In People’s Poland
Biography

In People’s Poland

When Zygmunt Mycielski returned to Poland on 5 November 1945, his first action was to contact his composer colleagues.

He had known many of them since before the war. Now, the predominant feeling among the many whirling within him was joy. He was coming back to his own people. Initially, he moved in with his mother in Kraków, but after a while he moved to Warsaw. Soon he became actively involved in various spheres of cultural life. As early as in 1945 he became a member of the Publishing Council of Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne - PWM Edition. In 1946 he joined the Polish Composers’ Union and the editorial team of Ruch Muzyczny, a journal on the pages of which he had appeared already in December 1945. His pieces were also published in other journals and newspapers, like Przekrój, Nowiny Literackie, Dziennik Polski, Tygodnik Powszechny, Odrodzenie and even the very leftish Kuźnica. In his writings Mycielski tackled mainly musical themes, although sometimes he would refer to urgent problems of public life as well. He wanted to be actively involved in the shaping of Poland’s musical life. In order to achieve that goal, he did not shy away from talking to both his fellow musicians and the authorities. Both appreciated his balanced views and a desire to seek a consensus for the common cause, that is the quality of Polish culture. 

Press joke on the pages of Odrodzenie, 1947
The first post-war years were also a time of strengthening various ties of friendship.

With Stefan Kisielewski Mycielski co-created Ruch Muzyczny, often arguing with him about the role and significance of music. In his Abecadło Kisielewski recalled:

Our discussions were long, because our musical views were completely different. I believed that music did not express feelings or images, but was an abstraction. That view made him very angry. He felt otherwise. We discussed a lot, we wrote a lot about each other (S. Kisielewski, "Abecadło Kisiela", Warsaw 1990).

At that time Mycielski also became friends with Andrzej Panufnik, with whom he remained close until the end of his life. With Roman Palester, who in 1947 left for Paris with his wife, Mycielski remained in contact via letters. He urged him to return to Poland. He believed that the place of Polish artists was in their homeland. This belief was by no means unique. Tadeusz Ochlewski, director of the Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne publishing house, wrote to Palester in a similar vein. Writing in late 1955 to Mycielski and referring to Panufnik’s and Miłosz’s emigration, Paweł Hertz said:

[...] I cannot praise Andrzej or Czesław, because that’s too easy, too comfortable. I’m sorry, but please toil together with all the others” (December 1955, Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw).

As a matter of fact, in that period Hertz became one of Mycielski’s closest friends. The two men understood each other perfectly, also in this respect. And in 1955 Mycielski would compose one of his most important works – the cantata Nowy lirnik mazowiecki – to his friend’s words. 

Zygmunt Mycielski was also active in the Polish Composers’ Union.
Photo from the Composers' Congress in Łagów Lubuski, photo by Jerzy Młodziejowski, Ruch Muzyczny 1949 No. 14

From the very beginning he collaborated closely with Piotr Perkowski, who in 1945 became the organisation’s president and whom Mycielski knew from Paris. In 1947 Mycielski became deputy president and secretary of the Union’s Board. In November 1948 he was elected the president of the PCU. He served in this position for nearly two years, until spring 1950. This was a key period for the Polish Composers’ Union. The cultural policy of the communist government was moving increasingly towards socialist realism. Eventually, in August 1949, during the National Congress of Composers and Music Critics organised by the Ministry of Culture and Art in Łagów Lubuski (5–8 August 1949), socialist realism was proclaimed the binding aesthetic doctrine in music. 

As the incumbent president of the Polish Composers’ Union Mycielski opened the congress. He thought for a long time about what to say in order to leave some room in the increasingly oppressive reality for the defence of true composing. However, the tone of the Łagów meeting dispelled all the illusions as to the government’s further policy towards composers. Mycielski saw that such a line was no longer defensible. A few months later, in March 1950, he submitted his resignation to the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party. And although he still agreed to become member of the Union’s Board one year later, in 1951, when Witold Rudziński was dismissed as president following the resignation of Grażyna Bacewicz, Andrzej Panufnik and Jan Maklakiewicz, in the following years he would remain on the sidelines in the Union’s main activities. After 1954 he was no longer member of the Main Board – until 1985 – but remained member of either the Admissions Committee or the Peer Tribunal. However, he never ceased to work for the composers community, supporting it always with his pen and his authority. 

The late 1940s and the early 1950s were one of the busiest periods in Zygmunt Mycielski’s life.
"Business card" by Zygmunt Mycielski in Ruch Muzyczny 1948 No. 2

He composed a lot at the time, despite having many community obligations and working as a journalist. The works written at the time include such significant pieces as Silesian Overture for orchestra and two pianos (1948) as well as Mycielski’s first symphony – Polish Symphony (1951). Both works were performed to considerable acclaim. Silesian Overture was also performed in Czechoslovakia: on 9 March 1951 Witold Rowicki conducted it during a subscription concert at the Czech Philharmonic in Prague. In addition, the catalogue of his works from that period includes the song cycle Ocalenie to words by Czesław Miłosz (1946–48), an artistic settling of accounts with wartime traumas. There are also Symphonic Sketches (1945) written in Paris as well as the orchestral Lamento di Tristano, begun in 1937 and completed to mark the tenth anniversary of Karol Szymanowski’s death (1947). 

Polish Symphony premiere, poster

There is the moving Brzezina (1951) and the ballet Zabawa w Lipinach (1952), full of folk vigour, both to words by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. There are works to words by Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński – Portret Muzy for reciter, choir and instrumental ensemble (1947) and Kwiaty na tor for a cappella choir (1949). The catalogue is completed by Freedom to words by Alexander Pushkin (1949) and Five Mazovian Songs for choir and orchestra (1952). Some of these works are still being regarded as products of the directives of socialist realism, but a closer look at these compositions reveals an approach of the composer that is far from obvious. The year 1954 was also the year of the charming Preludes for piano and Piano Concerto, which the composer had been contemplating for several years. The year 1955 brought one of Mycielski’s most important works, Nowy lirnik mazowiecki to words by Paweł Hertz. If we add to this several miniatures for violin and piano as well as music written for film, radio and theatre, we get a picture testifying to the composer’s huge creative potential. Mycielski clearly was able to find time for all activities important to him, achieving considerable success in each field. 

However, he saw increasingly clearly that Poland’s cultural policy was going in a wrong direction.

He bemoaned especially the country’s growing cultural isolation since 1949. Although he continued to take active part in actions associated with the musical life in Poland, although he received awards and decorations, and in 1952 visited China as a member of an official delegation, he also summed up his own activity in that period with the following words:

I had some illusions that there might emerge here some functional art, better or worse, but with some more common reach. In fact, however, it’s another lie, no one really cares about such art. Mediocrity cannot allow any achievement. Art is created by unique individuals for a chosen group of those who need it, because they live for it, and only then can it spread a little further. Turning this upside down only destroys art, by destroying its very source (Z. Mycielski, "Dziennik 1950–1959", Warsaw 1999). 

© 2024 Związek Kompozytorów Polskich. Wszelkie prawa zastrzeżone
Site by: Rytm.Digital