical approach to education [...] – it began with work on styles [...] The next stage was writing instrumentation for one’s works in various styles [...] He was very detailed, i.e. this feature of Tadeusz Baird’s scores is evident to this day, everything is very well written [...] the famous diminuendo all niente, a whole series of expressions that are [...] now anecdotal, but in some cases also became part of people’s technique, for instance in my case – they were an attitude one took over [...]. During lessons with him, he would never play the score with which one came to him. He would put the score on the piano with its lid closed (the keyboard was open) and he really looked at the keyboard more than he used it [...]. Sometimes neither we, the students, nor the professor felt for some reason like talking about music – we would go then to “Gama” to have some coffee [...] Wojtek Nowak and Paweł Buczyński used to frequent the place.
Unfortunately, when Jerzy Kornowicz was in his third year at the school, Tadeusz Baird suddenly died.
It was a thunderbolt [...]. Tadeusz Baird had been ill, but this illness was not the cause of his death [...]. Astonishment, a sense of facing a tragic situation. It seemed that Tadeusz Baird was beginning another important period in his life, that he was very important to us, his students, to the Academy of Music [...], his influence was growing [...]. And this element of tragedy present in [his] works was in a way fulfilled in his passing.
Indeed, the composer’s death was to some extent unexpected. This is how his wife, Alina Baird, talked about his illness and circumstances of his death:
This may have been predicted, but we didn’t realise that, because it was a cerebral aneurysm [...]. But it was manifested earlier, when during a visit to Germany he [Baird] fainted and was taken to hospital from the hotel [...]. Then, in the morning, when he woke up, he came to the conclusion that everything was all right [...], he quickly returned to Poland [...] But apart from that there were no other symptoms. He was in the early stages of diabetes, he was receiving injections [...], but he wasn’t so [seriously] ill. Of course, after the stay in Germany [during the war] and osseous tuberculosis, he must have been ailing, his heart must have been weakened [...]. But he wouldn’t have been able to swim, for example (and he was able to swim 2 kilometres), if he had had a weak heart, would he [...]? We returned from Bulgaria and the Artyszes visited [us] the following evening [...]. I made some supper and then they went home and everything was fine. During the night he suddenly felt unwell [...]. If fact, we should have called an ambulance and taken him to hospital, but there came a doctor, an acquaintance of ours, and she said that it was dehydration [...], that he needed a drip infusion and it would pass [...]. However, it didn’t pass two days later, he even had a slight paralysis on one side of his face, because it was a stroke. He was taken to a government hospital [...]. After some tests they said he needed a brain surgery, but it was not possible there [...], so they took him to the hospital in Banach Street [...]. He stayed there for two days and he felt fine [...] The following day they were to operate on him, [...] I was to come at 9.00 and find out everything [...]. I came and it turned out that they hadn’t called me at all and my husband had died [...] He was fine after Bulgaria, before that, too, a whole month at Ustka [...]. Everything was fine [...] the aneurysm must have ruptured [...].
- T. Baird, Trudno być artystą (młodym) [It is difficult to be a (young) artist], Kultura 20.5.1979 no. 20, p. 11.
- A. Skulska, Szkic do portretu: Tadeusz Baird [Tadeusz Baird: a Portrait] [sound doc.], Second Programme of the Polish Radio, 2007.
The Warsaw Autumn is an important point in Tadeusz Baird’s biography, because the composer made a substantial contribution to the organisation of this festival. We should look for its beginnings as far back as in 1950, when Baird became a member of the Board of the Polish Composers’ Union. Together with Kazimierz Serocki, Andrzej Dobrowolski and Włodzimierz Kotoński, he organised the 1st Polish Music Festival. It covered the whole country and took into account Poland’s entire musical culture – from amateur to professional activities. As Baird recalled years later:
Over one concert season, despite the chaos and still rather poor organisation, together with some conductors and soloists helping us we tried to present the most important works. The interest in and understanding of the event were beyond all our expectations.
As early as in 1952 the same individuals sought to organise the 2nd Polish Music Festival, which eventually was held in 1955. It was a huge venture witnessed also by a group of guests from abroad. The success of the Festival prompted Baird and Serocki – the outgoing deputy presidents of the Polish Composers’ Union – to put forward a proposal at the 8th General Assembly of the PCU that festivals of contemporary music be organised in Poland. This idea was indeed implemented and in 1956 the then members of the PCU’s Board (Tadeusz Baird, Andrzej Dobrowolski, Włodzimierz Kotoński and Kazimierz Serocki), supported by Professor Kazimierz Sikorski (president of the PCU), organised the 1st “Warsaw Autumn” International Festival of Contemporary Music.
The work on the preparation and organisation of successive Festivals was a source of great satisfaction to Baird. Until as late as 1969 he was a member of the Programme Committee of the Warsaw Autumn, but when he did not manage to introduce changes to its format, he withdrew, believing that
All institutions or all regular events share the fate of all living organisms: they get old. The Warsaw Autumn, too, has grown old a bit. This doesn’t mean we should abolish it or wait calmly for the patient to die.
The Warsaw Autumn was an international forum for presenting the works of contemporary Polish composers, a forum used also by Tadeusz Baird. Until 1981 his music was present during virtually every Festival (with the exception of its 1965 and 1980 editions). 25 of his works were performed at the Warsaw Autumn, with 11 of them being premiered there.
- J. Cegiełła, Szkice do autoportretu polskiej muzyki współczesnej [Sketches for a Self-Portrait of Contemporary Polish Music], Kraków 1976, pp. 21 and 23.
Beginning with his Łagów debut in 1949 and regardless of the external circumstances, the stature of Tadeusz Baird the composer was gradually growing. He was at the centre of Polish musical life, travelled regularly abroad and was invited to be jury member at various festivals and competitions. In addition, he received awards from the government, but, primarily, from various musical institutions. His most important achievements include first place – won three times – at UNESCO’s International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. In 1959 he won the prize for his Four Essays for orchestra, in 1963 – for the Variations without a Theme for symphony orchestra and in 1966 – for the Four Dialogues for oboe and chamber orchestra. He also received the Serge Koussevitzky Prize (1968), Alfred Jurzykowski Prize (1971), Arthur Honegger Prize (1974) and the Sibelius Medal (1976). The 1970s were marked by a veritable “shower” of various honorary and financial rewards. As a mature musician at that time Baird had achieved a high status in Polish musical culture and on the international stage (mainly in Germany and the USA). Half of all his 36 awards (prizes, diplomas, medals) come from that period. In addition to prestige, these awards often provided substantial financial support to the composer, a fact which he confirmed sarcastically:
As regards the award: I don’t really know whether in this hardly lovable Homeland of ours it is a more decent thing to be noticed and appreciated by those in power or, rather, to be disregarded and ignored. Unless one can console oneself by Kisiel’s old saying: it’s not just shame, they pay as well.
- K. Tarnawska-Kaczorowska, Tadeusz Baird. Glosy do biografii [Tadeusz Baird. A Biography], Kraków 1997, pp. 229-230.
1949 was a breakthrough year for Tadeusz Baird. He received an invitation to work with the Youth Club affiliated to the Polish Composers’ Union, and an offer of a bursary; he was also considered as a candidate for a stay in Paris on a UNESCO scholarship, and became a member of the Polish Composers’ Union.
However, the most important event turned out to be a visit to Łagów Lubuski, which between 5 and 8 August hosted a National Congress of Composers and Music Critics. Thanks to his Snfonietta the young composer achieved his first success there. As he recalled many years later:
This was my encounter with the musical Olympus, I was overawed and lost amidst all those heated debates. That is why those few young people present there quickly got together and presented a kind of united front.
This front was Group 49, bringing together three young composers:
Kazimierz Serocki, Jan Krenz and I met in a marina on one of the Łagów lakes, and after a long discussion we decided to stick together and, in fact, join our forces, talent and our various skills to find our way somehow in this difficult, complicated, alien and dangerous world – said the composer.
Group 49’s strong name and official programme (both by Stefan Jarociński) provided a “smokescreen” for Poland’s communist authorities, hungry for young artistic souls. The programme included the following provision:
[...] what these young musicians want first of all is to break with the traditions of unbridled novelty and restore lost contact with those listeners that are becoming the main consumers of culture today. Their music is anti-elitist in spirit, but it does not intend to pander to cheap petit bourgeois taste, which is why in pursuing their objectives they do not want to give up any achievements of modern harmony.
In fact, they were a group of three friends, who were bound by close personal and artistic ties all their lives. The name – Group 49 – was used only for two composers’ concerts (both in Warsaw): on 13 January 1950 and 30 May 1952 (repeated on 1 June 1952). After that the three artists worked only under their own names.
These important events in Tadeusz’s life were happening at an inauspicious time for his family. Not only did his father leave the family after the war and moved in with another woman, but on 5 January 1950 he was suddenly detained and arrested by the Public Security Authority. Nearly six months later, in May 1950, he was charged and on 30 November that year – sentenced. The District Military Court in Warsaw ruled that Edward Baird, as an official of the Ministry of Agriculture and Agricultural Reforms, had acted to the detriment of the Polish state, because he had revealed a state secret (concerning the general condition of agriculture in Poland, the state of the crops and fallow land, the headage, the repair of wartime damage to agriculture, the state of livestock) to a foreign agent. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and was deprived of public rights and honorary civic rights for 5 years. We can be almost certain that the reasons behind Edward’s arrest included his wartime past. He had been a member of the Union of Armed Struggle, and had been active in the Home Army and the Government Delegation for Poland as a deputy head of the Department of Agriculture. Such a past could not have gone unnoticed by the government, which persecuted former members of the Home Army. Aware of the great danger to his father’s life, Tadeusz did not cease in his efforts to have him acquitted and freed. He talked personally to and corresponded with various decision-makers, primarily with the then president and subsequently prime minister of Poland, Bolesław Bierut. As a result, the composer’s father spent three and a half years in prison. He was released in June 1953, with the sentence being rescinded four years later (1957) and the case being dismissed.
The composer’s widow recalls this extremely difficult case, stressing that not all events and efforts of Edward’s son are documented:
I know that when he went to Bierut, a favour procured by Sokorski and for which he had to writeThe Ballad of a Cup, he was very nervous – what to say in order not to make the matters worse [...] Bierut replied – we’ll see what can be done [...] There are no traces of this visit at the Institute of National Remembrance, there are probably only letters [...] of his father’s second wife, because she, too, went there many times, she took care of him.
We do know, however, that the fight for his father led to Baird’s writing three panegyrical pieces: a cantata, Song of Revolution (1951), The Ballad of a Soldier’s Cup (1954) and a mass song, At a Warsaw Rally (1955). The composer’s determined efforts were supported by the deputy minister and then minister of Culture and Art, Włodzimierz Sokorski.
- T. Baird, J. Zadrowska (ed.), M. Adamski (rec.), Życie nie tylko nutami pisane - cykl gawęd wspomnieniowych [A Life not Only in Notes – a Series of Reminiscences] [sound doc.], tale 7.
- T. A. Zieliński, Tadeusz Baird, Kraków 1966, p. 20.
