Karol Maciej Szymanowski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkarɔl ˈmat͡ɕɛj ʂɨmaˈnɔfskʲi]; 3 October 1882 – 29 March 1937) was a Polish composer, pianist, and writer. He was part of a modernist group called the Young Poland movement, which was active in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Szymanowski’s early works show the influence of the late Romantic German school and the early compositions of Alexander Scriabin, as seen in his Étude Op. 4 No. 3 and his first two symphonies. Later, he created music with an impressionistic style and sometimes used sounds that were not in traditional scales, as shown in his Third Symphony and Violin Concerto No. 1. In his third period, his music was influenced by the folk songs of the Polish Górale people, including the ballet Harnasie, the Fourth Symphony, and sets of Mazurkas for piano. King Roger, written between 1918 and 1924, is Szymanowski’s most famous opera. Other important works include Hagith, Symphony No. 2, The Love Songs of Hafiz, and Stabat Mater.

Szymanowski received Poland’s highest national honors, such as the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, as well as other awards from Poland and other countries.

Life and career

Karol Szymanowski was born into the Korwin-Szymanowski family, which was part of the wealthy Polish nobility from the Mazovia region. The capital of Mazovia is Warsaw. After the fall of the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, his great-great-grandfather, Dominik, was sent away from Poland to Dnieper Ukraine. Karol’s grandfather, Feliks, later lived in the village of Tymoszówka, which was then part of the Kiev Governorate in the Russian Empire. Today, this village is called Tymoshivka in Cherkasy Oblast of Ukraine. His mother came from a Baltic German family that originated in Courland. He studied music with his father before joining the Gustav Neuhaus Elisavetgrad School of Music in 1892. From 1901 to 1905, he studied at the State Conservatory in Warsaw, where he later became director from 1926 until 1930. During this time, he met important Polish artists such as Arthur Rubinstein, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, and Stefan Żeromski. Because musical opportunities in Congress Poland were limited, he traveled across Europe and North Africa.

In Berlin, Szymanowski started the Young Polish Composers’ Publishing Company in 1905, which aimed to share new works by Polish musicians. While living in Vienna from 1911 to 1914, he wrote the opera Hagith and two song cycles, The Love Songs of Hafiz, which show a change in his musical style. Because he was unable to serve in the military during World War I due to a disability in one knee, he focused on composing and studying Islamic culture, ancient Greek drama, and philosophy between 1914 and 1917. His works from this time, such as Mity (1914), Metopy (1915), and Maski (1916), show great creativity and variety in style. His music became less intense, and he began using colorful orchestration and techniques like polytonal and atonal music while keeping the melodic style from his earlier works.

In 1918, Szymanowski finished writing a two-volume novel called Efebos, which focused on the topic of homosexuality. ("Efebos" is a Greek word for a young man.) His travels, especially to the Mediterranean, influenced his personal and artistic life. When Arthur Rubinstein met him in Paris in 1921, he said, "Karol had changed. Before the war, he told me about his visits to Sicily, where he saw young men who reminded him of ancient statues. Now he was a confirmed homosexual."

One critic described Szymanowski’s works from 1917 to 1921, such as Król Roger (King Roger), as combining many cultural influences to imagine a future society based on artistic freedom. Szymanowski returned to Warsaw in 1919.

In 1926, he became director of the Warsaw Conservatory, even though he had little experience in administration. He became seriously ill in 1928 and temporarily lost his position. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and traveled to Davos, Switzerland, in 1929 for treatment. He returned to the Conservatory in 1930, but the school was closed two years later. He moved to Villa Atma in Zakopane, where he wrote music. In Zakopane, he studied the music of the Polish Highlanders (Gorals) and used their styles in his work, including their unique rhythms and melodies. In 1936, he received more treatment in a sanatorium in Grasse, but it did not help. He died in a sanatorium in Lausanne on March 29, 1937. His body was brought back to Poland by his sister, Stanisława, and buried in Kraków at Skałka, a place where many notable Poles are honored.

Szymanowski’s letters to the pianist Jan Smeterlin, who supported his piano music, were published in 1969.

Influences

Karol Szymanowski was influenced by the music of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin, and the impressionism of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. He was also greatly influenced by his countryman Frédéric Chopin and by Polish folk music. Like Chopin, Szymanowski composed many mazurkas for piano. He was especially influenced by the folk music of the Polish Highlanders, which he discovered in Zakopane, a town in the southern Tatra highlands. In his article "About Goral Music," he wrote, "My discovery of the essential beauty of Goral music, dance, and architecture is a very personal one; much of this beauty I have absorbed into my innermost soul." Jim Samson described Goral music as "played on two fiddles and a string bass" and noted that it has "uniquely 'exotic' characteristics, highly dissonant and with fascinating heterophonic effects."

Aleksander Laskowski said about Szymanowski's music and its changing style, "He invented a musical language […] His works were true and ingenious creations. His body of work shows an incredible development from the Straussian and Wagnerian styles, through an interesting and very romantic Oriental period, and ending with a national period influenced by his time in the Tatras."

Works

Among Szymanowski's more famous orchestral works are four symphonies, including No. 3, Song of the Night, which includes a choir and solo singers, and No. 4, Symphonie Concertante, which features a piano. He also composed two violin concertos. His stage works include the ballets Harnasie and Mandragora and the operas Hagith and King Roger. Szymanowski wrote many piano pieces, such as the four Études, Op. 4 (with No. 3 once being his most popular piece), numerous mazurkas, and Métopes. Other works include the Three Myths for violin and piano, Nocturne and Tarantella, two string quartets, a sonata for violin and piano, several orchestral songs (some set to texts by Hafiz and James Joyce), and his Stabat Mater.

According to Samson, "Szymanowski did not use completely different ways to organize music tones. The way harmonies create tension and release and how melodies are structured clearly come from traditional tonal methods, but the basic tonal structure is mostly or entirely gone."

Recognition

Szymanowski's music has been recognized worldwide. In the 1920s and 1930s, his compositions were very popular. His works were performed by famous soloists, including Arthur Rubinstein, Harry Neuhaus, Robert Casadesus, Paweł Kochański, Bronisław Huberman, Joseph Szigeti, and Jacques Thibaud, and by orchestras led by conductors such as Emil Młynarski, Albert Coates, Pierre Monteux, Philippe Gaubert, Leopold Stokowski, and Willem Mengelberg. Performances of his Stabat Mater in Europe and the United States were major events, taking place in cities like Naples, Paris, Liège, New York, Chicago, and Worcester. A performance of King Roger in Prague on October 21, 1932, directed by Josef Munclingr, closely followed Szymanowski's vision for the piece and was very successful, as was the stage production of Harnasie. A Polish recording of his Symphony No. 4 in 1932 was followed by performances abroad, mostly with Szymanowski playing the piano and Grzegorz Fitelberg conducting. In 1933, the symphony was performed in London, Bologna, Cleveland, Moscow, Zagreb, and Bucharest. In 1934, it was performed in Paris, Sofia, and London. In 1935, it was performed in Stockholm, Oslo, Bergen, Berlin, Rome, Liège, and Maastricht. In 1937, it was performed in The Hague.

Recordings

In 1994, Charles Dutoit recorded both violin concertos by Szymanowski with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Sir Simon Rattle, an English conductor, said Szymanowski was "one of the greatest composers of this [20th] century" and recorded several of his works with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In 2004, Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti received the BBC Young Musician of the Year award for performing Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1. In 2008, the opera King Roger was performed at the Edinburgh International Festival by the Mariinsky opera company under the direction of Valery Gergiev. In 2012, Gergiev led the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of all four of Szymanowski’s symphonies at the Edinburgh International Festival. In 2015, King Roger was performed at London’s Royal Opera House, directed by Kasper Holten. Over the past 20 years, Szymanowski’s music has become more popular again and has been performed worldwide. It has been recorded by conductors and musicians including Pierre Boulez, Edward Gardner, Vladimir Jurowski, Mark Elder, and Krystian Zimerman.

Remembrance

Karol Szymanowski received many honors, including the Officer Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta; the Officer and Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy; the Knight of Legion d'Honneur; an honorary plaque from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; the Commander Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta; and the Academic Golden Laurel from the Polish Academy of Literature. He also held the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and was an honorary member of the Czech Academy of Learning, the Latvian Conservatory of Music in Riga, the St Cecilia Royal Academy in Rome, the Royal Academy of Music in Belgrade, and the International Society for Contemporary Music.

On November 16, 2006, the Polish Parliament passed a resolution to name 2007 "The Year of Karol Szymanowski" to celebrate the 125th anniversary of his birth and the 70th anniversary of his death. On October 3, 2007, the National Bank of Poland released special commemorative coins featuring Szymanowski in denominations of 200 zloty, 10 zloty, and 2 zloty. The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice and the Kraków Philharmonic are both named in his honor. On November 11, 2018, President Andrzej Duda posthumously awarded Szymanowski and 24 other notable Poles Poland's highest honor, the Order of the White Eagle, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Poland's independence. Szymanowski also inspired the character of composer Edgar Szyller in the novel Fame and Glory by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz.

On October 3, 2023, Google honored Szymanowski with a Doodle to mark his 141st birthday.

Awards and decorations

• Order of the White Eagle (given after death, 2018)
• Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (given after death, 2 April 1937)
• Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (11 November 1934)
• Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (30 April 1925)
• Gold Cross of Merit (5 May 1931)
• Gold Academic Laurel (5 November 1935)
• Commander of the Order of St. Sava (Yugoslavia)
• Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy (Italy)
• Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy (Italy)
• Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (France)
• Order of Cultural Merit (Romania)

Additional sources

• Jim Samson, Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–1920, published in New York by W.W. Norton & Company in 1977. ISBN: 0-393-02193-9
• Jim Samson, The Music of Szymanowski, published in London by Kahn & Averill in 1980. ISBN: 0-900707-58-5
• Alistair Wightman, Karol Szymanowski. His Life and Work, published in Alderhost by Ashgate Publishing Company in 1999
• Christopher Palmer, Szymanowski. BBC Music Guides, 1983 (An introduction to Szymanowski's music in English)
• Paul Cadrin and Stephen Downes, editors, The Szymanowski companion, published in Farnham, Surrey by Ashgate in 2015. ISBN: 978-1-4724-5557-4

• Patrick Szersnovicz, Olivier Bellamy, and Piotr Anderszewski, "Karol Szymanowski: le génie méconnu" (Karol Szymanowski: unknown genius), published in Le Monde de la musique, No. 299, June 2005, pages 46–59
• Didier Van Moere, Karol Szymanowski, published in Paris by Fayard in 2008
• Anetta Floirat, Karol Szymanowski à la rencontre des arts, published in Sampzon by Delatour France in 2019. 338 pages

• Roger Scruton and Petra Weber-Borckholdt, editors, Szymanowski in seiner Zeit (Szymanowski in his time), published in Munich by Wilhelm Fink Verlag in 1984
• Danuta Gwizdalanka, Der Verführer. Karol Szymanowski und seine Musik, published in Wiesbaden by Harrassowitz Verlag in 2017. ISBN: 978-3-447-10888-1

• Alessandro Martinisi, Il sogno sognato di Karol Szymanowski. Re Ruggero tra luce ed ombra, published in Gallarate by Quintessenza Editrice in 2009. ISBN: 978-88-901794-2-6
• Aldo Dotto, Le Maschere di Karol Szymanowski (preface by Joanna Domanska), published by Edizioni ETS in 2014. ISBN: 9788846740861

• Stefania Łobaczewska, Karol Szymanowski. Zycie i twórczość (Karol Szymanowski. Life and work), published in Cracow by PWM in 1950
• Zygmunt Sierpiński, O Karolu Szymanowskim (About Karol Szymanowski), published in Warsaw by Interpress in 1983
• Tadeusz Zieliński, Szymanowski: Liryka i ekstaza (Szymanowski: Lyric and ecstasy), published in Cracow by Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne in 1997
• Teresa Chylińska, Karol Szymanowski i jego epoka (Karol Szymanowski and his time), published in Cracow by Musica Iagellonica in 2006, 3 volumes
• Mortkowicz-Olczakowa, Hanna (1961). Bunt wspomnień, published by Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy
• Jerzy Maria Smoter (collective), Karol Szymanowski we wspomnieniach (Karol Szymanowski in our memory), published in Cracow by PWM in 1974, 394 pages
• Łozińska Hempel, Maria (1986). Z łańcucha wspomnień, published by Wydawnictwo Literackie.