Karol Szymanowski

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Lore & Background

Szymanowski was born into the wealthy Polish nobility of the Korwin-Szymanowski family in Tymoszówka, then in the Russian Empire. He studied music privately with his father and later at the Gustav Neuhaus Elisavetgrad School of Music and the State Conservatory in Warsaw, where he later served as director from 1926 to 1930. He traveled extensively through Europe and North Africa, and during World War I, being lame in one knee, he devoted himself to composition and the study of Islamic culture, ancient Greek drama, and philosophy. In Berlin he founded the Young Polish Composers' Publishing Company. His works from the 1910s, such as Mity, Metopy, and Maski, show great originality and diversity. He completed a two-volume novel, Efebos, on the subject of homosexuality, now mostly lost. After the war he settled in Warsaw, and in the 1920s and 1930s his music proved immensely popular, performed by soloists such as Arthur Rubinstein, Harry Neuhaus, and Joseph Szigeti, and conductors including Leopold Stokowski and Willem Mengelberg. In his later years, living in Zakopane, he immersed himself in the culture of the Polish Highlanders, creating a national style influenced by their folk music. Szymanowski was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sought treatment in Davos and Grasse, but died at a sanatorium in Lausanne on 29 March 1937. His body was returned to Poland by his sister Stanisława and laid to rest at Skałka in Kraków. He was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, among other distinctions.

Reader's Guide

Szymanowski's significance lies in his stylistic evolution from late Romanticism through impressionism and atonality to a distinctive national idiom rooted in Polish folk music. His opera King Roger remains his most popular work, while his Third Symphony and Violin Concerto No. 1 exemplify his impressionistic period, and Harnasie and the Fourth Symphony reflect his engagement with Górale traditions. His music was performed internationally in the 1920s and 1930s by leading artists, and his Stabat Mater achieved world-scale success in Naples, Paris, New York, and Chicago. Szymanowski's legacy includes his role in the Young Poland movement and his synthesis of diverse cultural influences—from Islamic and ancient Greek to Polish folk—into a personal musical language. His works, such as the Mazurkas and the Symphonie Concertante, continue to be performed and studied, and his correspondence with pianist Jan Smeterlin was published in 1969.

Did You Know?

• Szymanowski completed a two-volume novel, Efebos, which took homosexuality as its subject; the manuscript is now mostly lost.
• He was lame in one knee, which made him unsuitable for military service in World War I.
• Arthur Rubinstein recalled Szymanowski telling him about seeing young men bathing in Taormina who 'could be models for Antinous,' confirming his homosexuality.
• His great-great grandfather Dominik was exiled from Poland to Dnieper Ukraine after the fall of the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794.
• Szymanowski's Stabat Mater was performed as world-scale events in cities including Naples, Paris, New York, Chicago, and Worcester.