Seasons of the Year by Noskowski as the educational material for young recipients. Artistic values

Abstract

Zygmunt Noskowski (1846-1909) is a little bit forgotten figure of Polish musical life. He was a composer, conductor, teacher and music publicist. the 170th anniversary of his birth was on 2nd May 2016. Not only due to this reason, his artistic output and versatile artistic activities deserve to be recalled and propagated. His composing output is very rich, diversified and contains several hundred works. He composed among others 3 symphonies, 24 scenic works such as ballet Święto Ognia (tran. The Feast of Fire), operas Livia Quintilla, Zemsta (trans. Revenge), many cameral, piano, choral works and vocal pieces with piano. Equally important are his orchestra works: Concert overture Morskie Oko (trans. Sea Eye) op. 19 (1875) or first Polish symphonic poem Step op. 66 (1896). In September 1888 he was appointed as the professor of Music Conservatory in Warsaw. Many of Noskowski’s students are renowned artists for Polish music culture, especially composers who established at the beginning of 20th century the group called “Młoda Polska” (young Poland): Grzegorz Fitelberg (1879-1953), Ludomir Różycki (1884-1953), Apolinary Szeluto (1884-1966) and Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937). Noskowski considered music education of children and the youth as very important field of music life. He presented his opinions about that many times on different public forums and in his numerous publications. He composed many works for children – both instrumental and vocal. An example of such works is The Songs Book for Children (orig. Śpiewnik dla dzieci) presented in this article performed vocally with piano for texts written by Maria Konopnicka. the Songs Book contains 50 songs which are arranged by Noskowski according to the seasons of the year: winter, spring, summer and autumn. Each of the season has its own sphere of sounds. Spring – imitation of bird singing also as a motif for song or playing, in winter the sounds are sharp imitated by jingles of bells or sound of walking on snow. Summer is the season which describes works on the field, harvesting the crops, singing of birds and unnoticeably becomes an autumn. Each of the season of the year was demonstrated by means of songs in which z. Noskowski used all poetic and artistic values of poems by Maria Konopnicka. Konopnicka in her poems gave the guidelines for acting and showed true beauty of Polish nature. All of these features of Konopnicka’s poems were used by Noskowski in his songs. He created a collection of songs diversified in terms of character, pace, expression, scale of voice and artistic impression accommodated to age and vocal capabilities of children from primary school. Noskowski created The Songs Book possessing rich artistic values which is also an example of valuable vocal lyrics.