The present volume of Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny features a collection of articles referring to 'non-absolute music'.The phrase was included the title of the Polish Composers' Union's 53rd Musicological Conference, which took place at the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz and the Ostromecko Palace on 3-5 October 2024.It became the starting point for a discussion covering a very wide range of approaches to not only the relations between music and its literary programme, visual context or utilitarian function, but also fundamental questions about the limits of the autonomy of a musical work.The articles collected here are a selective representation of the papers delivered at the conference, complemented by two non-conference contributions.The first section of the volume comprises articles examining the classical dichotomy between absolute and programme music.Stefan Keym proposes to bridge this divide through a theory of dramaturgical topoi that shape the musical experience and an analysis of the ways in which programmatic aspects contribute to new formal strategies.Marcin Trzsiok demonstrates that the formalist understanding of absolute music is historically unjustified -even in Hanslick's case the musical form was understood as a sensual manifestation of spiritual forces regulating organic development.Sawomira eraska-Kominek analyses Brahms' song Mondenschein.Her critical analysis gives rise to the so-called emergent meaning, analogous to that unfolding during the listener's experience.Tomasz Barszcz carries out a comprehensive analysis of the history of Ludomir Rycki's opera Medusa.Using the example of motifs depicting objects (props) in The Ring of the Nibelung, Ryszard Daniel Golianek investigates whether Wagner constructed his leitmotifs arbitrarily or whether he was guided by the principles of similarity and traditional codes of meaning.Krzysztof Bilica reflects on Hanslick's question about the possibility of music containing non-music content, introducing the notion of information Od redakcji
Iwona Lindstedt (Mon,) studied this question.