Young Poland in Music

This term is used to refer to a group of Polish composers that included Grzegorz Fitelberg, Ludomir Różycki, Karol Szymanowski and Apolinary Szeluta. ¹ In 1898 Artur Górski published a series of articles entitled ‘Young Poland’, which by principle rejected the ideals of positivism and a narrow understanding of patriotism, and postulated a renewal in literature. This renewal of art was to lead to the realisation of the long-unfulfilled aspirations of the Poles for freedom, the liberty of artistic, social and political expression. In 1901 Feliks Jasieński–Manggha called for a renewal in music, stating that ‘the artists must be, above all, themselves, and by being themselves, they will eo ipso be nationalist’. ² Traditional aesthetics, which imposed onto artists a duty of creating ‘nationalist art’, repressed the deepest source of creativity, lowered its quality and led to unenlightened aversion to true novelty. The new manifestos proclaimed that this state of affairs needed to change, for the very good of the nation.