• Duration: 13'
• Instrumentation: 0000-0000-archi (8.7.6.5.4)
• Year: 1937
• Type: parts, score

Epitaph on the Death of Karol Szymanowski Anecdote has it that Szeligowski was the author of the ironic expression dwunastnicy [twelvers - a pun on dwunastnica (duodenum, as in duodenal ulcer)] to describe composers in the first half of the 20th century who were tempted by Schönbergs dodecaphonic technique. The artists aversion to this novelty situates him among artists whose attitude could be called conservative, with the reservation that in Szeligowskis case there was nothing doctrinaire about it. In this composer and distinguished pedagogues prolific and diverse oeuvre, many threads meet: Neo-romantic with Neoclassical, folklore with archaism. This conglomerate blurred rather than brought out individual style traits, but the composers best works are characterized by a superb technique and expressive emotionalism. Since his youth, Szeligowski was fascinated with the person and oeuvre of Karol Szymanowski. The artist met the composer of the Myths in 1924 in Paris, where he was staying as a correspondent of the Wilno [now Vilnius] press at the 2nd Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. After returning to Wilno, he organized concerts of Szymanowskis music, with participation of the artist himself as guest of honor as well, and sent him his own works for evaluation; and despite a few of the little misunderstandings in which true friendship always abounds, he remained his admirer until the end. In 1937, at the news of the composers death, he composed Epitaph on the Death of Karol Szymanowski for string orchestra, performed not long thereafter in Wilno. It is a one-movement composition, maintained in a lugubre mood throughout, but one can distinguish in it three phases. The work begins with an Adagio of falling chord progressions maintained in the stylistic language of a Baroque lamento. A figure alluding to Szymanowskis last Mazurka Op. 62 No. 2 becomes the fundamental motif, and this figure shapes the course of the first part, in which one can also distinguish a fragment marked grandioso, representing the expressive culmination of this phase of the work. In the middle fragment, there appears a fugato, but the composer does not work it out in full. After that, the thematic ideas of the initial Adagio return in somewhat altered form; and finally, a funeral march in 3/2 meter resounds, in which a solo cello part stands out, recalling yet once more the leitmotif of the work. Małgorzata Gąsiorowska