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• Series: PWM
• Publisher: PWM Edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Composer: Mieczyslaw Karlowicz
• Price: 68.00 (US)

The songs of Mieczyslaw Karlowicz appeared in the history of Polish song as a rather unusual phenomenon. In the output of this outstanding symphonist - as youthful works - they formed an anacrusis, albeit a significant one, to his fully mature and masterful output. Nearly all of them were written over the course of a single year. Composed on the margins of his academic course in composition, they appear to represent a document of deeply personal feelings and thoughts, seismographically recording his current states of mind.

Of the twenty-nine songs known to have existed, twenty-two have come down to us; the seven unpublished works, some merely sketched, were lost during the Second World War. Overlooking a couple of them, of a separate character, they form a remarkably coherent body of work. On closer inspection, it turns out that this cohesion of a distinctive character marks the whole of Karlowicz's oeuvre. Thesymphonic poems of the composer of Eternal songs are set within the same space of ideas and meanings as the songs; they are marked by analogous categories of expression. And it is a space which the composer’s main biographer, Adolf Chybinski, described as teeming with tragedy and boundless woe, resignation and a longing for another world'.

In terms of the style of utterance, Mieczyslaw Karlowicz’s songs – although deeply rooted in late Romantic style – have often been described as output standing on the threshold of a modernist phase.

Zdzislaw Jachimecki wrote in 1930:‘A warm lyrical note in many of them, a genuine inspiration manifested in the very natural way inwhich the melodies are drawn, unsophisticated forms of accompaniment, which are nevertheless suited to the mood of the poetry in question and organically linked to the song, and the accomplished declamation and construction of these works have earned Karlowicz's songs deserved popularity in Polish singing circles.’

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