Four Mazurkas, Op.50, Nos.13-16 (1924-5)

Moderato

Animato

Allegretto dolce

Allegramente, vigoroso

Szymanowski had long been familiar with the spa town of Zakopane in the Tatra mountains but it wasn’t until 1922 that he definitively joined the artistic community there - “the emergency rescue squad of Tatra culture,” as he called it. Having exhausted impressionism and exoticism as sources of inspiration, he was now enthraled by Góral folk music which he absorbed, he said, into his “innermost soul” and, like Bartók in a similar situation, into his own musical language.

It was in this conscientiously Polish frame of mind that he set out in 1924 to create a modern equivalent to the mazurkas of Chopin. But, while his twenty Mazurkas, Op.50, clearly take Chopin’s as a model, he allies their characteristic rhythms with the peculiarly tough modal harmonies of the Tatra mountaineers. It is a hybrid creation but the spontaneity of the writing makes it seem perfectly natural. While the structures are loosely ternary, in that the opening material tends to return at the end, the intervening episodes, are inspired by the freely improvisatory quality of Góral folk music. The agitated and melodically resourceful development of the two main themes of No.13 is a particularly striking example. The ternary shape of both No.14, which wittily mingles its mazurka features with allusions to Chopin in waltz time, and the expressive No.15 is clear enough. The last of these mazurkas seems, on the other hand, to be knocked ouf of shape by apparently primitive intrusions on the lyrical main theme. It is in fact a little masterpiece of structural integration.

Moderato

Animato

Allegretto dolce

Allegramente, vigoroso

Szymanowski had long been familiar with the spa town of Zakopane in the Tatra mountains but it wasn’t until 1922 that he definitively joined the artistic community there - “the emergency rescue squad of Tatra culture,” as he called it. Having exhausted impressionism and exoticism as sources of inspiration, he was now enthraled by Góral folk music which he absorbed, he said, into his “innermost soul.” Although he did use actual folk tunes in his ballet Harnasie, he was more inclined, like Bartók, to rethink his own musical language to incorporate the distinctive features of the organic material he found around him.

It was in that spirit that he set out in 1924 to create a modern equivalent to the mazurkas of a composer who, he said, “is the most profoundly philosophical and yet most artistic embodiment of what might be called the spirit of Poland.” But, while his twenty Mazurkas, Op.50, clearly take Chopin’s as a model, he allies their characteristic rhythms with the peculiarly tough modal harmonies of the Tatra mountaineers. It is a hybrid creation but the spontaneity of the writing makes it seem perfectly natural. While the structures are loosely ternary, in that the opening material tends to return at the end, the intervening episodes, are inspired by the freely improvisatory quality of Góral folk music. The agitated and melodically resourceful development of the two main themes of No.13 is a particularly striking example. The ternary shape of both No.14, which wittily mingles its mazurka features with allusions to Chopin in waltz time, and the expressive No.15 is clear enough. The last of these mazurkas seems, on the other hand, to be knocked ouf of shape by apparently primitive intrusions on the lyrical main theme. It is in fact a little masterpiece of structural integration.