Witold Lutosławski, The Road To Victory. Song About A Sloe-Tree

Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego

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Witold Lutosławski

The Road to Victory. Song about a Sloe-Tree

for voice and piano

Publisher: PWM Edition

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Cat. no. 11406
ISBN ISSN: 979-0-2740-0910-6

Songs for the masses under Stalin were considered to be music journalism. Their life was to be short, but they were to arouse a universal resonance, and they were addressed to youth, soldiers', peasants' and workers' ensembles. In order to create such a repertoire, competitions for such songs were held from the 1940s, usually giving participants text to use the that had already been approved by the Ministry of Culture and Arts, as in any case the most important aspect in this political-propaganda repertoire was the words. In one of these competitions Lutosławski received the highest award (together with Tadeusz Szeligowski) for the song Wyszłabym ja (‘I would marry’), which was accompanied by 75 000 zł (the average monthly salary was then 18 000 zł). This gratification should not be underestimated, for composition is not just a vocation – as Lutosławski said repeatedly and very suggestively – but also a profession, and the composer had to support a family of six. Following this calling, a few years earlier he had resigned from his leadership position on the radio, wishing to devote as much of his time as he could to composing and from then he worked as an editor-advisor with low pay, and drew his main income from music composed by commissions from theatres, radio and the competitions held for a variety of occasions, but in general, promoting the idea of ‘progressiveness’.

In 1950, when the main offensive aimed at encouraging composers to create songs for the masses was launched, half of these songs were created by Lutosławski: Nowa Huta, Służba Polsce (‘Service to Poland’), Naprzód idziemy (‘Forward we go’), Wyszłabym ja (‘I would marry’) and probably Najpiękniejszy sen (‘The most beautiful dream’, this could also have been written at the beginning of 1951). In the first months of 1952 he wrote Towarzysz (‘Comrade’), and Zwycięska droga (‘The road to victory’) is also from the same year. The first of three Soldiers' Songs can be dated to the turn of 1952-1953 which also belong to the category of songs for the masses, and arranged through a commission from the Ministry of Defence (Narciarski patrol, ‘Ski patrol’). The next song (Kto pierwszy, ‘Who first’) was created in 1953, and the last (Skowronki, ‘Skylarks’) – in 1953 or even early 1954. Perhaps the MoD was also the addressee of Śpiew o tarninie (‘Song about a sloe-tree’) to words by Hanna Januszewska.
[Danuta Gwizdalanka]