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"Hagith" - the Final Edition ot "The Complete Works of Karol Szymanowski"
2014-09-24
It has taken nearly half a century to complete the project to prepare and publish Karol Szymanowski's entire legacy as a composer: 26 volumes in the Polish edition and 17 in the German-English edition. The Polish Music Publishing House in now concluding the edition of Karol Szymanowski's Works with the score of his opera Hagith.
Established in the spring of 1938, which was also the year of the composer’s death, the Karol Szymanowski Society saw it as its main duty to safeguard his legacy, prepare its critical edition and publish it. The mission was continued after World War II by the Polish Music Publishing House, which was set up in 1945. Its strategic goal was to publish the works of the four "classics of Polish music": F. Chopin, S. Moniuszko, M. Karlowicz and K. Szymanowski. This lofty task called for an inconceivable amount of work. The project began with the collection of sources, such as autographs and original editions; later it continued with the setting up of the framework and methods necessary for source and critical editing; and it finally concluded with the formation of an expert editorial team, a team like no other in the history and practice of Polish musical editing. One has to admit that all participants in the project (musicologists, musicians and publishers) were beginners, apprentices and, at times (as is the case of engravers), even inventors. The work aimed at publishing Szymanowski's legacy turned out to be particularly difficult as it was impossible to perform the editorial work without access to his autographs and copyrights, which in turn were the property of the Viennese Universal Edition, the original publisher of Szymanowski's works. The Polish Music Publishing House had to sign an international co-editing contract with the Austrian company. This in turn involved politics. Time passed, but red tape seemed never to relent. However, since the need (and enthusiasm!) is the mother of all activity, after years of endeavour, the score of Stabat Mater was issued in 1965 to announce the publication of the Works of Karol Szymanowski (edited by Teresa Chylinska). The work also involved continual search for Szymanowski's manuscripts (Universal Edition failed to publish three of his works), which resembled the Argonauts' quest for the Golden Fleece. The difference, however, was that editors had no compass to find their way to the legendary Colchis... The manuscripts would thus unexpectedly resurface in Leningrad, Paris or London, and later in Chicago, Washington D.C. or New York. The routes of their migrations may also serve as traces of both history and individual human lives: habent sua fata manusrcitti. [Teresa Chylińska]
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