Brzezina for soprano and string quintet to words by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1951)
The text of the song comes from Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s story Brzezina, written in Zakopane in 1932, when the author was staying at Karol Szymanowski’s Atma villa. At that time Iwaszkiewicz was fascinated with the choral Kurpie Songs and – as he wrote in Spotkania z Szymanowskim [Encounters with Szymanowski] (PWM, Kraków 1947, p. 123) – he created a poetic adaptation of the lyrics of a folk song (most likely “A chtóz tam puka” [Who’s knocking there]). Zygmunt Mycielski, while staying at the Iwaszkiewiczs’ at Stawisko in 1951, became interested in a song sung by Malina – one of the protagonists of Brzezina.
As we read on page one of the score:
Andantino should be treated freely. Note values can be accelerated or slowed down, like in countryside/village singing, provided they are strictly harmonised with the piano. Diction must be very clear, in the foreground. The whole like wailing, peasant lamentation, but not tearful, not too espressivo. The first stanza is a scream. The second more mysterious. Slow down on the words ‘on which they must tread’. The third one lento. But not exaggerated in expression (on the basis of the manuscript seen in Wiśniowa, 17 October 2019, cf. photograph).
The structure of the text determined the form of the song. Each stanza is repeated (with some melodic changes) and then comes an “addendum”, a kind of instrumental commentary leading gradually into a lower and lower register and dynamic level. Brzezina is a peasant lament, as it were, an intimate stylisation “in the folk spirit”, moving from screaming to muted resignation.