Composer

Notes:
Fauré
Poulenc
Szymanowski

Synopsis
Fauré
Poulenc
Szymanowski

Text:
Fauré
Poulenc
Szymanowski

Szymanowski's 3rd Symphony

Szymanowski's early training and output to around 1910, was based on German styles, Wagner and particularly Richard Strauss. During the war years he was closer to the hyper-romanticism of Skryabin and the French Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel. From 1920 he composed Polish nationalistic works which owed much to Bartók and Stravinsky.

The third symphony, written during the 1914-1918 war, draws for subject-matter from the Austro-German tradition of mystic transcendentalism, but owes most harmonically to Debussy and Ravel.

For the text of the third symphony Szymanowski turned to the thirteenth century writings of the Persian mystic and Sufi, Rumi. The aspirations of Sufis were towards an identification of God and man through contemplation and abstemiousness: a kind of pantheism, and consonant with much nineteenth-century thought.

The structure throughout the symphony consists of repetition of segments in differing order. At the outset the harmonies are characteristically dense. The opening is a tableau of soaring violin enclosed in whole tone chords. The mystical beauty of the night is expressed by a high violin song hovering over constantly changing coloured backcloths. Yet this mood is contrasted with the on-going climax-building especially from the choir.

While the first part of the symphony is really a single song, the middle part is a glorification of the dance: tableaux with stylizations of oriental music. In the final part the soloist whips the music into a frenzied climax.

Like climaxes in the first and last part, and the C Major of the opening and closing chords, point to an overall arch structure.