Mediated Sound—Between Visual Art and Music: Three Case Study: Zbigniew Bargielski, Zygmunt Krauze, Bettina Skrzypczak

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Suggestion for:

Presentation of Siglind Bruhn as German musicologist acting in America.

Presentation of Zbigniew Bargielski as Polish composer acting temporarily in Austria (is Bargielski Austrian composer, in what sense?)

Unifying the number of reference (after of before a dot) in accordance with the journal's publishing rules

Shortening the title of a paper, suggestion: Mediation sound – between visual arts and music: Bargielski, Krauze, Skrzypczak.

Expanding on the content presented the subtitles as they are very sparse, suggestion:

2 Mysłowski-Bargielski (to add some words in the subtitle leading to what is the relations between them, what sense does this fragment introduce)

Adding some comment about how and why important the topic is today.

 

Other remarks:

Reference/footnote 2 – has no content, page 3

Graphics 1,2, need the pictures author’s name

Figure 1. no source of the example, the composer’s  consent needed p. 7

long quotes should be adapted to the publishing house's editorial rules

Image 4., needs the description of the source and consent – is Google share access to graphic free?

References/footnotes 6,7,8,9,11 are too wide, suggestion for shortening and including the essential content in the main text

Figure 3.4, no appropriate description, no page and bars numbers, page 16,17.

Suggestion for explaining the term ‘unidirectional’ (the composer’s term) and presenting it in quotation marks, page. 17, as it as further in the text: This non-contrastive ‘unidirectionality’ of the musical process

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title of Manuscript: Mediated Sound-on the Musical Representation
of Works of Visual Art in the Oeuvre of Contemporary Polish Composers:
Zbigniew Bargielski, Zygmunt Krauze, Bettina Skrzypczak

 

Journal: Arts

 

MDPI Publishing House

 

 

            The scholarly article submitted for a review is an exceptionally successful musicological study of considerable scientific maturity. It combines several types of analysis – including aesthetic, semiotic, and historical – into a single document. The presented manuscript maintains a high level of narrative and substantive coherence.

            It offers a very interesting and valuable analysis of the relationship between visual arts and contemporary music. It introduces the concept of musical ekphrasis, linking three Polish composers: Zbiegniew Bargielski, Zygmunt Krauze, and Bettina Skrzypczak. Its counterparts in the visual arts are Władysław Strzemiński, Tadeusz Mysłowski and Alberto Giacometti. Also, the paper is based on excellent theoretical literature (Bruhn, Szerszenowicz) with a very in-depth analysis of both visual and musical works, building an interdisciplinary study that combines research on trends in the visual and musical arts. The article meets all criteria for scientific accuracy and originality, making a valuable and diverse contribution to the development of transmedia art research in the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

 

Positive aspects of the article:

1. the topic is original and unique. The author(s) present an analysis of visual art alongside Polish composers, juxtaposing the two worlds and focusing on influences – a very good and innovative approach, rarely undertaken in international literature;
2. the use of Bruhn's and Szerszenowicz's methodology provides a very clear analytical framework, truly worthy of an international subject matter;
3. the author/authors demonstrate a very high level of analytical competence – very well grounded in sources (Szwajgier, Szczepańska, Tarnawska-Kaczorowska). The literature selected for descriptions of the issues, in my opinion, is the best choice for describing the given phenomenon;
4. despite its 42-page length, the manuscript is written in excellent language and is a very easy read. The further you read, the more intrigued the reader/reviewer becomes by the topic addressed by the author(s) – the argument is truly excellent!;
5. detailed documentation of sources and iconography – numerous sources, manuscripts, scores, and works of art allow for comparison – which is additionally well organized by the author(s);
6. scholarly style and excellent language – the manuscript demonstrates a very high level of knowledge of musicological terminology, with a high level of precision in its argument and clarity of narrative. The manuscript submitted for evaluation is very readable;
7. the text can be addressed to many recipients, both in the field of visual arts and music – a wonderful combination of two worlds perceived with different senses and yet somehow connected with each other, which is always illustrated by the author(s);
8. footnotes and commentary by the author(s) are outside the text, thus they do not interfere while reading, which is a really very good solution.

 

 

Negative aspects of the article:

            none noticed, apart from a few very minor errors and typos, which do not impact the text at all but out of my duty as a reviewer I mention them:

 

1. line #12: duplicated word ("compositions");
2. line #705: "ThTall Woman IV";
3. it is possible that the original text consists of double spaces (difficult or impossible to determine with certainty while reading from a PDF file, which I received for evaluation);
4. to be certain, the bibliography should be checked once again to determine whether the style has been preserved in all cited works, e.g. "Raczek, M. (edited by). 2012. [online], available at: www.krzywoblocki.eu, accessed: October 2012."„Raczek, M. (edited by). 2012. [online], available at: www.krzywoblocki.eu, accessed: October 2012.”

 

 

 

Final opinion:

Aside from minor typos, which are common in such a comprehensive work by any author, I rate this text very highly. It is a definitely innovative approach to the original topic, and I wholeheartedly recommend it for publication in Arts magazine. Reading this manuscript, I get the impression that the author(s) have presented the subject very meticulously and exceptionally well. It's safe to say that they are high-class specialists, and the text becomes more compelling the further you delve into it – I truly recommend it; in my opinion it's an excellent manuscript.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review in file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a rich and methodologically grounded exploration of how the works of Polish composers Bargielski, Krauze, and Skrzypczak engage with visual art through the paradigm of musical ekphrasis. The paper’s primary strength lies in its depth and the way it reconstructs the artistic and philosophical contexts connecting visual and musical modernism in postwar Poland. The analysis provides a valuable record of interdisciplinary collaboration, and the linkage of Krauze’s “unistic” compositions to Strzemiński’s visual theories is an important and well-supported interpretive contribution. The discussion of Giacometti and Skrzypczak, though briefer, expands the essay’s comparative scope. The writing is clear, scholarly, and well-organized, and the author’s deep familiarity with Polish avant-garde music and visual art is evident throughout.

There are several areas where I believe revision would strengthen the article’s analytical and interpretive precision. First, while the paper frames its methodology through Bruhn’s theory of musical ekphrasis and Szerszenowicz’s notion of causal mediation, the theoretical implications of ekphrasis are treated somewhat descriptively rather than critically. The argument would benefit from more sustained reflection on the conceptual stakes of musical representation. For example, how musical ekphrasis differs from inspiration, translation, or intermedial analogy. This might give the paper greater coherence and make its methodological contribution more explicit. Second, much of the text moves between historical contextualization and detailed descriptive analysis, but transitions between these sections are at times abrupt. The lengthy presentation of each composer’s oeuvre, while informative, occasionally reads as catalogic rather than analytical. Condensing some historical material, especially the biographical passages on Strzemiński and Krauze, would allow space for deeper engagement with the aesthetic mechanisms that translate visual structures into musical form (rhythm, proportion, spatial analogy, texture). The author’s insights into unistic non-contrastive form and temporal perception are compelling and could be foregrounded more strongly as central claims rather than embedded in exposition. Finally, the study’s conclusion would profit from a clearer synthesis of its three case studies. The juxtaposition of Bargielski/Mysłowski, Krauze/Strzemiński, and Skrzypczak/Giacometti invites reflection on broader questions of Polish modernism, cross-media dialogue, and the philosophical dimensions of ekphrasis, topics the author gestures toward but does not fully consolidate. A concluding paragraph that draws together the essay’s methodological findings and identifies what “musical ekphrasis” reveals about twentieth- and twenty-first-century aesthetics would give the paper a stronger sense of closure and argumentative unity.

In sum, this is a substantive and erudite contribution to the study of contemporary Polish music and interartistic discourse. With revisions to streamline structure, strengthen theoretical articulation, and draw clearer conclusions, the paper would be fully suitable for publication.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf