Tadeusz Baird

Tadeusz Baird began his studies during the German occupation in World War II. After the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 he was arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis. He continued his studies in 1947 at the State Academy of Music in Warsaw. Baird also studied piano and musicology at the University of Warsaw. Immediately after the war, he began to compose and, together with fellow composers, founded “Grupa 49”, which strove for a socialist-realistic aesthetic. In Poland he was one of the first composers to turn to 12-tone music.

In 1956 Baird was one of the initiators of the “Warsaw Autumn”, an international festival of contemporary music. Beginning in 1974 he taught composition at the State Academy of Music, and in 1977 he took over the chair of composition there. He was appointed a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin (East) and an honorary member of the Polish Composers’ Association. Baird died unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm.

Baird used modern compositional forms and combined them with elements of musical tradition. Although called “the last Polish Romantic”, Baird was also considered a successor to Expressionism. In addition to concert works, he composed music for film and television. He was awarded numerous national honors and art prizes.

Baird’s Sonatina No. 2 for Piano was written in 1952, and the movements are Vivo e giocoso, Molto andante and Allegro con fuoco. The original title of the work was Concert Sonatina for Piano. The duration was 12-minutes. It earned him the third prize in this category of the pre-Olympic art competitions in Poland. Baird dedicated the work to the Polish violinist Tadeusz Ochlewski (1894-1975). Baird later arranged the first part of the Sonatina No. 2 for orchestra as Giocosa Overture.