Szymanowski composed "The Swan", song for voice and piano, in 1904, dedicating it to his mother, Anna Szymanowska nee Taube.
Szymanowski composed The Swan, song for voice and piano op. 7 in 1904, dedicating it to his mother, Anna Szymanowska nee Taube. The mood is set by the sonnet written by a Young Poland's writer and poet Wacław Berent and included in his 1902 novel Próchno. The sonnet's swan is symbolic of a number of things: of love and death, journey to the unknown, to the underworld where the swan is the guide, and finally of unsatisfiable desire, hopelessness, renunciation and inability.1 Szymanowski's music is meditative and mysterious. The mood is emphasized by the dark colour of low registers and the characteristic rising and falling of melodic themes. Szymanowski's note on performance in the manuscript reads: Slow, rhythmic movement - as of the wings of a flying bird.
The Swan was first sung on 12th March 1909 in Warsaw, the singer being Szymanowski's sister Stanisława Korwin-Szymanowska. Nowadays it features in the repertoires of top singers, notably Krystyna Szostek-Radkowa, Urszula Kryger and Małgorzata Walewska. Kryger's and Walewska's interpretations were recorded by DUX and released, respectively, on two CDs: Karłowicz, Szymanowski: Pieśni (2002) and Szymanowski, Wagner. Songs (2007).
Notes:
1 Mieczysław Tomaszewski, Nad pieśniami Karola Szymanowskiego. Cztery studia, Akademia Muzyczna w Krakowie 1998.
Author: Anna Iwanicka-Nijakowska, September 2007.