Polish composer Tadeusz Baird was interested in expressionism (although his definition of this changed during his career), and wrote many works for voice. Baird studied under Piotr Rytel and Tadeusz Witulski, among others, in Warsaw. He co-founded Group 49 in 1949 with the goal of writing music that expressed the state's ideology. In 1956, he and Group 49 cohort Kazimierz Serocki organized a festival of international contemporary music. Around this time, Baird's style underwent a change, with subsequent works such as "12-Tone String Quartet" (1957) and "Four Essays for Orchestra" (1958) demonstrating a more emotional aspect. He scored films by Andrzej Wajda in the late '50s and early '60s. His works for voice include a song cycle of Halina Poswiatowska's poems. Baird received numerous awards and honors, including the Polish Composers' Union Award, the Honegger Prize, the Koussevitzky prize, the Award of the Andrzej Jurzykowski Foundation (NY), and the UNESCO International Composer's Rostrum three times during the '50s and '60s. He taught composition at the Academy of Music in Warsaw beginning in the late '70s. ~ Joslyn Layne
