1960
On 21 February, Panufnik appears with the London Symphony Orchestra and the pianist Fou Ts’ong at the Royal Festival Hall, conducting a concert to commemorate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Chopin’s birth.
In June the composer conducts a series of concerts in Argentina.
Towards the end of June, after his return from Argentina, Panufnik learns that Winsome Ward is suffering from advanced cancer.
In the late summer he meets Camilla Jessel, recommended to him by a friend, Neil Marten.
I received a telephone call from an unknown girl, who explained that she had been asked by Neil Marten to contact me. Though somewhat sceptical about the ability of such a young-sounding person being able to help me in my dire professional straits, I was intrigued and charmed by her sensitive approach and by her warm, quiet personality which I sensed even over the telephone. I suggested that she should visit me that very day at my flat in The Boltons.
When I saw her standing at my door, not only was my impression from our telephone conversation confirmed – I was completely conquered by her beauty, unique charm and sense of inner calm which was combined with a strong aura of spirituality I found most surprising in a girl of her age.
In the autumn Panufnik leaves for the USA in search of new musical possibilities. Unfortunately, in spite of the help and friendship of Leopold Stokowski, he is unable to achieve his goal.
1961
At the beginning of the year Panufnik leaves London and moves to Adderbury near Oxford, where he concentrates on composing his Piano Concerto.
Shortly after the composer moves again, to Dockenfield (in Surrey), where he works on his Sinfornia Sacra, commissioned by the Kościuszko Foundation to commemorate the Millennium of the Polish State.
In December Panufnik is granted British citizenship.
Just before Christmas 1961, the papers for my British citizenship came through the letter-box, including a form which had to be signed by an established pillar-of-society who knew me well, such as a doctor or MP. Neil Marten was the obvious choice. He invited me to bring the papers and have tea with him at the House of Commons. By coincidence, Camilla Jessel was there too. Back from Paris, though still working freelance as a secretary, she was trying to establish herself as a photographer, and the helpful Neil used to invite her along to immortalise, on the steps of Westminster, visiting worthies from his Banbury constituency, for publication in their local paper. The three of us had tea together, during which Neil, guessing how I neglected my professional affairs, suggested that Camilla should look after my secretarial work. (...) she was extremely efficient with my correspondence. In no time at all she had dealt with an enormous pile of unanswered mail. Gently she rebuked me for drifting into pessimism about my prospects when I had left unacknowledged an invitation to conduct my music on a German radio station, a request about a commission, and various other useful approaches. (...) Deftly, she mended old bridges and built new ones – her diplomatic skills were invaluable to me. However, my intuition told me nothing about her future role in my life: uppermost in my mind at this time was my all-consumoing despair as Winsome slipped away from me.
1962
On 25 January Panufnik conducts the first performance of his Piano Concerto in Birmingham (with Kendall Taylor as soloist).
Winsome Ward dies in February.
Panufnik concentrates his efforts on composing Sinfonia Sacra. At the same time, his friendship with Camilla Jessel grows into a closer attachment.
Meanwhile I evolved an excellent system of working with Camilla. She would drive down to Dockenfield for a day and prepare a tasty lunch for us (she was already a promising cook). Then we would go for a long walk through the pine forest behind my house, after which serious work would begin: I would take a block of my headed writing paper, scrawl my signature at various levels on the page and hand the signed blanks over to Camilla, plus any letters that needed answering. She would stay on to cook supper, eventually returning to London. Thereafter, whenever I needed a letter written I would telephone her, and she would type in whatever was required above my signature and post it off without my ever having to bother with detail.
In the summer of 1962, I stopped seeing Camilla. It was a very hard decision, but after my unhappy marriage and my very recent, sad involvement I was determined to steer clear of any serious relationship. I had mentioned to her many times my intention never to marry again, and she had nodded quietly and understandingly.
In November Panufnik prepares a radio programme about Karol Szymanowski for the BBC.
Towards the end of the year Panufnik, as an economy measure, decides to spend the winter in Spain. Camilla Jessel visits him there for Christmas and the New Year.
1963
Panufnik completes Sinfonia Sacra on 28 January.
In March the composer meets Zygmunt Mycielski in Paris.
In May Sinfonia Sacra is awarded the first prize at the composers’competition in Monaco.
On 27 November Panufnik marries Camilla Jessel. Afterwards, the newlyweds move into Riverside House in Twickenham near London, leased for them by Camilla’s parents.
On 27 November 1963 we were married at Caxton Hall, the drab registry office made unusually resplendent by Winnie [Camilla’s mother] with a mass of white flowers. Camilla and I were festively garbed too: she wore a long white dress and I wore my conductor’s mornng suit, but without a top hat as this had never been required on the podium and I saw no sense in obtaining one specially. (...) suddenly, after years of having no family of my own, I found myself part of a vast clan as Camilla introduced me to yet another aunt, a dozen more cousins, fifty-three second cousins, umpteen uncles, swarms of nephews and nieces, all enthusiastically clamouring to make the acquaintance of their new relative.
1964
The first performance of Sinfonia Sacra, conducted by the composer at Monte Carlo on 12 August, is a great success.
The composer’s loving wife surrounds him at last with the longed-for peace and ideal working conditions.
Suddenly I was in a kind of ideal existence I had only imagined, never experienced before in my life. I never had to answer the telephone, hardly even open any letter. Delicious meals were put before me three times a day without my having to spare even a thought in advance unless I cared to dream up some gastronomic treat.
1965
Accompanied by his wife, the composer undertakes a concert tour in South America (Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Chile, Lima).
One tour was to South America, starting with three concerts in Buenos Aires. These concerts were a particular pleasure, especially because of the number of rehearsals. To my momentary annoyance, a souvenir-hunter absconded with my baton in the interval of the first concert. Since then I have almost always conducted without a baton.
Panufnik gives his composer’s concert in Twickenham in November. The programme includes the first performance of Landscape.
Panufnik is awarded the Sibelius Centenary Medal for Composition.
1966
Accompanied by his wife, the composer undertakes a concert tour in South America (Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Chile, Lima).
One tour was to South America, starting with three concerts in Buenos Aires. These concerts were a particular pleasure, especially because of the number of rehearsals. To my momentary annoyance, a souvenir-hunter absconded with my baton in the interval of the first concert. Since then I have almost always conducted without a baton.
Panufnik gives his composer’s concert in Twickenham in November. The programme includes the first performance of Landscape.
Panufnik is awarded the Sibelius Centenary Medal for Composition.
1967
The first ballet to be choreographed to Panufnik’s music – Elegy, set to his Sinfonia Elegiaca, is staged in New York. Panufnik composes little; that year he only writes Katyń Epitaph, a short instrumental composition inspired by the Katyń tragedy.
I did indeed produce only one new piece in the mid-1960s, the Katyń Epitaph, (...) dedicated to the 15,000 Polish officers slaughtered in Katyń Forest. All Poles had always known who the murderers were, but Stalin had cunningly shifted the blame on to Hitler’s shoulders; (...) Because of the Soviet guilt, no one in Poland could openly write music or pay any poetic tribute to these victims, so I felt, in my new freedom, that it was my privilege to be able to do this.
Otherwise I wrote nothing new for four whole years. Camilla never expressed aloud any concern at the slowness of my musical output despite the perfect conditions which she was creating for me; she always reiterated her faith in the theory that a period of calm and rediscovery was essential, as convalescence, she said, from a quarter of a century of adversity. She stood guard and quietly waited, while I learnt how to be a complete person again, and found life could indeed begin at fifty.
1968
Andrzej and Camilla’s daughter Roxanna is born on 24 April.
After some years of intense effort, Panufnik formulates the principles of his musical language, based on small note cells. The first composition written using these principles is his short piano work – Reflections.
I resolved, however long it would take me, to persevere relentlessly until I could discover a new way of expressing myself, influenced neither by my native culture nor by the language of any other existing composer or musical school of thought. Almost every day, not for weeks, nor for months, but for three, almost four years, I spent hour after hour in my converted stable at the end of the garden, reflecting how to tackle my new task. Sitting at my desk I would search on the staves of my manuscript paper, scribbling down endless different ideas, then trying them at the piano, until at last one day I realised that my ear, together with my intuition, was beginning to win over intellectual speculation: I suddenly found a group of three notes which, as I manipulated them within the stave and on the piano, I perceived had some evocative and strangely expendable qualities – even, it felt to me, some magical power.
(...) The spring of 1968 saw the completion of the first of my new line of compositional progeny, the piano piece, Reflections, within days of the birth of our exquisite, tiny, gentle Roxanna. Somehow I do not think that their arrival together was entirely coincidental.
1969
Panufniks’ second child, their son Jeremy, is born on 16 June.
Panufnik works on a large vocal-instrumental composition: Universal Prayer.
With the birth of my new language and the beginning of our parenthood, we stopped rushing around the world for concerts, and settled down into an even quieter life in Twickenham.(...)
For some time, I had wanted to compose a work with a spiritual message, intended to unite the feelings of all people of all races and religions, attempting to bridge the tragic divisions within our disturbed and ugly world. I was searching for a concept less corruptible than the great ideal of 'peace', which had been so distorted and misused by the Soviets and their sycophants. To my joy, I discovered among the poetry of Alexander Pope, who had lived only a few hundred yards up the Thames from my home, the magnificent Universal Prayer to the 'Father of All, by every race and every creed ador’d', a visionary concept for anyone brought up within the confines of eighteenth-century religion, yet so close to my heart that it might have been written not 250 years ago, but especially for me today.
