On the trail of a trail, the trace of a trace. Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer’s Cień Chopina and its compositional interpretations
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Date
2010
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Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
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Abstract
At the beginning of this article, the author points out how quickly the
image of Chopin as an artist who wrestled all his life with a mortal sickness (Chopin as
a “singer of Weltschmerz”) took shape – an image which was subsequently taken up by
European art of the fin de siècle. Attention then turns to the poem Cień Chopina [Chopin’s
shadow], by the poet Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, highly fashionable during the
Young Poland period, which can be ascribed to the “Weltschmerz current”. In contrast
to earlier interpreters of this lyric, the author does not identify the lyrical subject of
Tetmajer’s poem with the shadow (that is, the soul) of the Polish composer, but –
referring to the observations of Barbara Sienkiewicz, who applied the Heideggerian
formula of the “trace of a trace” to her exegesis of Tetmajer’s works – maintains that
its hero is the shadow of Chopin’s shadow (or the shadow of his soul). Going on to
analyse four song settings of this poem composed during the period 1900–1926 by
Władysław Żeleński, Stanisław Lipski, Juliusz Wertheim and Ryta Gnus, and also the
composition Cień Chopina by Witold Friemann (1913-46), scored for piano, baritone
and orchestra, the author arrives at the conclusion that four composers – Żeleński,
Wertheim, Gnus and Friemann – interpreted Tetmajer’s lyric in a way that is not entirely
in keeping with the poet’s intentions. These composers, employing stereotypical
Chopin formulas (a quasi-folk drone or chords imitating bells) or allusions to specific
Chopin works, treated the lyrical subject of Tetmajer’s poem as identical to Chopin’s
soul. Only Stanisław Lipski, who in his song forged a “pastoral scene”, referring to
some extent to the most important features of the pastoral idiom elaborated by Beethoven
on the pages of his Sixth Symphony, interpreted the figure of the lyrical subject
of Tetmajer’s poem, listening to voices from the past, as a “double epiphenomenon” –
a shadow of Chopin’s shadow.
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Keywords
Chopin Fryderyk, Przerwa-Tetmajer Kazimierz, Żeleński Władysław, Lipski Stanisław, Wertheim Juliusz, Gnus Ryta, Friemann Witold, song, Young Poland music, national style and pastoral style in music
Citation
Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology 9, 2010, pp. 216-250.
ISBN
978-83-232-2148-7