These composers wanted some complexity and substance but did not see the need to create such complex scores. Complex sounds could still be made using alternative methods. They often combined controlled random elements with new instrumental techniques. The primary interest in their music is often texture, not melody, harmony or rhythm.
Used extended string techniques to create a barrage of sound that made the work both confronting and emotional. Used quartertones to create clusters of sound, denser than traditional semitone chords, as a way of completely separating itself from standard pitch traditions.
Slow ecstatic music for voice and orchestra. A solo soprano sings a different Polish text in each of the three movements. The first is a 15th-century Polish lament of Mary, mother of Jesus, the second a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell by a young girl during World War II, and the third a Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son killed in the Silesian uprisings. The first and third movements are from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, and the second movement from that of a child separated from a parent. The dominant themes are motherhood and separation through war.