Cassazione per orchestra (1956)

Cassazione is not just Baird’s first orchestral work using the serial technique, but the first and only Polish dodecaphonic work presented at the 1st “Warsaw Autumn” Festival in 1956. The composition is dedicated to Witold Rowicki.

It consists of three movements: I. Adagio molto tranquillo. Allegro, II. Andante molto cantabile, III. Allegro.

This reference to the sonata cycle is a sign of neo-classical thinking, as is the use of the sonata allegro form in the outer movements, and instrumentation for a large symphony orchestra, emphasising the formal features of the work.

The work is based on five series – one source series and four prime series. The composer often diverges from strict dodecaphonic principles: he uses motivic work, imitates fragments of a series, organises the sound material around individual central notes. In the last section of the work the serial technique is treated very freely, its rules are made very loose, even abandoned.

Cassazione, as the first Polish dodecaphonic composition written in Poland after 1956, is not an “ideal example” of this technique. However, this “imperfection” became a norm in Baird’s work; the composer treated the basic principle of dodecaphony – composing by means of twelve tones – very individually. Later he became very critical of Cassazione, saying that it was a

piece lacking coherence, a piece combining attempts to compose by means of the serial technique with a form and texture taken straight from the previous period.