Szymanowski on Music

Selected writings of Karol Szymanowski

Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) is now widely acknowledged to be the most important Polish composer since Chopin. Szymanowski was also a considerable thinker on musical tropics: the role of music in society, the goal of musical education, the purpose of criticism, the nature of Romanticism, the hallmarks of national identity - indeed, he was passionately concerned with the emergence of the Polish voice in music, and the role of Chopin in particular.

"Szymanowski on music" is the first comprehensive selection of his writings to be published in English. It contains all the most important of his essays and interviews, throws light on the trying conditions under wich he was obliged to work in the 1920s and '30s, specially in education, and gives perceptive assessments of the work of some of the major composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - Wagner, Strauss, Stravinsky, Ravel, Satie and others - and the trends they embodied. A number of pieces of a more biographical nature are included, no least Szymanowski's touching obituary for his life-long friend, the violinist Pawel Kochanski.

CONTENIDO:

Preface
Introduction: Szymanowski's life and thought

Part One: On crisis and criticism
- On contemporary musical opinion in Poland
- "My splendid Isolation"
- "I will leave my rocky entrenchment..."

Part Two: On folk-music and Nationalism
- Antena chez Karol Szymanowski
- On highland music
- The ethnic question in relation to contemporary music
- A footnote to "Stabat Mater"

Part Three: On Nineteenth-century Music
- Romanticism in the Present Era
- On Romanticism in Music
- Fryderyk Chopin

Part Four: On Twentieth-century Music
- Karol Szymanowski on Contemporary Music
- The Highways and Byways of Contemporary Music
- On the Work of Wagner, Strauss and Schoenberg
- Igor Stravinsky
- On the Musical Life of Paris
- Maurice Ravel on the Occasion of his Fiftieth Birthday
- Paul Dukas "Tel qu'en lui-même enfin..."
- The future of culture

Part Five: On Education
- A new spirit in the Warsaw Conservatory
- The Generation War between old and young musicians and the conflict between their creative outlooks
- The vicissitudes of the Warsaw Conservatory
- The Opening of the State Academy of music in Warsaw
- The dispute over the Academy
- The educational role of music culture in society

Part Six: On the composer's life
- Introduction to my memoirs
- Karol Szymanowski
- In memory of Pawel KochaŽnski

Appendix: Catalogue of Karol Szymanowski's writings

Bibliography

Index