Between the years 1899-1904, Eugeniusz Morawski-Dąbrowa studied piano under Antoni Sygietyński, and composition under Zygmunt Noskowski at the Music Institute in Warsaw. In 1903, he took up studies at the artistic school of Warsaw, where he took part in Jan Kauzik’s Drawing Course. In 1904, Morawski-Dąbrowa enrolled into the newly founded School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where through to 1907 lerned from some of Poland’s most acclaimed painters: Kondrad Krzyżanowski (portrait course), Ferdynand Ruszczyc (landscape course) and Karol Tichy (applied arts course). As a student of the School, the artist also took part in three plein-air sessions organized in Arkadia (1904), Zwierzyniec (1905) and in Istebna (1906).
From 1903, Morawski-Dąbrowa took part in the militant organization called the Revolutionary Fraction of the Polish Socialist Party. In November, 1907, due to taking part in a plot of assassinating the police, he was emprisoned at the Cytadela fortress in Warsaw. Following a year in jail, he was condemned by the Tsarist Military Court for four years of exhile in Syberia. Thanks to the efforts of his father, this sentence was alleviated and changed to emigration. Thus from 1908 Morawski-Dąbrowa resided in Paris, where he continued to study. He was a student of André Gédalge (counterpoint) and Camille Chevillard (instrumentation). He also took up painting at the Académie Julien and sculpture under the direction of Émile Antoine Bourdelle.
He returned Poland in 1930 to take up work as a pedagogue. In March, Morawski-Dąbrowa became a director of the Music Conservatory in Poznań, and in June 1930, he relocated to Warsaw, where he took up the post of the director of Musical Middle School of the Warsaw Conservatory. Between 1932-39, following Karol Szymanowski's leave, he took on the function of a rector of the State Music Conservatory, where he also lectured in instrumentation. During his work as the rector, he took an active part in creating the Musicology Department, as well as the Teaching Department under Stanisław Kazura's direction. He also helped to start the Opera Course with Walerian Bierdiajew.
During the Second World War, Morawski-Dąbrowa conducted classes in a secret Conservatory ledy by Kazura. In 1944, he moved to Ruda Pabianicka, where he taught music, and in 1948, shortly before his death, he returned to Warsaw.
Eugeniusz Morawski was the founding member of the Société des Artistes Polonais in Paris (1909), the National Opera Society (1932), and the Friderick Chopin Institute (1934). He received the Musical Award of the Poland's Ministry of Religious Beliefs and Public Enlightment for his ballet Świtezianka (1933), and was also honoured iwh the Officer's Cross of Poland's Renaissance (193), the Medal of Independence (1933) and the Golden Laur of the Polish Academy of Literature (1938).
The 2011 Plus Camerimage Festival feature a special screening of a film devoted to the memory of Morawski-Dąbrowa, directed by Maciej Puczyński. The picture was entitled Fantazja na temat Morawskiego (A Fanstasy About Morawski), and it consists of a documentary part, which collects the remaining archive data about the late composer, uxtaposed with dream-like fantasies about this somewhat forgotten figure. The film is a nocturn about a lost heritage and a world that no longer exists, even though its fragments remain in the three surving musical scores.
In 2012, Symphonia Varsovia recorded an album with the three compositions, which were performed under the baton of Monika Wolińska.
A description of Puczyński's film on the www.pluscamerimage webstie states:
80% of his works were consumed by the fires of the Warsaw Uprising. That, which his brother managed to save from the ruins of a burnt-down house, shows incredibly imaginative film compositions, in spite of the fact that these works were created in 1910.
Author: Małgorzata Kosińska, Polish Centre of Musical Information (Polskie Centrum Informacji Muzycznej), Polish Composers' Association (Związek Kompozytorów Polskich), December, 2006; updated in March, 2012, based on press release, translated by Paulina Schlosser, September, 2013.
