Gorzka zatoka [Bitter Bay] for soprano and piano to words by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (1932)

Vocal-instrumental and vocal works

dedication: –

duration: ca 2’

manuscript: Zygmunt Mycielski Archive, Manuscript Department, National Library, no. IV 14313 akc. 020704 (and IV 14153 akc 020544 version transposed for alto and piano)

premiere: [a list of compositions made in October 1946 features a note by Mycielski: performed Paris, France, Belgium, Poland; these may have been Maria Modrakowska’s vocal recitals; the song Bitter Bay combined with Where Are You?! may have been performed as Two Melodies/Deux Mélodies in Paris, 17 November 1933, Maria Modrakowska – soprano, Léon Kartun – piano]

Gorzka zatoka was written in July 1932 to words by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (a poem with the same title was published in Kraków in the collection Wachlarz [Fan]).

Gorzka zatoka, manuscript. Zygmunt Mycielski Archive, National Library

It is a small composition often combined by Mycielski with a song he wrote to his own words in the same period, Gdzieżeście?!. The two pieces were performed as Two Songs / Two Melodies in November 1933 in Paris by Maria Modrakowska, accompanied on the piano by Léon Kartun.

Gorzka zatoka, manuscript. Zygmunt Mycielski Archive, National Library

A tonally free, broad-breathed melodic line of an apostrophe addressed to an idealised figure of a sailor develops – supported by an evenly paced accompaniment – from a barely outlined B flat minor centre towards other, barely indicated sound centres. Each phrase is illuminated differently from the tonal and harmonic perspective. The second part of the song, matching its beginning material-wise, is a calm confession of the lyrical subject and oscillates between the keys of B minor and B major, only to close the piece with a tonal finale in B flat minor. It is difficult not to have the impression that Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska’s reference to the figure of the mermaid evoked a distant, melic at most, reminiscence of mermaid singing from Claude Debussy’s orchestral triptych Nocturnes.