Written in autumn 1909, Songs Op. 20 are the second cycle of songs (after Four Songs Op. 11) setting poems by 'the great poet and friend Tadeusz Miciński'. This time Szymanowski selected a few excerpts from the poems making up the volume W mroku gwiazd (In the Twilight of the Stars): song No. 1 Na księżycu czarnym (On the Dark Moon), song No. 3 Pachną mi dziwnie twoje złote włosy (The Extraordinary Scent of Your Golden Hair), song No. 5 Z maurytańskich śpiewnych sal (From the Singing Halls of Mauretania) as well as song No. 6 Na pustej trzcinie (On the Hollow Reed) from the series Strąceni z niebiosów, song No. 2 Święty Franciszek mówi (St Francis Speaks) from the series Białe róże krwi, song No. 4 W mym sercu (In My Heart) from the series Noce polarne). Szymanowski cut and changed the poems to adjust them to his own vision of a words-and-music work and to give it a personal, individual touch. The music which sets Miciński's poetry of resignation and powerlessness, unfulfilled love and longing, loneliness and tragic fate is brimming with internal expression, its harmony going beyond late Romanticism (with a strongly accentuated "Tristanesque" chromatisms) and its piano texture thick and linear. The songs verging on the erotic (Nos. 3 and 5) also have a subtle oriental tint - a harbinger of the later Love Song of Hafiz Op. 24 and Op. 26.
Dedicated to Miciński, Songs Op. 20 were among Szymanowski's favourite songs. He often performed them with his sister, Stanisława Korwin-Szymanowska, and wrote in one of his letters to Stefan Spiess in 1912:
I am beginning to prepare for print my latest, favourite cycle of Micinski's songs (St Francis etc.).1
The songs first appeared in print in 1925, published by Gebethner i Wolff in Polish, French and German languages. They were recorded for the Dutch label Channel Classics by Urszula Kryger and Reinild Mees in 2004.
Notes:
1 Karol Szymanowski. Korespondencja, Tom I: lata 1903-1919, p.. 364, list z dn. 18 XII 1912 do Stefana Spiessa, red. Teresa Chylińska, PWM, Kraków 1982.
Author: Anna Iwanicka-Nijakowska, September 2007.