Four Songs op. 41 to Rabindranath Tagore’s poems in musicological reflection: aspects of exploring Karol Szymanowski’s Oriental visions
Authors: Mamona Anhelina 
Published: March 2024

Statement of the problem. Karol Szymanowski’s vocal works have repeatedly drawn the attention of researchers particularly from the perspective of embodying an oriental colour. In the majority of such studies one of the composer’s cycles, which should clearly be included in the group of his oriental works, is interestingly omitted. Four Songs op. 41 to the poems by Rabindranath Tagore seem to fall out of the context of the composer’s work, since they lack the traditional complex of musical idioms associated with Eastern exoticism, which was typical for K. Szymanovsky in the 1910s and early 1920s, as well as for the Western European tradition of that time in general. However, this cycle, as argued in this article, is an example of Orientalism, although unusual. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to reflect on this cycle from the perspective of the composer’s creative search and testing of alternative to European musical Orientalism artistic solutions. To achieve this objective, the following research methods were chosen: source-critical, comparative-historiographical, genre and stylistic, and semantic. In the musicological works dedicated to Szymanowski’s vocal music and oriental aspect of it the Four Songs to Tagore’s texts are often neglected or characterised as those that lack of significant artistic value. The cycle is usually not considered as a part of composer’s oriental “visions”, which determines the original contribution of the proposed article to researching K. Szymanovski’s work. Results and conclusion. Answering the question whether Szymanowski’s Four songs op. 41 are an extra cycle or a technical exercise, we note that both answers may be correct, but with the negative connotation being excluded. In a group of oriental works, this cycle can really seem odd due to the lack of exoticism in its sound. In a certain sense, the writing of this cycle can be understood as a technical exercise, being perceived as K. Szymanowskis attempt to master the potential of Orientalism beyond exoticism. The composer probably did not set himself the goal of completely moving away from the very idea of Orientalism in the music of the cycle, but he clearly avoided the use of stereotyped signifiers of musical exotics. Apparently, Tagore’s poetry prompted him to try to embody its images on a more personal expressive level. The result of the “technical exercise” was the realisation of the possibility of creating an artistic vision of oriental imagery beyond the clich&#233;s of musical exoticism practiced in European art. However, as it can be seen from K. Szymanowski’s subsequent works, this approach, caused by the peculiarities of the poetic source, did not become the leading one in the composer’s work. Four songs op. 41 to the texts by R. Tagore arose at the intersection of two creative interests of the composer: the world of the East and modern musical language. And in this case, the creative decision of the artist was to level in the cycle of signs of musical Orientalism; instead, K. Szymanovsky focuses attention on the deeper, psychological side of R. Tagore’s poems.