Author Description

After many years of neglect, the music of Karol Szymanowski is now achieving wider recognition outside his native Poland. This is the first study of his music in English and in the course of preparing it the author has examined all the music, including unpublished and incomplete works. He has also worked on the sketches in the composers' archive of the University of Warsaw. Although his main concern is with the development of Szymanowski's musical language itself, the author traces this development against a background of radical change in the political life of Poland and in the composer's personal circumstances, offering in the process a personal interpretation of the major turning-points in Szymanowski's life and work.