The turbulent years of World War I saw Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), who had extensively travelled throughout Europe and Africa, confined to his family’s estate in the Ukraine. Physically isolated from the rest of Europe, Szymanowski began a process of drawing intellectual conclusions from the vast cultural and musical experiences of his youth.
His approach to the piano medium had changed radically, transferring his allegiances from Brahms and Reger to Debussy, Ravel, and the late works of Scriabin. The resulting compositions, including Métopes and Masques exhibit the composer’s unique brand of expressive modernism.
Karol Szymanowski
In these two piano cycles, Szymanowski achieved his full maturity as a composer. As a scholar explains, “he established a new aesthetic orientation of his music and employed new textural and colouristic devices.” His musical influences are clear enough, but Szymanowksi remains at “a happier distance from his models, forging a genuinely original and distinctive language.”
Karol Szymanowski: Métopes, Op. 29, “L’ile des Sirenes” (Anu Vehvilainen, piano)
Métopes
Calypso and Odysseus
During a previous visit to the museum in Palermo, Sicily, Szymanowski admired the Doric frieze of the temple of Selinunt, dating from between the sixth and fourth centuries BC. In classical architecture, a metope is a rectangular architectural element that fills the space between two triglyphs in a Doric frieze. That particular space is frequently decorated with relief sculptures. Like the metopes in the frieze, Szymanowski’s Métopes, Op. 29, are intended to outline stages in history by drawing on Greek mythology and Homer’s Odyssey.
Each of the three movements of this cycle of miniature tone poems features a female character encountered by Odysseus on his homeward voyage. The first piece, “Isle of the Sirens,” takes much of its musical detail from the mythological source. That source describes the enchanting calls of the beautiful Sirens, who sit beside the ocean, combing their long golden hair. Anyone who hears their song is bewitched by its sweetness, and they are drawn to that island and killed.
An insistent lullaby theme runs through the music, reflecting the double flute and lyre associated in Homer with the sirens. In addition, some patterns suggest bird calls, “reminding us that the sirens were half-bird and half-woman.” The tonal language is at some distance removed from triadic harmonies, emphasising chords that outline a tritonal span. “The opening measures of “Isle of the Siren” also establish the principal textural feature of the piece, and the continuous development of the principal melody becomes the main source of continuity.”
Karol Szymanowski: Métopes, Op. 29, “Calypso” (Ronaldo Rolim, piano)
The second movement, titled “Calypso”, tells the story of the nymph Calypso, who lived on the island of Ogygia and wanted to make Odysseus her immortal husband. She enchants Odysseus with her singing, weaving on her loom with a golden shuttle. However, Odysseus can no longer bear to be separated from his wife Penelope and begs his patron, the goddess Athena, to set him free. Calypso eventually relents, and it takes Odysseus seven years to build his boat to leave the island.
Odysseus meets Nausicaa
Szymanowski again establishes a refrain-like melody with close ties to the melody from the opening “Isle of the Sirens.” Scholars have suggested that the composer here “employs his favourite narrative manner, a 6/8 metre incorporating a distinctive rhythmic cell.” This construct is surrounded by extended piano textures to evoke the sense of the sea.
“Nausicaa” is a Phaeacian princess who met the shipwrecked Odysseus when she was washing clothes on the shore. Odysseus crept out from under the bushes, carrying just a leaf to conceal his naked manhood. Nausicaa, who stood firm in front of the naked stranger, gave him a chance to explain himself and reveal the reason for his appearance. Odysseus pleaded his case with polite words, and he praised Nausicaa’s beauty, grace, and stature, saying that she looked like a goddess. Eventually, Nausicaa, having fallen in love, nevertheless ensures that Odysseus returns home. Odysseus never tells his wife Penelope about his encounter with Nausicaa, “suggesting a deeper level of feeling for the young woman.”
Szymanowski invokes the dancing of Nausicaa and the Phoecian maidens, with the 6/8 dotted rhythm again generated on a single pedal point. The melodic line is rather similar to the ones heard in “Isle of the Sirens” and “Calypso,” once again incorporating the distinctive rhythmic cell. A scholar writes, “the element of dance stylisation grows strong as the piece develops, with subtle rhythmic dislocations of the basic meter, so that by the end the dance features have been submerged totally.” As expected, there are cyclic references to the textures of both preceding movements.
Karol Szymanowski: Métopes, Op. 29, “Nausicaa” (Matthew Bengtson, piano)
Masques
Szymanowski’s Métopes
The composition of the second major cycle of piano poems Masques, Op. 34 is once again based on mythology, but we move into a more complex musical world. Begun in the summer of 1915 and completed one year later, these brief tone poems for piano feature sectional schemes reflecting the unfolding narratives. These rhapsodic miniatures explore all manner of textural complexities, “often passing an inner melodic strand between hands or isolating an inner note from a surrounding chord in the interests of a subtle highlighting of line.”
“Shéhérazade,” the major female character and the storyteller in the frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the “One Thousand and One Night,” is well established. Her survival depends entirely on keeping her new royal husband entertained, and Szymanowski’s seductive introduction unfolds in the melodic gestures of Scriabin.
It is an enchanting and rhapsodic dance-like narrative, which builds to a pair of linked climaxes. Szymanowski established clear harmonic reference points, and recurring pitch collections unexpectedly announced an entirely conventional cadence. The dramatic discourse is developed as a dynamic and contrasting musical recitative, and the music returns to the opening, providing an overall arch-like structure.
Karol Szymanowski: Masques, “Shéhérazade” (Patricia Arauzo, piano)
One Thousand and One Nights
Composed in homage to the famed pianist Heinrich Neuhaus, “Tantris the Clown” is derived from a parody of the Tristan and Isolde legend by Ernst Hardt, published in 1908. The man hero disguises himself as a buffoon to enter the court of King Marke to admire his beloved. While Shéhérazade was unable to escape the royal chambers, Tantris tries to break into Isolde’s quarters but is recognised by the dogs. The King subsequently hands over a naked Isolde to the lepers.
We immediately get a sense of this grotesque, sarcastic and irreverent story in the very beginning as Szymanowski provides a strident and dissonant sound under the indication “buffo e capriccioso.” The musical language seems closer to Ravel, featuring points of sharp dissonance. We also hear the love theme from Shéhérazade and a new melody, “subject to wicked distortion. Bitonal elements play an important role in this distortion, and quasi-improvised characters chiefly function to establish an atmosphere of exoticism and fantasy.” We are listening to a sensitive, bitter and lyrical protagonist who is constantly in dialogue with his mockers.
Karol Szymanowski: Masques, “Tantris le Bouffon” (Wouter Valvekens, piano)
The concluding “Serenade of Don Juan,” dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein, opens with a clear allusion to the improvisatory strumming on a guitar. Marked “quasi-improvisando fantastic,” this opening paragraph functions as an extended and elaborate cadenza. In addition, it introduces some of the important building blocks of the piece, “from the characteristic bitonality of pentatonic black and white note patterns to a thematic cell suggesting in context a Spanish-Arabic mode.”
Essentially a Rondo, a biographer describes this movement as “the perfect piece about an egomaniac, since its recurrent theme can stand as the antihero’s ongoing love affair with himself.” In essence, the music grows more impassioned and urgent as it develops, leading to a return of the introductory cadenza. Szymanowski writes, “I believe that in spite of all the terrible things which are happening in the world today, there exists some mysterious means of mutual understanding amongst men, some straightforward, purely human solidarity,” and Szymanowski attempted to visualise this mutual understanding in both the Métopes and Masques.
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Karol Szymanowski: Masques, “La Sérénade de Don Juan” (Cathy Krier, piano)
