Szymanowski on Music: Selected Writings of Karol Szymanowski (review)

Szymanowski on Music: Selected Writings of Karol Szymanowski. Translated and edited by Alistair Wightman. (Musicians on Music, 6.) London: Toccata Press, 1999. [390 p. ISBN 0-907689-38-8. £35.]

One hundred and eighteen years have passed since the birth of Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), and sixty-three years since his death. Finally, there is a publication that translates Szymanowski's most important writings on music from Polish into English. Just as Szymanowski nearly single-handedly dislodged Polish music from its "romantic intoxication" (p. 176) and advanced it into the world of twentieth-century modernism, so, too, has distinguished British musicologist Alistair Wightman made a significant contribution. This anthology in English makes the writings of this important composer accessible to major non-Polish-reading audiences. Wightman is to be congratulated for his painstaking attention to detail. His effort has resulted in an anthology that will allow scholars and performers alike to learn more about Szymanowski's contribution to twentieth-century music.

The anthology includes approximately two-thirds of Szymanowski's writings on music, and Wightman has made conscious, well-thought-out choices about what to include and what to omit. Although the exclusion of one-third of the writings may seem significant, Szymanowski frequently repeated himself, and Wightman omitted a number of the less important articles to avoid "excessive over-lapping" (p. 9). Relevant portions of articles are introduced in editorial notes in those cases where an entire article contains an excessive amount of duplication. Wightman has also added a short and informative preface and an introductory chapter.

The preface (pp. 9-11) serves as a thumbnail sketch of the anthology's contents and method. The introductory chapter, "Szymanowski's Life and Thought" (pp. 13-69), leads the reader through an overview of the composer's life, weaving his literary work into its historical context. Wightman provides the reader with an understanding of who Szymanowski was and what his aspirations were for the direction Poland's musical life should take. What impresses me most in this chapter is the clarity with which Wightman describes the struggles Szymanowski endured in a newly emerging nation, explaining why he was perceived as an outsider by his own people and how this contributed to the musical choices he made.

After the preface and introduction, Wightman organizes Szymanowski's literary writings, which date from 1907 to 1936 (although a prose example probably dates from 1903-4), into six sections by subject category rather than chronology: "On Critics and Criticism," "On Folk-music and Nationalism," "On Nineteenth-Century Music," "On Twentieth-Century Music," "On Education," and "On the Composer's Life." A complete catalog of the composer's extant articles, interviews, speeches, letters to the press, and tributes (with details of first publication where applicable) is provided in an appendix, which also includes a chronological list of Szymanowski's literary sketches and fragments pertaining to music and his other literary works, both prose and poetry. The volume concludes with a bibliography, index, and list of illustrations.

A brief example will serve to highlight Wightman's astute annotation. To Szymanowski's sketches for his proposed study of contemporary music called "On the Work of Wagner, Strauss and Schoenberg," Wightman adds a note (p. 217, n. 4) in which he discusses Max Reger, cleverly incorporating an extended fragment of an unfinished work by Szymanowski (in Wightman's translation) titled "German Music, Reger and Cyclic Form." Though it may appear confusing at first, Wightman's system results in a readable and concise anthology. He has aptly captured Szymanowski's expression in an intelligent translation that benefits from his more than thirty years of experience with Szymanowski's music and writings. The translation into English was challenging because the original writings are in a verbose, excessively decorated and florid style.

Szymanowski on Music is a meticulously prepared English-language anthology of the most important writings on music by a significant composer. Wightman states at the opening of the preface that...