Early music by Zygmunt Mycielski – the case of the Sketches of compositions 1927

Abstract

The Sketches of Compositions 1927, deposited at the Manuscripts and Old Prints Department of the National Library in Warsaw, is an extraordinary collection documenting, among others, the youthful works of Zygmunt Mycielski. It contains a number of piano compositions, songs and pieces for chamber ensembles, written in his home (manor) in Wiśniowa, then during his studies at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, where he studied with Paul Dukas and Nadia Boulanger, as well as in Vilnius and Bukowina Tatrzańska. It also lists examples from musical literature illustrating selected problems of compositional technique. Although Mycielski made a comment on the title page that the pieces were not eligible for publication, they are an extremely interesting source for musicologists to learn about the artistic fascinations of the twenty-year-old composer.