Leszek Wisłocki, Jeleniogórska sonata na cztery lata

Leszek Wisłocki is a famous music theorist and composer. For many years he has been a Professor at the Academy of Music in Wrocław. However, before he started working for the Academy, he spent some time living in Jelenia Góra, where for 4 years he attended the Stefan Żeromski Co-educational Gymnasium and Grammar School. These school years are the subject of Wisłocki’s account. It is a detailed description of Professor’s pre-war life, as well as his and his family’s war experience, and in particular of his father’s military service. Wisłocki clearly explains the reasons for his family coming to Lower Silesia and settling in Jelenia Góra. Equally clearly Wisłocki recalls his teachers, school friends and important events which influenced the school life as well as the life of the local society, such as existence of the underground independence movement in 1949. He tells anecdotes about excursions to the mountains or his first performances as a musician staged at school. Wisłocki underlines the importance of this first, post-war period – not only for him, but also for his friends who later, having graduated from grammar school, went on to become professors or achieved other socially significant posts. Finally, Professors pays a lot of attention to returns and school relations – still vivid and close after more than seven decades. Annual school reunions and extensive correspondence exchanged by the ex-pupils serves as a proof that the short period of education, which lasted only 4 years, had a great impact on the life of this generation.