Szymanowski as post-Wagnerian: The Love songs of Hafiz, Op. 24

The importance of the influence of Wagner, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on the art of Karol Szymanowski has long been appreciated. His cycle, The Love Songs of Hafiz, Op.24, is widely recognised as one of the most distinguished early products of this stimulus. This study combines detailed analysis of musical structure and language with a concern for cultural and historical issues. The introduction is in four parts. The first discusses Hans Bethge’s paraphrases of Hafiz and the role of ‘Orientalism’ in nineteenth-century art. The Bethge-Hafiz texts are found to be susceptible to dual interpretation - at once sensual and mystical. This leads to wider assessment, in the second section, of the Realist-Idealist debate in Polish and German thinking at the turn of the century, and in particular of the role of the ideas of Wagner, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in this dialogue. The third section addresses theories of influence and ‘intertextuality’; and the fourth prepares for the main analyses by explaining the relationship between musical structure and symbolic meaning. The central chapters discuss the six songs of Op.24 in turn. The analytical approach is deliberately eclectic, blending ideas drawn from Schenker, Schoenberg and Kurth with concepts derived from literary criticism. Each chapter focuses on a specific feature of musical language and relates this to aesthetic and philosophical issues. A Nietzschian sub-text to the cycle is proposed. The conclusion demonstrates how the musical language of Op.24 relates to aspects of Szymanowski’s later works, revealing the continuing significance of the Wagnerian legacy.