New item for Kaper Collection
An unexpected and truly treasured gift came to us from our dear friend, Andrew Justice, Head of the Music Library at the Thornton School of Music. It is a rare LP featuring a large selection of Bronisław Kaper’s most famous film and song compositions, including Mutiny on the Bounty, Lili, The Glass Slipper, Butterfield 8, Auntie Mame, The Chocolate Soldier, Invitation, The Brothers Karamazov, Green Dolphin Street, The Swan, Lord Jim, and San Francisco.
Not only does this DELOS DEL/F25421 Stereo LP release feature the composer—a classically trained pianist and Warsaw Conservatory alum—performing his own music, but the front cover of this album also includes handwritten dedication by Kaper to two of his friends: “To Anne and Kirk with Love, Broni. Play once a day before retiring. Warning: For external use only! May 1976.” It is quite likely that Kaper’s witty inscription was intended for Kirk Douglas and his second wife, Anne Buydens. Kirk and Anne met in Paris in the early 1950s on a film, Act of Love, and were married a few years later. Both lived well past 100 years of age, with Douglas dying at 103 in 2020 and his wife at 102 a year later. Kaper knew them socially in Beverly Hills and also from the 1967 production, The Way West, where Kirk Douglas starred alongside Richard Widmark and Robert Mitchum. The score for this feature is in the PMC’s Kaper Collection.
New additions to the Wars Collection
Dennis Mitchell, grandson of the composer Henryk Wars (known in the US as Henry Vars) and great friend of the PMC, recently ran into PMC Archives Specialist Tomasz Fechner and told him with a twinkle in his eye that he had a “few new things” to add to his grandfather’s Collection at the PMC. Much to our delight, at the very end of February Dennis arrived at the PMC with a treasure trove of items related to his grandfather’s Hollywood film scoring career!
The items donated to the PMC by Dennis fall into five categories. The first is represented by posters and various film-related promotional materials. They pertain to such features as Ski Crazy! (1955), Gun the Man Down (1956), China Doll (1958), The Two Little Bears (1961), and Flipper (1963), the latter represented by a small Mi amigo Flipper postcard destined for the Spanish-speaking audiences.
The second category are audio-visual materials. Besides the DVD re-releases of Ski Crazy! and The Two Little Bears with music by Henry Vars, there are a few rare treasures here, including test pressings (mainly on 12-in. shellac discs) of such compositions as the first movement of what later became the City Sketches suite for orchestra and the soundtrack for the 1953 feature Slaves of Babylon. Even rarer is the 10-in. disc featuring three cues Vars wrote for Fritz Lang’s 1953 film, The Big Heat. Even if he was one of several composers hired to score this picture, Vars’s contribution was a very important step in his Hollywood career, especially after several years of working only as a music copyist and an occasional songwriter. Also in this category are test recordings of Vars songs from the late 1940s and early 1950s including The Flag, My Treasure, Every Hour, Speak To Me Pretty, and I Cry and Wait. Fascinatingly, there are also two reel-to-reel tapes—one a 3 in. the other 4-in, both in their original boxes. There are no indications of what’s on the smaller reel, but the 4-in. tape has, in Vars’s handwriting, “Sleep my Child sung by Alma Piazza” inscribed on top of its box. Sleep my Child (also known as by its Yiddish title, Shloof Mein Kind and subtitled, “A Lullaby for a Displaced Child”) was published in Hollywood in 1948 and sung by various artists, starting with Dennis Day who premiered it. It seems that on this tape the soloist is Alma Lucille Piazza (1913-2007). More interesting discoveries are certainly coming up once these tapes get digitized, and we get to hear exactly what’s there!
The third category of materials donated to us by Dennis include several piano-vocal scores of Henry Vars’s songs written in America between 1950 and 1964. Among them are the title songs from Flipper and its sequel, Flipper’s New Adventure, as well as Speak To Me Pretty (from the film The Two Little Bears) and The Fifty Stars, the latter possibly a music revue number. Also in this category is an album of Polish hit songs from the 1930s, arranged for a 4-part male choir by Włodzimierz Sołtysik, where we find such popular tunes as Umówiłem się z nią na dziewiątą [I have a date with her at nine] Najcudowniejsze nóżki [The most fabulous legs], Sex Appeal, Już taki jestem zimny drań [I’m such a cold-blooded cad], and Śpij, kochanie [Sleep, my darling], all composed by Henryk Wars with lyrics provided by Emanuel Schlechter, Andrzej Włast, Jerzy Nel, and Ludwik Starski.
The most important item in the fourth category is the photocopy of published booklet, featuring selections of film stills, plots of synopses and, occasionally, lyrics to selected film songs. Covering well over forty films scored by Henryk Wars throughout the 1930s, it begins with his first film score (Na Sybir, 1930) and includes such celebrated pictures as Szpieg w masce (1933), Czarna perła (1934), Jaśnie pan szofer (1935), Bolek i Lolek (1936), Piętro wyżej (1937), Znachor (1937), Kobiety and przepaścią (1938) and Sportowiec mimo woli (1939). Two other short documents (an article about the Wars films retrospective in 1999 and a copy of Polish Cultural News journal from summer of 1994) complete this category of new materials in the Henryk Wars/Henry Vars Collection.
Finally, the “Miscellanea” folder contains documents relating to the to the posthumous awarding of the Knight’s Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order to Henryk Warszawski. Dennis Mitchell represented his grandfather and the family of the composer for the ceremonies that included Poland’s President, Polish Radio and the Ave Arte Foundation and took place in Warsaw during the first week of October 2008.
From our friends at SPMK
Following a recent PMC visit of two prominent members of the Polish Chamber Musicians’ Association [SPMK], our collections gained several interesting and prized items. From Dr. Grzegorz Mania, a noted pianist and SPMK President we received several recent issues of Notatnik Pianistyczny, a quarterly publication covering a wealth of piano-related subjects consistently presented in a very attractive way. With in-depth articles by well-known pianists, discussions and analyses of well-known piano pieces, and reproductions of scores of contemporary solo piano works, this journal is a truly phenomenal resource for pianists of all levels, piano teachers of all kinds, and piano enthusiasts alike.
During the last year or so, SPMK also became a noted publisher of CD recordings. Accordingly, Dr. Mania presented us with five CD albums. They included: Ludomir Różycki—Pieśni zebrane, a 2 CD collection of about fifty songs by this early 20th century composer, delivered on the SPMK 41-42 release by Urszula Krygier and Paweł Cłapiński; a CD of works by Szymon Laks (Cello Sonata & Trois pièces de concert), Karol Rathaus (Rapsodia notturna), and Mieczysław Weinberg (Sonata for Cello and Piano) performed by Bartosz Koziak and Grzegorz Mania on the SPMK 44 CD; a recording of music by Olga Hans, a composer and professor from Łódź, Da suonare a tre, performed by the Vivo Trio on the SPMK 52 disc; Dolny Śląsk na puzon/Lower Silesia for Trombone with trombonist Eloy Panizo Padrón and pianist Monika Hanus-Kolbus, presenting music by Thomas Stoltzer, Daniel Speer, Wilhelm Eduard Scholz, Leszek Wisłocki, Ryszard Klisowski, and Mirosław Gąsieniec (SPMK 53); and Szymon Laks—Chamber Works/Utwory kameralne, featuring Suite Polonaise for violin and piano, Piano Quintet, Dialogue for Two Cellos, and Concertino for Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon, performed by Magdalena Bojanowicz, Katarzyna Budnik, Jakub Jakowicz, Bartosz Koziak, Damian Lipień, Piotr Lato, Maria Machowska, and Grzegorz Mania (SPMK 55).
Another distinguished guest who graced the PMC with his august presence in late February was Dr. Piotr Różański, the Vice-President of the Penderecki Music Academy in Kraków and SPMK founding member. He came bearing gifts for us from His Magnificence, the Rector [President] of the Kraków Music Academy, Prof. Dr. Hab. Mariusz Sielski. The wonderful tranche of surprises from Kraków included Music of Change—Expression of Liberation in Polish and Lithuanian Music Before and After 1989, a hard-cover publication by the Kraków Music Academy and Musica Iagellonica imprint and edited by Małgorzata Janicka-Słysz. It was accompanied by a short publication about a noted Polish violinist, Kaja Danczowska: In the World of International Competition, authored by Katarzyna Marczak.
The gift also included two extensive CD collections, published by the Penderecki Music Academy in Kraków. The first, Krakowska Szkoła Kompozytorska—Mistrzowie i ich uczniowie [Kraków Composers’ School—Masters and their Students], presents recordings of works by Marek Stachowski and his students Wojciech Widłak and Marcel Chyrzyński, as well as Zbigniew Bujarski and his students Jakub Ciupiński and Mendi Mengjiqi, and finally of Krystyna Moszumańska-Nazar and her students Anna Zawadzka-Gołosz and Magdalena Długosz. The other CD presentation donated to the PMC by Rector Sielski is Katedra Organów AMKP w Krakowie [Organ Department of the Penderecki Music Academy in Kraków]. On this 2-CD release the Academy’s organ professors Dariusz Bąkowski-Kois, Arkadiusz Bialic, Andrzej Białko, Wacław Golonka, Marcin Szelest and Krzysztof Urbaniak perform on the historical instrument at the Holy Cross Church in Kraków.
In addition to presenting us with the official gifts from Kraków Music Academy, Dr. Różański also brought us the newly-published choral works by Roman Ryterband. Three separate attractively presented publications contain Ryterband’s works by unaccompanied mixed choir: Raise Your Heads, O Gates, Two Sonnets to texts by William Shakespeare as well as a setting of Let’s Praise the Lord, Let’s Hail the Lord. This PWM publication came out in late 2024 and features extensive program notes in Polish and English, based on recollections of the composer’s widow, Clarissa Ryterband.
IS-PAN continues their support
Our dedicated and faithful friends from the Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk [Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences] sent us another parcel of their publications which we’ll happily add to our library. As of this week, two new catalogue entry positions will enrich our shelves: the first is the Muzyka Quarterly, Issue No. 4 (the last issue for the year 2024), and the other is Henryk Opieński—Listy do Anny, an elegant publication by the Fundacja Archivum Helveto-Polonicum in Freiburg.
The most recent issue of Muzyka features, among other news, three outstanding articles: Marcin Szelest’s extensive study of the Gdańsk/Danzig Tablature from the sixteenth century, Marek Bebak’s analysis of Józef Tadeusz Benedykt Pękalski and his links to the Apostolic Union of Secular Priests at the Collegiate Church Ensemble of Kielce and the Kraków Cathedral’s Rorantists’ Chapel, and Irena Bieńkowska’s exploration of the new sources regarding aristocratic music collections from the second half of the eighteenth century.
Dr. Szelest’s article is in English and with its extensive illustrations and bibliography will be an excellent resource for anyone interested in this topic. In the same issue of Muzyka he also published another piece in English about the history of 20th century annotations in the lost keyboard tablature from the Holy Spirit Monastery in Kraków. One more article in English, also in this issue, is by Nicolò Ferrari, When Musicology Goes Cultural. On A Cultural History of Western Music in the Renaissance. It examines the period from 1400 to 1650 and departs from discussing it from the traditional composer-centric view, favoring instead a thematic approach that explores cultural concepts and changes within the musical landscape of that era. In any case, like many previous issues of Muzyka, this one will be shared with students, faculty and researchers interested in our library resources.
Henryk Opieński—Listy do Anny continues a series of publications relating to the correspondence between the Opieński and Krzymuski families. This volume presents 33 letters of Henryk Opieński to Anna Krzymuska, who later became his wife, and dates from the composer’s first extended residence in Paris between the months of September and December 1895. At this time Opieński decided to devote his life to music, and study violin along with harmony and composition. Thus, figures like Władysław Górski, Zygmunt Stojowski and Ignacy Jan Paderewski became part of Opieński’s professional and social milieu in Paris and appear throughout this batch of his correspondence. The lessons with Górski gave Opieński insights not only into violin playing but also allowed him to share some gossip about Górski’s much younger wife, Helena, and the overall state of their marriage. Writing to his fiancée who clearly inquired about the situation Opieński notes: “You’ve asked what impressions are made by the Górskis when they are together? One who doesn’t know anything about them could consider them an exemplary couple—because it is so, and she takes care of him whenever he’s weak—but whatever takes place inside their souls is a mystery to anyone.” An additional sliver of information on this subject comes from a letter where Opieński mentions that “Helena Górska accompanied Paderewski to London,” since by that time the long-running love affair between Paderewski and Górska was finally discovered by her husband, who sued for divorce which in turn, four years later, allowed Paderewski to marry Górska in Warsaw in May of 1899.
Since Opieński’s main goal was to study composition, Władysław Górski recommended Zygmunt Stojowski, a close friend of Paderewski who also lived in Paris and, as a Paris Conservatory alum had great connections there. Before Opieński could be considered for admission, he had to catch up on some basics. Stojowski’s harmony and composition lessons, as it turned out, were to be quite expensive at 15 fr. each. Since Opieński’s financial situation was quite precarious and he appeared uncertain of being able to afford them, Stojowski quickly added that “the price shouldn’t present an obstacle of any kind.” Many other fascinating tidbits and observations about leading French musicians, about Opieński’s visits to the Louvre and social gatherings with various Polish painters, also extend to the everyday life in Paris. One of them was his witnessing of the famous train crash at Gare Montparnasse on 22 October 1895 when Opieński was returning from a lesson with Stojowski. This—and many other details—make the reading of these letters a most gratifying diversion for any reader.
As always, to all our donors: Dziękujemy! Thank you!
by Marek Zebrowski