Karol Szymanowski

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(b Tymoszówka, 6 Oct 1882; d Lausanne, 29 March 1937). Polish composer. He was born into an artistic family of the Polish landed gentry and began his musical education with his father. At 13, in Vienna, he was powerfully impressed by hearing Wagner for the first time. He then had formal tuition from Zawirski and Noskowski in Warsaw (1901-4), and during the next decade began to make an international reputation for music in the German tradition, relating to Wagner, Strauss and Reger: the main works of this period include the Symphony no.2 (1910), Piano Sonata no.2 (1911) and the opera Hagith (1913).

During these years he visited Italy, Sicily and north Africa; he also encountered Pelléas, The Firebird and Petrushka, and all these enriching influences were remembered in his abundant output of 1914-17, when he was confined by the war to Russia. Works of this period are typically classical or oriental in inspiration, and ornately figured in a manner relating to Skryabin or Debussy. They include the choral Symphony no.3 (1916), Violin Concerto no.l (1916), Myths for violin and piano (1915) and the piano triptychs Metopes (1915) and Masques (1916). He then used this new, highly sensuous language to tackle the theme of The Bacchae in his opera King Roger (1926), set in the orientalized Norman kingdom of Sicily.

In 1919 he settled in Warsaw, now the capital of an independent Poland; and he began while completing King Roger to compose in a nationalist style, drawing on folk music in his choral orchestral Stabat mater (1926), ballet Harnasie (1935) and other works. He accepted the directorship of the Warsaw Conservatory (1927-32), but his last years were dogged by ill health, and he wrote nothing after his Violin Concerto no.2 (1933) and a pair of piano mazurkas, adding to a set of 20 dating from 1924-5. Other works include two quartets, songs, folksong arrangements and cantatas.

works:
Operas

• Hagith (1922)
• King Roger (1926)

Ballet

• Harnasie (1935)

Orchestral music

• Concert Ov. (1905)
• 4 syms. (1909, 1910, 1916, 1932)
• 2 vn concs. (1916, 1933)

Vocal music

• Love-songs of Hafiz, orch (1914)
• Songs of a Fairy-tale Princess, orch (1933)
• choruses, solo songs

Choral music

• Stabat mater (1926)
• Veni Creator (1930)
• Litany to the Virgin Mary (1933)

Chamber music

• 2 strqt (1917, 1927), 6 works for vn, pf

Piano music

• 3 sonatas (1904, 1911, 1917)
• Metopes (1915)
• Masques (1916)

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The Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) treated national subjects in an original and highly effective manner.

On Oct. 6, 1882, Karol Szymanowski was born at Timoshovka in the Ukraine to a wealthy, highly cultured Polish family that encouraged his obvious musical talent. While still in his teens he wrote elegant pieces for the piano obviously inspired by Frédéric Chopin. In 1901 he entered the Warsaw Conservatory, and after graduation he went to Berlin in 1905. There he and three other young Polish composers founded a society called Young Poland in Music. In 1908 Szymanowski returned to Timoshovka. He spent the years 1912-1914 in Vienna.

Compositions of this early period are numerous piano pieces - Preludes (1901, 1905), Etudes (1902), and Variations (1901, 1904) - introduced by Artur Rubinstein in his concerts; and violin pieces - a Sonata (1904), Romance (1909), and Notturn e tarantella (1914) - introduced by Paul Kochanski. The Love Songs of Hafiz (1910, 1914) and the opera Hagith (1912-1913) reflect Szymanowski's interest in Oriental mysticism and philosophy.

Szymanowski's Mythes (1915) is a set of three pieces for violin and piano. The second of these, the Fountain of Arethusa, became his best-known and most frequently performed composition. Over a shimmering, dissonant piano part the violin soars in arabesque-filled melody. The harmonies are dissonant but are treated in the impressionist manner, not for their tension but for their color.

The Szymanowski family estate was lost in the 1917 Revolution, and the composer's affluent position changed overnight. In 1920 he went to Warsaw, where he lived until 1935.

During the 1920s Szymanowski's compositions became known to a wider audience through their inclusion in the annual programs sponsored by the International Society of Contemporary Music, and he emerged as Poland's most eminent composer. He became director of the Warsaw Conservatory in 1926. At this time Szymanowski's works began to reflect his national heritage. Harnassie (1926) is a ballet-opera based on Polish peasant music and traditions, similar to Igor Stravinsky's treatment of Russian folklore in Les Noces and Bohuslav Martinu's use of Czech themes in Spalicek. Szymanowski's Stabat Mater (1928) for solo voices, mixed chorus, and orchestra reconciles Palestrina counterpoint with Slavic melodies. A cycle of 12 songs (1930) was inspired by the folk music of the Kurpie region of Poland. Other important compositions are the Second Violin Concerto (1930) and the Symphonie Concertante for piano and orchestra (1932), both distinctly Polish in character.

Szymanowski died of tuberculosis in Lausanne, Switzerland, on March 28, 1937.

Further Reading

Stefan Jarocinski, ed., Polish Music (1965), contains a chapter on Szymanowski's life and music. See also Homer Ulrich and Paul A. Pisk, A History of Music and Musical Style (1963).

Additional Sources

Chylianska, Teresa, Karol Szymanowski: his life and works, Los Angeles: University of Southern California, School of Music, 1993.

Chylianska, Teresa, Szymanowski, Cracow: Polskie Wydawn. Muzyczne, 1981.

Karol Szymanowski: an anthology, Warszawa: Interpress, 1986.

• Period: Modern (1910-1949)
• Country: Poland
• Born: October 06, 1882 in Timoshovka, Ukraine
• Died: March 28, 1937 in Lausanne, Switzerland
• Genres: Chamber Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Symphony, Vocal Music

Biography

Composer Karol Szymanowski spent his early years in Ukraine (where many affluent Polish families still owned land at the time). An injury to the leg forced young Karol into a life of relative inactivity, and, from age seven on, attendance at school was replaced by rigorous musical studies (first under his father's tutelage, and then, from 1892 on, at Gustav Neuhaus' music school in Elisavetgrad). Although early training focused on the piano, Neuhaus was quick to observe his young student's potential as a composer. While in Elisavetgrad, Szymanowski was introduced to the German classics as well as to Chopin and Scriabin. After studies with Noskowski in Warsaw from 1903 to 1905, Szymanowski lived for a time in Berlin, helping to found that city's "Young Poland in Music" Society. During the Warsaw and Berlin years Szymanowski began absorbing the musical language of the later German masters (Richard Strauss in particular), under whose strong influence Szymanowski produced his first two symphonies (1907 and 1909, respectively).

The pre-World War I years found Szymanowski traveling extensively throughout Europe, spreading his name as a composer (among those who signed on to champion his music were fellow Poles Arthur Rubinstein and violinist Paul Kochansky) and absorbing the newest trends in European art. A brief 1914 stay in Paris helped to cement a growing admiration for Debussy and the French Impressionist school. The War years themselves were spent at the family estate in Tymoszowka, where Szymanowski composed prolifically (the Third Symphony, First Violin Concerto, First String Quartet, as well as a number of smaller works, all date from this period). Tymoszowka suffered heavily during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the Szymanowski family was forced to relocate to nearby Elisavetgrad. Elisavetgrad, however, was soon subject to Austrian occupation, and, in late 1919, after selling all the family land (at a heavy loss), Szymanowski made a new home in Warsaw. Achieving some popular success in the new Polish capital, Szymanowski eventually became director of the Warsaw Conservatory (1926). However, tuberculosis forced him to resign this position in 1930, and the next several years were spent abroad (largely in Switzerland). Continuing health troubles forced him to enter a sanatorium, and he died in Lugano in 1937.

Szymanowski's unique brand of expressive, lyric modernism has found many admirers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Though his earliest music is perhaps too closely allied to that of his childhood idol Chopin to fully stand on its own, his later work synthesizes the stylistic characteristics of a wide range of composers (Scriabin, Strauss, Reger, Debussy, Ravel) into a highly individual new language, which seems likely to bear the test of time better than many such experiments in eclecticism.

~ Blair Johnston, All Music Guide

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