Marcin Stanczyk

3 Afterimages

In the mid-twentieth century, Władysław Strzemiński painted a series of solaristic pictures entitled Powidoki światła ('Afterimages of light'), illustrating the optical impressions triggered by gazing at the sun. They can be observed when we look at the sun and then suddenly turn our eyes to a white sheet of paper. We then see a reflection of the light - a trail in blue, contrasting with the yellow. The reflection of the notes in this work are their harmonics. The three movements are formed from the relationship between the fundamental pitches and their overtones. The first is built on the principle of the mutual contrast between the sounding 'light' and its 'afterimages'. In the second movement, the transitions between the 'lights' and their 'afterimages' are smooth, while in the third, the juxtaposing of fundamentals and overtones is initially smooth, but then alters in the direction of the contrast from the beginning of the work.