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Polish Music Center |
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Szymon Laks was born on 1 November, 1901 in Warsaw and died in 1983 in Paris, France. This violinist, conductor and composer studied mathematics for two years at Vilnius University before entering the Warsaw Conservatory, where he became a student of Roman Statkowski, Henryk Melcer, and Piotr Rytel (1921-24). In 1926 he went to Paris to study with Pierre Vidal (composition) and Henry Rabaud at the Paris Conservatory. Arrested by the Germans in 1941, he spent three years in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. He lived through the inhumanity of the Nazi concentration camps to tell his story in a poignant and witty book of memoirs, La musique d'un autre monde (published in 1948 in Paris; the book is now available in English translation from Northeastern University Press, 1989). Music, one might say, literally saved Laks's live: as a member of the camp orchestra (violinist, conductor, and arranger) he was spared the daily ordeal of physical labor that killed so many around him. At the same time, Laks was a witness of the Holocaust and experienced first-hand the irrelevance of art amidst the total destruction of all human values such as occurred in those camps. The destruction affected his music: a large quantity of his manuscripts was lost during the war. In 1945 he returned to Paris, promoting music in Polish emigré circles. Laks's compositions may be described as neo-classical; he left several string quartets, symphonic suites, as well as many chamber works and songs. The Divertimento presented in our Exibition is a typical example from this part of Laks's output. (This work was donated by composer Krzysztof Meyer).
Deeply moving lyrical songs constitute a particularly interesting part of Laks's music. Some songs are based on Jewish folklore (Jewish songs); others include settings of texts by Polish-Jewish poets, such as Julian Tuwim, or Mieczys³aw Jastrun. Many of Laks's texts deal with the trauma of war, suffering and loss, e.g. the disappearance of a way of life bemoaned in the Elegy of Jewish Villages, or the tragedy of the Holocaust reflected upon in the Funeral. A large donation of original manuscripts (scores and parts) of 11 compositions by Szymon Laks made by André Laks, his son, is an extremely valuable addition to the PMC Manuscript Collection. The list of works includes instrumental music: Chants de la terre de Pologne. Grande fantaisie folklorique pour orchestre (score and parts); Concertino pour Trio d'Anches (score and parts), Third String Quartet (score), Fourth String Quartet (parts),and Concerto da camera (score and parts). Another part of the collection consists of song manuscripts: Elegia ¿ydowskich miasteczek [Elegy of Jewish villages] to a text by Antoni S³onimski (published by PWM); Ma y wi zie [Little Prisoner], published as no. 1 in Trois poèmes chanteés; Trois chants de Tuwim, published as no. 1-3 in Five Songs to Poems by Tuwim; Erratum, no. 4 in the same set; and Wszystko [All], no. 5 in the same set. Besides the music manuscripts the collection includes a number of original letters written to and from the PWM Publishers, and several important composers and musical personalities: Nadia Boulanger, Alexander Tansman, Zygmunt Mycielski, Józef Czapski, Antoni S³onimski, Krzysztof Meyer, Piotr Perkowski, Igor Markevich, Katarzyna Zachwatowicz, and others. Mr. André Laks's donation includes also a number of published scores and books by his father. "The Five Songs to Tuwim's Poems draw texts from the poetry of Julian Tuwim (1894-1953), one of Poland's most important 20th century poets. The poems of this cycle are addressed to God and comment on the spiritual value and meaning of life. The introductory Prayer continues the Biblical tradition of arguing and fighting with God, whose presence however, gives the narrator the only source of Happiness (in the second song). The bliss of closeness to the Creator is further relished in The Covenant - recalling the peace of Noah, with a dove bringing an olive twig to the faithful who are gathered under the rainbow, in a new House of God and Gods' people. The humorous Erratum describes a spiritual failing as a mistake on the narrator's C.V. where "one reads ‘despair' but it should be ‘love.'" This grievous error should be corrected and the final song of the cycle points out the perfect way of doing this, i.e. offering one's whole life (Everything) in a complete devotion to God. The spiritual reflections and gentle humor of Tuwim's melancholy poems find an appropriate setting in Laks's music, with its poignant dissonances, complex harmonic progressions, expressive melodic lines, and through-composed forms". [Program, Polish/Jewish/Music! International Conference, USC, 1998]"In superimposing a text in a foreign language on the existing melodic line terrible difficulties arise. It seems to me that both translations did almost no harm to the original, I attended to this as well as I possibly could". [Laks, letter to Antoni S³onimski, author of the text for Elegy of Jewish Villages, 23 September 1962]
"I am delighted to notice that PWM Editors do not accept without criticism the musical-textual units provided by the composers and I am greatly impressed by this carefulness. However, in the case of the Elegy, I have to boast that not a single syllable, not a single accent were missed by me in the setting and both texts were arranged with my very active, one could almost say, merciless participation. A proof of that is provided by rhythmical variants of the vocal parts which were introduced in places where it could not be done otherwise". [Laks, letter to PWM Edition, about the publication of Elegy of Jewish Villages, 29 October 1962]
MANUSCRIPTS AT USC
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