Masques Op.34 (1915–16)

Shéhérazade

Tantris le bouffon

Sérénade de Don Juan

Szymanowski’s two most popular piano works, Métopes and Masques, were both written in the middle of the First World War at his home in Tymoszówka in the Ukraine. Neither the time nor the place left the slightest mark, however, on music conceived under the influence of the evidently still thrilling liberation of the senses experienced by the Polish composer on a trip to Sicily and North Africa in the spring of 1914. A passionate interest in Mediterranean and Arab cultures joined a fascination with visionary Scriabin and a recent exposure to the latest developments in French music – he met both Debussy and Ravel in Paris on his way back from Italy – to inspire an intensely personal hyper-impressionism.

Although the three movements of Masques bear descriptive titles like those of Métopes, they are probably not as important in this case. In Shéhérazade, for example, there is little orientalism of the kind to be found in Ravel’s orchestral songs of the same name or Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite. At the same time it is difficult to detect any narrative content beyond, perhaps, an at times voluptuous and at times dangerous nocturnal atmosphere. In spite of its extravagant colouring and the virtuosity applied in achieving it, Shéhérazade seems to be about a purely musical subject: that is the theme with the habanera rhythm anticipated in the Scriabinesque Lento assai, languido introduction and presented in its definitive form – after an accelerating cadenza of swirling arpeggios, trills, and repeated notes – in a gentle 6/8 Allegretto.There are other, unrelated themes, like the lovely melody introduced pianissimo in an untroubled D major after the con passione central climax. Even so it is the habanera theme that dominates the last third of the piece, first in a dramatically treated 3/8 Vivace variant and finally in its original form in the closing bars.

The title of the second movement, Tantris le bouffon alludes to Ernst Hardt’s parody Tristan der Narr which makes a special feature of that episode in the legend where, in order to gain access to Isolde in King Mark’s court, Tristan anagramatically changes his name to Tantris and disguises himself as a jester. It seems unlikely, however, that Szymanowski was thinking here of programmatic detail rather than of the musical challenge of creating a scherzo which integrates caricature and pathos not by alternating them in a simple ternary form – as in Ravel’s Alborado del gracioso which is often said to be the source of his inspiration – but in a constant fluctuation between the two extremes. Whatever his thinking, it is brilliantly done – and not without recalling the habanera from Shéhérazade, once in the middle and once near the end.

The habanera theme also occurs near the end of Sérénade de Don Juan where, of course, it geographically belongs. The question of what it is doing in Shéhérazade and Tantris le bouffon clearly cannot be answered by reference to any kind of programmatic purpose. Once again it seems that the answer is a musical one – in this case a concern for securing some kind of thematic unity between the three pieces (the fact that Sérénade de Don Juan was written first does not invalidate the argument.). As with Tantris le bouffon Szymanowski has been accused of modelling Sérénade de Don Juan on a French precedent. While there are echoes of Ravel’s Alborado del gracioso again or Debussy’s La sérénade interrompue, no composer has created a more brilliant piano fantasy from the sounds, rhythmic figurations and harmonies associated with the Spanish guitar than Szymanowski does here.