Eight Songs for baritone and piano to words by Zbigniew Herbert (1984)

Vocal-instrumental and vocal works

I. Naucz mnie rzeko uporu i trwania [Teach me, river, stubbornness and persistence]

Performers: Jarosław Bręk – baritone, Katarzyna Jankowska – piano, 2005

V. Zabrali mego brata [They took my brother]

Performers: Jarosław Bręk – baritone, Katarzyna Jankowska – piano, 2005

VIII. Idę nad morze [I go to the seashore]

Performers: Jarosław Bręk – baritone, Katarzyna Jankowska – piano, 2005

dedication: –

duration: ca 15’

manuscript: Zygmunt Mycielski Archive, Manuscript Department, National Library, no. IV 14184 akc. 020575

premiere: Warsaw, 28 November 1985, Ryszard Cieśla – baritone, Beata Swanidze – piano

I. Naucz mnie rzeko uporu i trwania [Teach me, river, stubbornness and persistence]
II. Tyle lat układałem mowę ostateczną [For so many years I was composing the final speech]
III. W samym sercu skarbca [In the very heart of the treasury]
IV. I może tylko ja jeden słyszę [Perhaps I’m the only one to still hear]
V. Zabrali mego brata [They took my brother]
VI. Po deszczu gwiazd [After a shower of stars]
VII. Chciałbym opisać światło [I would like to describe the light]
VIII. Idę nad morze [I go to the seashore]

Eight Songs for baritone and piano to words by Zbigniew Herbert, title page, manuscript, Zygmunt Mycielski Archive, National Library

Zbigniew Herbert’s poetry stimulated Zygmunt Mycielski’s creative imagination so strongly that after the orchestral songs, in which the composer merely exploited the mood of the poems, he decided to write a cycle of pieces for voice with piano accompaniment. When in Paris Mycielski’s received Herbert’s collection Report from a Besieged City, published by Kultura, he immediately started reading it:

At night [...] I read the Report from a Besieged City – Herbert’s poems. Strangely UNPOETIC [...] I select texts for songs – (Six Songs for Orchestra are also from Herbert’s poems!). [...] Perhaps I’ll manage to compose them in Ojai? (Zygmunt Mycielski, Niby-dziennik ostatni 1980–1987, Iskry, Warsaw 2012, p. 451).

Mycielski also mentioned that he was greatly moved, that there were tears in his eyes as he was reading “Mr Cogito – notes from a dead house” and, finally, that he wanted to set to music selected fragments of the poems as quickly as possible.

Eight Songs for baritone and piano to words by Zbigniew Herbert, texts, manuscript. Zygmunt Mycielski Archive, National Library

Eight Songs for baritone and piano to words by Zbigniew Herbert, song no. 4, manuscript. Zygmunt Mycielski Archive, National Library

At that time Paris was part of the itinerary of his journey to the United States, where he set about composing the new cycle at Mrs Porter’s Californian estate. He reached Ojai in late May and under 23 June 1984 wrote in his diary that he was working on the seventh song (the last one, as he noted in the score, was finished on 2 July 1984). Initially, he intended to give the cycle the title Last Songs, but in the end he called it Eight Songs for baritone and piano to words by Zbigniew Herbert.

Mycielski made substantial changes to his friend’s poems, choosing just isolated, non-successive verses from some of them. In a way, he became a co-author of the final, extraordinarily moving version of the poetic texts set to music, texts that came from both Report from a Besieged City and from the cycle that prompted him to write Six Songs for Orchestra in 1978 (Hermes, Dog and Star).

The composer gave the lyrics prepared in such a way an extremely austere sound layer. The melodic line, very economical in terms of the means used and close to melodeclamation, does not blur the clarity of the words but brings out the emotions carried by Herbert’s poems. Its structure, based on the pre-composition rows of the composer’s table system, features both basis intervallic steps and leaps – the latter introduced in places of special significance. Mycielski entrusts an extremely important task in the cycle to the piano part, which is not reduced to the function of accompaniment, but co-creates the expression of the various songs and is sometimes highlighted more strongly than the solo voice.