Spiritual-aesthetic and style instructions of K. Shymanovsky’s Creative Activity

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify the spiritual and aesthetic foundations of K. Szymanowski’s creative activity in the stream of genre and style specifics of the Polish cultural world of the early twentieth century. The methodology of work is based on the intonation concept of music in the perspective of intonation-stylistic, etymological analysis. Analytical-musicological, genre-style and interdisciplinary approaches that allow to identify and explore the spiritual and aesthetic guidelines of K. Szymanowski's work proved to be essential for this work. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by its analytical perspective, which takes into account both the genre and style evolution of K. Szymanowski's work and its correlation with the historical realities of Polish culture and music of the first half of the twentieth century («Young Poland»). Conclusions. Spiritual-aesthetic and genre-style guidelines of K. Szymanowski's work were formed in direct connection with the ways of development of Polish culture and music of the XIX-XX centuries, marked by creative and artistic pursuits of representatives of «Young Poland», genre-style advantages of which the intersection of the ideas of symbolism, neo-romanticism, impressionism and modern aesthetics. At the same time, in the creative activity of «Young Poland» the desire to create a national Polish style in the fine arts, literature, generalized in the concept of «Zakopane style» as a «model» of neo-folklore. K. Szymanowski’s work as the founder of «Young Poland in Music» and Polish musical modernism determines the genre and style evolution of the composer’s creative heritage, concentrated in a consistent movement from romantic preferences and interest in the aesthetics of impressionism-symbolism to neo-folklore pursuits of later period.

Keywords: works by Karol Szymanowski, «Young Poland», romanticism, symbolism, modernism.