The cantata "Agawe" was written in the same period as Szymanowski's previous opus, "Demeter", and likewise set the lyrics of Szymanowski's sister Zofia.
Dated 1917, the cantata Agawe Op. 38 was written in the same period as Szymanowski's previous opus, Demeter, and likewise set the lyrics of Szymanowski's sister Zofia. Szymanowski borrowed the leitmotif from Euripides' Bacchae - the story of the eponymous mother of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who, during orgiastic Dionysian mysteries held with a group of Bacchants, unknowingly tore to pieces her son, not recognizing him until the tragedy was complete.
Szymanowski's work was never performed nor published, and its manuscript survives incomplete as a draft of the score and fragments of a piano extract copied by musicologist Stanisław Golachowski. Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne has published its facsimile together with the score of Szymanowski's cantata Demeter. The surviving draft suggests that Agawe was similar in style to Demeter, with emphasis on colour and expressiveness that matched the story's drama.
Author: Anna Iwanicka-Nijakowska, September 2007.