Karol Szymanowski - The Man

Karol Szymanowski was born on October 6, 1882 on his family's estate in Tymoszówka in the Kiev District of the Ukraine. His mother, born Baroness Anna Taube, was of Swedish extraction and his father was a Polish land-owner. All five of their children later pursued careers as musicians, painters or poets having come from a home in which there was a very considerable interest in the arts.

A leg injury at the age of four prevented him from attending school and so his early education, including his early piano tuition, took place at home. Subsequently he had music lessons from a relative, Gustav Neuhaus, who ran a school in Elisavetgrad – the modern day Kirowograd.

In 1901 he went to Warsaw for more regular studies in music. From that year until 1904 he had private lessons with Zawirski for harmony and with Zygmunt Noskowski for counterpoint and composition.

Although Poland had produced performers of great distinction no Polish composer since Chopin had made an impact on the international scene. Even Stanislaw Moniuszko, the creator of the great Polish national operas, was largely unknown outside Poland.

Warsaw was in many ways a culturally isolated and very provincial city within the huge Russian Empire of the end of the Nineteenth Century and this had been increasingly reflected in Polish music.

However, the beginning of the Twentieth Century saw the emergence of a group of young musicians with greater talent, serious ambition and far wider outlook. These included the pianist Artur Rubinstein and the violinist Pawel Kochanski. Meanwhile the conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg, the composer Ludomir Rozycki, the pianist and composer Apolinary Szeluto, and Karel Szymanowski developed the Young Poland in Music Group for the promotion and publication of new Polish music under the patronage of Prince Wladyslaw Lubomirski.

Fitelberg and Kochanski proved fervent and invaluable supporters of Szymanowski’s efforts and Rubinstein as well as the far more conservative Paderewski both promoted interest in his compositions.

Szymanowski’s Variations on a Polish Folk Theme and Study in B flat minor were performed at the first Young Poland concert in Warsaw and were well received but a similar programme attracted less interest in Berlin.

Szymanowski now spent much of the next two years in Berlin and Leipzig absorbing the influence of Wagner, Reger and Richard Strauss. He completed his Symphony No. 1 in F minor in 1907 and it was performed in Warsaw two years later. He would subsequently withdraw the work unhappy at what he saw as the excessive post-Wagnarian influence inherent in the work.

The Symphony No. 2 in B flat, Opus 19 completed in 1910 and heavily influenced by Skryabin met a poor response in Warsaw a year later but went down well with Leipzig and Berlin audiences and also in Vienna. Szymanowski was known an established figure on the European musical scene. Determined to build on this success he moved to Vienna where Universal were to publish his output.

Although Vienna allowed him to develop his knowledge of the work of Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky he did nor really find the inspiration which he was seeking and in early 1914 he set off to travel to Italy, Sicily, and North Africa and on to Rome, Paris and London where he indeed met Stravinsky.

If Szymanowski’s work before the First World War was influenced by Chopin and Skriabin the next period of his career was characterised by a fascination with the Orient and with Mediterranean culture. The influence of Debussy and Ravel also becomes clear.

On the outbreak of war he returned to the family home at Tymoszowka where he immersed himself in the study of Ancient Greek culture and in the study of early Christianity and of Islam. It was the latter that which surfaced to profoundly influence his Symphony No.3 which he had completed by 1916.

His long novel, Efebos, written at this time was lost in the flames of burning Warsaw in 1939.

The Russian Revolution forced the family to leave Tymoszowka which was subsequently destroyed. In 1919 the family relocated to the newly independent Poland.

Together with his friends, violinist Pawel Kochanski and pianist Artur Rubinstein, Szymanowski twice travelled to the USA by way of London in 1920-21, giving concerts that met with critical and popular success. From 1921 Szymanowski was increasingly influenced by Polish themes, particularly drawing on folk motifs especially from the Podhale highlands.

During the years 1924-26 Szymanowski received increasing recognition at home, despite the opposition of conservative sections of musical society. He spent a lot of time in Paris, chiefly for the many performances of his compositions.

From 1927 Szymanowski spent five frustrating years as director of the Warsaw Conservatory. Szymanowski saw this post as a real opportunity to re-invigorate Polish music education, neglected during the years of partition, and to form a new generation of Polish composers. However, he found himself out of step with the dominating conservative musical ethos. He eventually resigned.

The years 1927-29 were entirely taken up by his campaign to establish a new model of training in order to open wide horizons to the young and to provide them with a thorough knowledge of composition. Arguably this was achieved at a very high personal cost as these were years of creative stagnation and of great physical and nervous stress, leading to a serious crisis in his health. His medical condition deteriorated as his pulmonary tuberculosis took further hold and he had to go to a sanatorium in Davos where he remained for almost a year, writing a treatise, The educational role of musical culture in society.

1930 and 1931 were a period of stability, success and prosperity. He rented the Willa Atma - now a museum in his memory - in Zakopane which he had often visited and where he delighted in the company of the highland folk musicians. In particular he developed close ties with the Obrochta family whose band was outstanding among the folk musicians of the region at that time.

In 1930 he was appointed rector of the Warsaw Academy of Music and became an honorary doctor of Kraków's Jagiellonian University. He was elected to the highly select group of honorary members of the ISCM. The Stabat Mater greatly enhanced his reputation at home and abroad.

For the last few years of his life he was without a regular income and was therefore increasingly reliant on his earnings as a concert performer. The Symphony No. 4 written in 1932 was specifically framed to the needs of his own limited piano technique. The same year saw the success of his opera King Roger in Paris.

His few remaining years were increasingly clouded by the tuberculosis which would eventually kill him. He died in Lausanne on 29th March 1937. His final orchestral work was a second violin concerto completed in 1933, followed by two Mazurkas for piano a year later. The ballet Harnasie inspired by the folk music of the Polish Tatra mountains was performed in Prague in 1935 and a year later with great success in Paris rapidly becoming a popular part of the Polish ballet repertoire after its 1938 performance in Poznan.

Despite his many friends Szymanowski was essentially a solitary and private figure maintaining close contact only with his mother, brother and sisters.

Szymanowski was undoubtedly the outstanding figure of Polish music in the first half of the Twentieth Century. He created a wide range of works on an equally wide variety of themes absorbing a vast range of influences which he then deployed to develop a unique musical expression which was all his own. Ultimately his greatest works were distinctively and particularly Polish but at the same time universal in their message, emotion and appeal. Szymanowski was one of the very greatest figures in Twentieth Century World music.