Józef Koffler is the only Polish graduate of Vienna’s Institute of Musicology to have become editor in chief of music periodicals (apart from him, Zdzisław Jachimecki was responsible for two issues of Rozprawy i Notatki Muzykologiczne). Koffler edited two monthlies. First of them was monthly Orkiestra (1930–1938). Orkiestra had its editorial office in Przemyśl, at 11 Smolki St., where Józef Neger’s music instruments store was also located, one-and-a-quarter hours (less than 100 km) by railway from Koffler’s home city of Lwów. Orkiestra was definitely more than a local journal. It seems to have effectively competed with Lwowskie Wiadomości Muzyczne i Literackie (publ. in 1925–1934, without any contributions by Koffler) and with many music periodicals published outside the Lwów province.
Orkiestra
Orkiestra was described in its subheading as ‘a monthly dedicated to the propagation of musical culture among orchestras and music societies in Poland’, but its contents were more varied than this phrasing suggests. There were texts introducing the fundamentals of music history and theory, commentaries on most recent research in the fields of both historical (music history) and systematic musicology (the latter including psychology and sociology of music, etc.), and current news on Poland’ musical life (in the columns titled Chronicle and Musical Activity in Poland), including popular music.
Many Polish musicologists published their texts in Orkiestra. Contributors included two university professors (Zdzisław Jachimecki of Kraków’s Jagiellonian University and Adolf Chybiński of Lwów’s Jan Kazimierz University), Józef Reiss (likewise a lecturer in musicology at the Jagiellonian University), Zofia Lissa, and Stefania Łobaczewska, as well as such composers and teachers as Stanisław Niewiadomski, Feliks Nowowiejski, and Adam Sołtys (also a musicologist, head of Lwów’s PTM Conservatoire). Other authors included military band leaders: captain Faustyn Kulczycki (Katowice), lieutenant Maksymilian Firek (Kielce), lieutenant Tomasz Szyfers (Lwów), captain Aleksander Dulin (Gdynia), later also major Stefan Śledziński (who studied musicology at the Jagiellonian University). Contributors from the musical circles of Przemyśl itself included Witold Nowak (chairman of the city’s Music Society), physicians Henryk Biber and Karol Schatzker, Roman Marciniec (?), Franciszek Skoczek (who also represented Stanisławów), Józef Neger (owner of the music instruments store), and major Rudolf Burda.
Over the eight years when the monthly was published (1930–1938), Koffler himself contributed at least eleven individual signed entries (but as editor in chief he left most of his texts unsigned). He also contributed six cyclic educational features, including ‘Music and Composition Theory’ (1930), ‘Instrumentation’ (1930), ‘The Study of Harmony’ (1933), and ‘Musical Forms’ (1934–1935). He presented the outputs of such composers as Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (based on his PhD dissertation), Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg (a brief obituary), Igor Stravinsky, as well as two Poles – Stanisław Niewiadomski (in the context of the artist’s death) and Feliks Nowowiejski. Koffler also commented in Orkiestra on women’s place in musical life.
Though as an editor he remained neutral with respect to worldview (and was formally of the Jewish faith till the autumn of 1937), Koffler did not shun religious references in Orkiestra and took care to mention Christmas on the first page(s) of each December issue. In 1930 an illustration representing the nativity of Christ was printed above four bars of music and text from the Christmas carol ‘Bóg się rodzi’ [God Is Being Born]. On another occasion, a choral setting of ‘Dzisiaj w Betlejem’ [Tonight in Bethlehem] was printed.