Musicologica Olomucensia 31 – June 2020

Czechs in Poland in the 19th

and 20th Century and Their
Influence on the Development
of Polish National Music
Magdalena Dziadek

It is a well-known fact that a lot of Czech musicians worked in Poland in the

18th century and the first half of the 19th century. They were German-speaking
and typically took the positions of directors, orchestra musicians and teachers in
private or public institutions. They were held in high esteem on the professional
grounds. However, over the years their influence on the development of Polish
national music remained vague, which was to change only with the appearance
of two illustrious individuals: Jan Stefani and Wilem Würffel.
Jan Stefani, the musical director at the court of the last Polish king Stanislaw
August Poniatowski, later the director of the National Theatre in Warszawa is
considered to be the author of the first Polish national opera. It was staged in
1794 under the title Cud mniemany czyli Krakowiacy i górale [The Pretended
Miracle or Krakovians and Highlanders] and represented the so called idyllic op-
era, taking place in a rural setting. When it comes to its music style, it combined
the style of Mozart with the use of some elements taken from Polish national
music, such as the motifs typical of Polish national dances: mazur, polonaise
and krakowiak.
Wilem Würffel, the pupil of Václav Jan Tomášek, worked in Warszawa as
a piano teacher from 1815. He is the author of several polonaises published in
Warszawa, but the most important trace of his ties with Polish national music
is Grande fantaisie lugubre au souvenir des trois héros Prince Joseph Poniatowski,
Kościuszko, et Dąbrowski, composé et dediée à la nation polonaise (Warsaw, 1818).
The composition expemplifies a genre of fantasias flourishing in Poland at that
time; its characteristic feature was the use of narrative elements and quotations
to express Polish nationalism. Würffel illustrated, among others, the sounds of
the bells from the famous Polish churches and put a quotation taken from the
patriotic anthem Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (nowadays, it is the Polish national
anthem). One can also point out the similarity between Würffel’s polonaises,

37
 Magdalena Dziadek

belonging to the German polonaise tradition, and the early polonaises by his
most famous pupil Frederic Chopin (let me explain, at this point, that there are
some musicial features that act as an objective criterion according to which one
can decide if a polonaise belongs to the German tradition; one of them is the lack
of the so called Polish cadenza. As the Polish language, with very few exceptions,
has fixed stress on the penultimate syllable (last but one syllable), the formula
of Polish cadenza cadenza consists of two units, shorter and longer, included in
three parts of the last bar.
The reconstruction of the further history of the influence of Czechs on Polish
national music must take into consideration the fact that after the partitions
of Poland fundamental differences arose between the areas of the country re-
maining under the rule of the particular foreign powers: Russia, Austria and
Prussia. The Austrian part called Galicia was multicultural and inhabited by
many Czech citizens. Moreover, the neighbourhood of the Galician centers and
Prague enabled and fostered an unbroken cultural exchange between them. As
regards the Prussian part, the local elites and the Czech elites shared the same
political interest, namely the resistance against the supremacy of the Germanic
elements in politics and culture. By contrast, the Russian part with its two capi-
tals, Warszawa and Vilnius, was distant to Czech affairs in a double sense. First
of all, the distance was geopraphical. Second of all, the general attitude of Czechs
and Poles towards Russia was different. Because of their anti-Russian sentiment,
Poles did not support slavophilism, being an essential element involved in the
awaking of Czech national consciousness. Such a state of affairs can be perfectly
illustrated by the story of the Czech ethnographer Ludvík Kuba, who visited
famous Polish ethnographer Oskar Kolberg in the summer of 1886, on his way
to Russia. During the visit, Kuba participated in Kolberg’s conversation with
the owners of the house in which Kolberg rented an apartment. Kuba noted the
touchy tone of the conversation, which included many remarks on the Russian
despotism, manifested, among others, by the ideology of Pan-Slavism. The Czech
guest felt awkward, and he commented as follows: “Being a greenhorn and over-
whelmed by similar feelings towards Poles and Russians, I could hardly join the
conversation”1. Because discussing the Polish-Czech relations in the musical
life of all the three parts of Poland would be too extensive, I will limit myself to
reporting these relations on the example of Warszawa, a decision-making center,
acting as a mental and spiritual capital of the non-existent country.
The state of Polish-Czech relations in the middle decades of the 19th century
is well-reflected in the following relation of an anonymous Czech, who traveled
from St. Petersburg to Prague in the summer of 1859. His account was published
1
Ludvik Kuba, Cesty za slovanskou písní (Prague 1953), 90.

38
Czechs in Poland in the 19th and 20th Century and Their Influence on the Development of Polish National Music

in Pražské noviny: “Sbližování se Poláků k jiným slovanským plemenům je posud

malé, jest ale přece. Slyšel jsem tam např. deklamovat Malczewského ‘Marii’
v českem jazyku, i zpívati ‘Těšme se blahou nadějí’ v překladu polském, který já
však mám za originál. Škoda, že knihkupecké a vůbec obchodní spojení s Čechy
jest tak mizerné. [Poles are hardly close to other Slavic tribes, but I have heard,
for example, how Malczewski’s Maria was recited in Czech and Těšme se bla-
hou nadějí sung in the Polish translation, which I consider to be the original.
It’s a pity that collaboration with the Czechs, commercial and any other, is so
miserable here.]”2
I must add that Maria is the famous poem written in 1825 by Antoni
Malczewski, a poet belonging to the so-called ukrainian school of Polish poetry.
The subtitle of Maria is “A Ukrainian novel”, which is worth to remind against
the backdrop of the well-known Czech-Ukrainian sentiment flouorishing in the
19th century. However, we should ask whether the translation made by the above
Czech poetry admirer was based on the Polish original text or on its German
translation published as early as in 1845.
Anyway, the relation of the unknown author suggests that a small minority of
Czech intelectuals and artists lived in Warszawa at that time and that they orga-
nized some meetings with their Polish friends. Perhaps those meetings resembled
besedas. Yet the Polish press did not mention the event of the Czech Beseda in
Warszawa before the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
We also have another exciting testimony of Polish-Czech cultural discours
from about the same period as the relation of an anonymous artist. It is a a novel
titled Black Ribbon and published in 1852 by the well-known writer Włodzimierz
Wolski, who was the member of literary group “Warszawa Bohema” (nowadays,
Wolski is primarily recognized as the author of libretti to Moniuszko’s Halka
and Hrabina / The Countess). Black Ribbon is a roman à clef. Some real promi-
nent figures of Warszawa music life were showed in it – Stanisław Moniuszko,
a composer; Józef Sikorski, a prominent critic; Maria Kalergis, a host of a famous
music salon; and many other bigwigs. In his novel, Wolski quoted, of course in
a literary manner, a number of authentic discussions that took place in Warszawa
at that time. One of them concerned the project of Slavic opera. The author’s
footnote reveals that Wolski heard about the above project from a Czech settled
in Warszawa whose name was Wilczek (who may be identical to the pianist
and composer Felix Wilczek, actually living in the city at the time). The project
was typical of Czechs but very unusual of Poles. First of all, Wolski described
Slavic music according to the theory of national styles, assuming some standard
characteristics of German, French, Italian and Slavic music (in his taxonomy,
2
“Feuilleton. Z Petrohradu”, Pražske noviny, 28 August 1859, 200.

39
 Magdalena Dziadek

German music makes the listeners think, dream and miss; French music makes
the listeners float and think; Slavic music makes the listeners feel, dream and
miss; Italian music does not make the listeners think at all). Then, Wolski de-
picted Wilczek’s project of the Slavic opera. It concerned a 5-act work called
The False Tsar Dimitri whose action was to take place in three Slavic countries:
Russia, Poland and Ukraine (strictly speaking – in Kraków, Wiśniowiec, Moscow
and an unspecified place in Ukraine). The plot was devised as a pretext to apply
the elements of Russian, Ukrainian and Polish national music characteristic
of three social strata: noblemen, folk people and clergy. The nobility was to
be represented by Polish dances: mazur and polonaise, folk people – by songs
symbolizing three nationalities living in Poland (Polish krakowiak and oberek;
Ukrainian kolomyjka and dumka; and a Lithuanian song. Church matters were
to be illustrated by the introduction of some elements the liturgy of the Orthodox
and Catholic Church. Wolski’s project, focused on the creation of universal Slavic
music, was an isolated phenomenon, a document utterly uncharacteristic of the
Polish literature of the mid-nineteenth century. Taking into account the political
situation and atmosphere in Warszawa around 1850, it is surprising that Wolski
did not hesitate to include some bits of Russian musical tradition in his project;
it was even bolder of him to use the events form the history of Russia in the
plot. However, as I said, it can be explained by the fact that the primary author
of the project was of Czech origin.
One more thing is worth emphasizing here: the above documents concern-
ing Polish-Czech ralations in music are literary and not musical sources. It is
because in the 19th century the innovative aspects of Polish music culture were
shaped under the influence of literature; literary discourse, continued by critics,
was far ahead of musical practice. I have already explained that phenomenon on
the example of Polish reception of Wagner’s music in several scholarly papers
published in Poland, Great Britain and Ukraine. The principles governing the
Poland reception of the works by Smetana and Dvořák were roughly the same.
The first Polish critic interested in Smetana and his music was Jan Kleczyński,
active since the early 1870s. In the second half of 1874, he published the article
entitled “Sprzedana narzeczona” (Bartered bride3). It was the first Polish study
devoted to Smetana. One should ask, how Kleczyński, who had not been to
Prague and heard Smetana’s opera before, took the idea of writing such an arti-
cle? To answer such a question, one must tackle another critical issue: the issue
of circulation of ideas between Western and Central Europe. Shortly before the
publication of Kleczyński’s paper, a comprehensive article on Smetana appeared
in Leipzig in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. The magazine was available in
3
Jan Kleczyński, “Ruch muzyczny”, Bluszcz, no. 44 (1874): 350–351.

40
Czechs in Poland in the 19th and 20th Century and Their Influence on the Development of Polish National Music

Warszawa, like many other foreign magazines that were systematically studied
by Polish authors and used as guides in the matters of international musical life.
Thus, the development of local musical concepts was shaped by the reception
of musical ideas created in Western Europe. Paradoxically, this also applied to
the approaches towards the music of Slavic nations. Due to the authority of
Western critics, their opinions about Slavic music were considered as valid. The
intellectual mechanism, consisting in the use of German critical filter by Polish
musical critics to build the image of Czech music, can be perfectly illustrated by
the further history of the Polish reception of Smetana. Its first chapter belonged
to Kleczyński. Having become a consistent admirer not only of Smetana but also
Czech music in general, he wrote the first Polish composition based on Czech
(strictly speaking, Moravian) folk melody, entitled Shodovani se (Resignation).
Between 1880 and 1895 Kleczyński published his periodical Echo Muzyczne
i Teatralne. Several issues of that magazine concerned various facets of Czech
and Slavic music, including the publication of the piece based on Shodovani se.
The magazine also devoted a lot of space to the celebration of the opening of
the National Theatre in Prague in 1883; Kleczyński was present at the ceremony.
To reconstruct inflow of ideas on Czech music from the Wester Europe to
Polish critical thought, one should first mention the famous Viennese critic
Eduard Hanslick and his harsh views on Polish music after Chopin. In 1893,
Hanslick reviewed the monograph concert of Władysław Żeleński in Vienna and
formulated the following opinion: “Chopin was the last brilliant and significant
Polish composer. Moniuszko may have been gifted, but he never crossed his
country’s borders to win European acclaim. And there is only silence after him.
Czechs and Russians have recently gained a great advantage in music over Poles”4.
The above mentioned concert of Żeleński’s music was designed as rehabilitation
after the defeat suffered by Polish opera performances at the famous theater and
music exhibition held in Vienna in the early autumn of 1892.
For its participants, the exhibition was the occassion for discussing the cur-
rent state of national music cultures in the region and for setting some directions
for their future development. In practice, however, it was a platform for sharp
Slavic-German confrontation. As in the case of the Prague Slavic Congress of
1848, it revelad bitter conflicts of interests between the particular Slavic nations.
However, what was the source of the great success of Czech music, represented
by Bartered Bride, and what stood behind the flop of Moniuszko’s operas: Halka
and The Haunted Manor, which were performed during the exhibition? This was
the central question asked in Poland after the event. Interestingly enough, the op-
timistic mood had prevailed before. The oustanding Varsavian critic Aleksander
4
Eduard Hanslick, “Feullieton. Conzerte”, Neue Freie Presse, no. 10251 (1893): 2.

41
 Magdalena Dziadek

Poliński was its proponent, and he used a very characteristic argument, referring
to the positive reaction of Germans to Czech proposals:

Until the performances of the Czech theater, it was feared that the
melodies in Moniuszko’s operas have too much Slavonic otherness and
sentimentality to meet the taste of the Viennese audience. These fears
were quickly dispelled by the triumphs of the Czech theater […]. The
cordial reception of the Slavic national opera by the Germans seems to
bode well for our future performances5.

As a result, Poles were completely surprised by the negative attitude towards

their offer by the leading Viennese critics, Eduard Hanslick6 and Theodor Helm7.
Various explanations were provided, among others, poor level of Polish perfor-
mances and the aversion of the Germans resulting from nationalism. Some objec-
tive observers wrote that Moniuszko’s music was outdated and naïve, pointing
out its failure to comply with the canons of contemporary art8. The backwardness
of Polish musical culture was also used as a general argument. In this context,
the comparison with Czech culture appeared again. It was presented as strong,
vivid and rational, consistently striving to take its rightful place in the European
music culture. The unknown author wrote in the feminine magazine Bluszcz:

You need to know Czechs and their situation in order to understand

how and why it thrills them with joy whenever they are appearing and
gainining international recognition, whenever ones talk and write about
them. This feeling is more profound and more tender than mere vanity,
than the desire for applause. They also try to develop their strength in
the field of art to enable Czech art to exist, to occupy a place among the
nations and to earn the interest of Europe. That is why Czechs are so
busy with theater. They want originality; they want their own school for
their Divadlo9.

5
Aleksander Poliński, “Mozaika wiedeńska”, Tygodnik Ilustrowany, no. 142 (1892): 181.
6
See: Ed[uard] H[anslick], “Musik- und Theater-Ausstellung. Die polnische Oper in Austellungs-
Theater”, Neue Freie Presse, no. 10077 (1892): 5.
7
See: Helm Theodor, “Von der Internationalen Musik- und Theater Ausstellung (Schluss)”,
Musikalisches Wochenblatt, no. 46 (1892): 566.
8
See: [Bylicki Franciszek], Die Musik in Polen, […] Skizzen [von Franz Bylicki und Alfred
Szczepański] (Wien 1892). About thee choes of the Viennese exhibition in Poland see also:
Magdalena Dziadek, “Echa prasowe występów opery lwowskiej na Wystawie Muzyczno-Teatralnej
w Wiedniu w 1892 roku”, Musica Galiciana (2008), 39–48.
9
“Z Czech”, Bluszcz, no. 25 (1892).

42
Czechs in Poland in the 19th and 20th Century and Their Influence on the Development of Polish National Music

The author of the above text was probably the Czech writer Eduard Jelínek,
who cooperated with Warszawa journalistic environment at that time.
The matters related to the organization of musical life and to the state of
contemporary music culture became the leitmotif of the Polish discussion on
Czech music in the next decades. Critics very rarely compared Polish and Czech
music as such, and even these infrequent attempts were limited to persistent
comparison Bartered Bride and Halka, considered as flagship works of national
art of both countries. Władysław Bogusławski, a Varsovian critic, gave a fascinat-
ing remark on the issue. In 1896, he wrote that in his Bartered Bride Smetana
adopted a relatively new and original approach to a genre of comic opera, while
Halka was only the implementation of the well-known convention. This state-
ment, however, was unique. Usually, both works were simply placed side by side
as examples of Slavic operas.
Despite the favourable reception of Smetana’s opera in the late 19th century,
it proved challenging to stage Bartered Bride in Warszawa. One of the reasons
was the fact that Tchaikovsky’s operas entered the same stage at that time. Let’s
mention here, that one the greatest paradoxes concerning Warszawa musical life
at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was the great success of Tchaikowski’s
music. He quickly became the Varsovian’s favourite composer, and such a state
of affairs was to last until 1939. One even spoke about “czajkowskomania” of the
Varsovian audience. Tchaikovski’s works were received in Warszawa as examples
of both Russian music and international repertoire. Their great public success
was associated with their purely artistic features, so they did not sharpen the
appetite for other Slavic works.
The way of Czech operas to the Varsovian stage was long. As early as in 1873,
a year after Stanisław Moniuszko’s death, Smetana sent the score of Bartered
Bride to Sergey Muchanow, the president of the committee of governement
theaters in Warszawa, but he did not receive any answer. In fact, Bartered Bride
was premiered in Warszawa as late as in 1895 in an operetta theater called Teatr
Letni; Dalibor came on the stage of the Grand Theatre in 1902. The performance
of Bartered Bride was a reasonably great success thanks to the cooperation with
A. Berger, a choreographer from Prague, who composed a series of Czech dances,
presented during the spectacle. By contrast, Dalibor came off the poster quite
quickly. After the presentations, several popular publications appeared, containing
easy transcriptions of favourite fragments of both Smetana’s operas. Besides, the
libretto of Dalibor was printed. In those days also some small Dvořák’s works
were published in Warszawa, among them Valse op. 54 no. 1 and – of course –
Humoresque. Warszawa library collections inlcude also Dvořak’s small pieces
published in Germany. The entry of his serious works: symphonies and chamber

43
 Magdalena Dziadek

compositions entered the stage in Warszawa several years later, not only be-
cause of the lack of professional orchestral and chamber ensembles in the capital
of the Polish Kingdom but also due to the dislike of Czechs, rapidly growing
from the beginning of the 20th century and motivated by political controversies
(which arose mainly from the Czech support for the Ukrainians in the Austro-
Hungarian parliament).
The interest of Varsovians in Czech was greater rose a little in 1908 – the
year of the Neoslavonic Congress in Prague – and it was an evident result of the
then atmosphere of general interest in the “Slavic matter”. It was sparked , once
again, by the press publications. In 1908, a Czech publisher Miroslav Kropánek
entered with the article, encouraging Poles to become interested in Czech music,
in the opinion-making weekly Tygodnik Ilustrowany10. In the same year, Adolf
Nowaczyński published in the daily Nowa Gazeta article “Contemporary Czech
music”11, which contained an appeal to the organizers of Polish musical life to
perform more Czech flagship works. In response to these appeals, Grzegorz
Fitelberg – the artistic director of the Warszawa Symphony Orchestra who
worked at the Warszawa Philharmonic in 1909–1911 – organized in 1909 the
first monographic concert of Czech music, filled with works by Smetana, Dvořák
and Fibich. The next Czech concert in Warszawa took place in 1911, also under
the direction of Fitelberg. In the program, apart from Smetana and Dvořák,
Vítězslav Novák appeared. Young musicologist Adolf Chybiński wanted to es-
tablish closer contacts with the Czech musical environment in Prague. He made
some efforts to include the works of the leading Polish musicians: Szymanowski,
Opieński, Fitelberg and Różycki to the programs of Umělecká Beseda. However,
these efforts were unsuccessful12. The author, who was critical of his compatriots,
wrote that they “wasted” Chopin’s heritage. In opposition to this phenomenon,
he pointed to the way in which Russians and Czechs, among them Smetana,
drew from Chopin:

Solemn ceremonies were held in honor of the Master; celebrations were

arranged, his heart was brought to his homeland, but [Poles] did not want
to feel and create in consonance with that big heart. […] Chopin was
treated differently by our brothers, Czechs and Russians. The great creator
of Bartered Bride, an opera still played in Germany, who in our country
fell into shameful oblivion, belonged to the first Chopinists. Already
before 1860, he published piano works stylised in Chopin’s manner, and

10
Miroslav Kropánek, “Najnowsza muzyka czeska”, Tygodnik Ilustrowany, no. 36 (1908): 740.
11
Adolf Nowaczyński, “Dzisiejsza muzyka czeska”, Nowa Gazeta, no. 498 (1908): 500.
12
See the letter of Adolf Chybiński to Ludomir Różycki sent from Kraków 20 January 1911.
Published in: Res Facta (1982): 318.

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Czechs in Poland in the 19th and 20th Century and Their Influence on the Development of Polish National Music

he wanted to create Czech national polkas in the same way that Chopin
showed in his mazurkas, clearly stating that he was inspired by Chopin13.

In his later articles, published in the Slavonic World – the organ of Slavic
Club in Kraków, founding after the Neoslavic Congress in Prague in 1908,
Chybiński made several further comparisons between Polish, Russian and Czech
musical cultures, trying to demonstrate the advantage of neighboring countries
over Poland14. Here we can see that once again, that Polish discussion on Czech
music was limited to practical matters; the artistic questions remained virtually
untouched. This state of affairs was also characteristic of the interwar period.
After the end of the Czechoslovakian-Polish border conflict (1920), Poland
started striving for political and cultural rapprochement to Prague. This was
justified by the new situation of the country as a part of the constellation of the
newly created states of Central Europe. Some Polish politicians tried to impose
the vision of Poland as a new leading power in this region. Less popular, but also
present in the Polish politics of those years was the attempt to establish close
cooperation between the new states, inspired by economic matters and, at least
when it came to cultural life, Slavophilism.
This orientation remained, as previously, attractive primarely to the citizens of
Poznań – the former capital of the Prussian segment of the partitioned country.
Some important initiatives concerning the participation of Polish musicians in
musical events organized in Czechoslovakia have emerged from Poznań. These
were, for instance, festivals organized by the International Musical Society
or choir meetings. Apart from Poznań, Warszawa contributed to the Polish-
Czechoslovakian bilateral cultural cooperation. This was due to its new role as the
capital of the country. Between 1920 and 1937, many official events were organ-
ized there devoted to solemnize some important Czechoslovakian anniversaries
(I have reported about them in detail in my paper titled “The Czechoslovakian
Music in Poland in the Interwar Era”, published in Czech and Slovak Journal
of Humanities. Musicologica in 2017). Various festivals, concerts and opera per-
formances were held or staged by musical institutions with the help of gov-
ernmental organizations. The government supported also publications of some
materials about Czech music. For example, in 1933, Polish Ministry of Foreign
Affairs financed the publication of the first Polish monograph about Smetana,
written by Franciszek Brzeziński on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of
the death of the Czech composer. Also, many private people were engaged in
creating Polish-Czech cultural exchange. There were among them Czech singer
13
Adolf Chybiński, “Chopin – Moniuszko i ich stanowisko w muzyce polskiej”, Sfinks, vol. 3 (1908):
472–3.
14
Eg. Adolf Chybiński, “Muzyka polska wśród słowiańskiej”, Świat Słowiański, no. 38 (1908).

45
 Magdalena Dziadek

and director Józef Munclinger, who cooperated in several initiatives connected

with presentation Czech operas in Warszawa, Lwow and Poznań, as well as
Pole Marian Szyjkowski, who was appointed as the first head of the Institute of
Polish Philology at the Charles University in Prague, established in 1923 and
starting from that time was busy organizing Polish-Czechoslovakian exchange
in literary, theatrical and musical life.
In spite of their great efforts, institutions and private individuals failed to
make Czech music a permanent part of musical life in Poland. Its dissemination
has remained, at best, partial. Moreover, it proved hard for new Czechoslovakian
music to gain wider acceptance in local concert halls. The reason was the same as
before the Great War – Czech composers were simply losing competition with
the prominent Russians, whose works not only often resounded on Polish stages
but also inspired multiple Polish composers. Especially Stravinsky and Prokofiev
took the position of the chief patrons of Polish neoclassicism, the current prevail-
ing among the Polish composers of the era.
The only case of increased interest in newer Czech music concerned Leoš
Janáček, or, more precisely, his opera Jenůfa, which was staged in the 1920s in
Warszawa, Lviv and Poznań. However, in this case, inspiration also came from
Western Europe. The performance of Janáček’s opera in Poland should be associ-
ated with the influence of the personal legend about the composer, which was
created in Germany by, among others, Max Brod – the discoverer and admirer
of the Janáček15. Some Polish recipients of Janáček’s music must have been in-
terested also in his other works. In the National Library in Warszawa, I have
found a copy of his piano collection “In Nebel”, printed in Prague by Umělecká
Beseda in 1924.
As I showed in my other paper, devoted to Polish reception of Janáček’s mu-
sic16, the ways of rendering Janáček’s music in the context of modern folklorism
were borrowed – as usual – from the Western, mostly German, critical works.
The report about the influence of Czech music on Polish should be supple-
mented with a piece of information about modern Polish compositions based
on Czech themes. The most notable examples here are the works created in the
early 1940s by Jan Maklakiewicz, one of the disciples of Karol Szymanowski. In
1947, Polish Music Publishing House edited his Uwertura “Praska” [Prague over-
ture] for orchestra and a cycle of songs for voice and piano to the Czech text by
Ladislav Stehlík entitled “Madoně” (parts: Krumlovská, Lnářská, Zlatokorunská).
In 1947, Maklakiewicz composed (but never published) also three songs to the
15
About Max Brod as Janáček’s admirer see: Michał Jaczyński, “Max Brod as Music Critic”,
Musicologica Olomucensia, no. 23 (2016): 81–100.
16
Dziadek Magdalena, “The Reception of Leoš Janáček’s Output in Poland in the 19th and 20th
Centuries (until 1956)”, Czech and Slovak Journal of Humanities. Musicologica, no. 2 (2015): 11–19.

46
Czechs in Poland in the 19th and 20th Century and Their Influence on the Development of Polish National Music

words of A. Trýba’s poem entitled Loňské listí, not published. Unfortunately, these
compositions have not attracted Polish musicologists’ attention so far.
The Czech thread occured also – in a legendary form and with the addition
of the propaganda content typical of the early 1950s – in the ballet Rapsod cre-
ated by the most prominent Polish composer of the stalinist era Piotr Perkowski.
The premiere of Rapsod took place at the Silesian Opera in Bytom in 1950.
Stefan Otwinowski, the author of the script of this piece, summarized its course:
“Fabulous poetic legends reveal the truth about the emergence of societies. Lech,
Czech and Rus – three brothers – lead their ranks. They pay tribute to the earth.
Work begins. Friendship, order and joy are born from this work. Ill advice comes
from strangers. The ferment begins in a solidary group. The exploiter class col-
ludes and breaks Slavic unity.”17 The ballet also personifies capitalism, as hostile
to the Slavs.
The next (and the newest) Polish composition drawing on Czech music,
which I am able to indicate is the duet Setkání s plamenem mistra Jana Husa. It
was written in 2006 by Ryszard Gabryś, a Silesian composer who originates from
Cieszyn, the city located on the Polish-Czech border. In this case, the inspiration
was connected with the Protestant confession of the author and with his purpose
to propagate the cultural traditions of his own region. The composition was writ-
ten in collaboration with two avanguard singers from Bratislava Petr Matuszek
and Markéta Dvořáková and premiered it in Katowice in the same year 2006.

Czechs in Poland in the 19th and 20th Century

and Their Influence on the Development
of Polish Na onal Music
Abstract
The contribution of Czech composers to the development of the Polish national
music begins in the era of the activity of Jan Stefani, the composer of musical
set to Cracovians and Highlanders by Wojciech Bogusławski, considered the first
Polish national opera. Further on are the achievements of Wilem Würffel as the
creator of polonaises and fantasies based on Polish national melodies. Although
after the anti-Russian uprising (1831), many Czech musicians still worked in
Poland as music teachers, members of orchestras or choir directors, their par-
ticipation in shaping the formation of Polish national music was rather niche. It
was influenced by political reality, which was not favorable to the development

17
Quoted after: Mieczysław Drobner, Opera i balet. W: Kultura muzyczna Polski Ludowej, ed. Józef
Michał Chomiński, Zofia Lissa (Kraków 1957), 78.

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 Magdalena Dziadek

of Polish-Czech contacts, especially in the part of the country under Russian

rule (here Czechs were seen as Russophiles). The impulse that increased inter-
est in Czech music in Poland in the last decades of the 19th century was the
awareness of its high position in Europe. The successes of Smetana and Dvořák’s
works discussed in foreign music press, prompted several Polish music activists to
attempts to introduce them to national stages. However, it was only the begin-
ning of the twientieth century when Czech national music was properly assessed
by Polish composers. And here political factors played also a role – the “Czech
Renaissance” in Polish musical thought was largely inspired by the events of the
Prague Neo-Slav rally of 1908.

Češi v Polsku v 19. a 20. stole a jejich vliv

na vývoj polské národní hudby
Abstrakt
Vliv českých skladatelů na rozvoj polské národní hudby začíná v době činnosti
Jana Stefaniho, tvůrce Krakowiacy i Górale podle Wojciecha Bogusławského, po-
važovaného za první polskou národní operu. Dále jde o práce Wilema Würffela
jako autora polonéz a fantazií založených na polských národních melodiích.
Ačkoli po protiruském povstání (1831) v Polsku stále pracovalo mnoho českých
hudebníků, a to v pozici učitelů hudby, členů orchestrů nebo sbormistrů, jejich
účast na utváření polské národní hudby byla spíše malá. Tato skutečnost byla dána
politickou realitou, která rozvoji polsko-českých vztahů nikterak nenahrávala,
zejména v části země pod ruskou vládou (zde byli Češi považováni za rusofily).
Impulsem, který zvýšil zájem o českou hudbu v Polsku v posledních desetile-
tích 19. století, bylo vědomí jejího vysokého postavení v kontextu celé Evropy.
Úspěchy Smetanovy a Dvořákovy tvorby diskutované v zahraničním hudebním
tisku přiměly několik polských hudebních aktivistů, aby se je pokusili představit
na národních pódiích. K plnému uznání české národní hudby však došlo až
na začátku 20. století. Politické faktory zde hrály rovněž důležitou roli – české
národní obrození bylo polskými skladateli reflektováno zejména prizmatem udá-
lostí pražského neoslovanského sjezdu z roku 1908.

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Czechs in Poland in the 19th and 20th Century and Their Influence on the Development of Polish National Music

Keywords
Polish-Czech cultural contacts; the reception od Smetana and Dvořák in Poland;
national music; Central-European music culture of the 19th and 20th centuries

Klíčová slova
česko-polské kulturní kontaky; recepce Smetany a Dvořáka v Polsku; národní
hudba; středoevropská hudba v 19. a 20. století

Magdalena Dziadek
Instytut Muzykologii Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
[email protected]

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