Beginnings

The Karłowicz family home was a deeply musical one. Chamber concerts were regularly held there, alongside Lithuanian and Belarusian folk songs. The future composer’s father was not only a musician, but also an ethnologist and linguist, while his mother was a trained singer. It is therefore hardly surprising that, at the age of seven, Karłowicz began to study the violin seriously. He was also introduced to the wider world. The Karłowicz family left Wiszniewo to live in major European cities, including Heidelberg, Prague and Dresden. Eventually, they settled permanently in Warsaw, where the young Karłowicz began studying the violin with one of the greatest virtuosos of his time, Stanisław Barcewicz. Karłowicz was a perfectionist and an introvert. He developed a high level of technical proficiency, but, as his teacher observed, he “did not possess virtuoso bravura”. He had no desire to dazzle audiences from the scene with breathtaking solo displays, as Paganini had done, for example. On the contrary, he was increasingly drawn towards composition.


Pictured: Stanisław Barcewicz – violinist and Karłowicz’s teacher (source: wikipedia.org)

The Birth of a Composer

He took his first steps as a composer in Warsaw under the guidance of the distinguished composer Zygmunt Noskowski. Yet he continued to hesitate. He made his final decision only after a painful disappointment in Berlin, where he had travelled driven by ambition and an unrelenting pursuit of perfection. He failed to gain admission to the violin class of the legendary virtuoso Joseph Joachim, for whom composers including Brahms and Dvořák wrote. His journey had therefore failed to achieve its original purpose. Yet this bitter disappointment proved to be a turning point in his career. Karłowicz enrolled in the composition class of Heinrich Urban, a professor renowned throughout Germany. Berlin, a great and thoroughly European capital, offered him an outlet for his many intellectual interests. He attended lectures on music history, psychology, philosophy and even physics.

From the perspective of his career as a composer, however, perhaps the most important opportunity was access to the world-class Berlin Philharmonic. Through its musicians, he learned about orchestration, the individual qualities of instruments and their technical possibilities. He even paid musicians to give him private lessons in playing various instruments, particularly brass instruments.

First Works – First Successes

It was the Berlin Philharmonic that gave the premiere of his first work, the Serenade for String Orchestra, Op. 2. When it was subsequently performed in Warsaw, it received favourable reviews from the press. But Karłowicz’s ambitions extended much further. Inspired by the great composers of his time, he wanted Polish music to find its place on the European stage and become part of the international musical canon.

The works he hoped would launch him onto the international scene were the Violin Concerto in A major and the Symphony Rebirth – the only symphony in his output. In 1903, Karłowicz personally conducted the premieres of both works with the Berlin Philharmonic, despite having virtually no experience or achievements as a conductor. The soloist was his former Warsaw teacher, Stanisław Barcewicz. The Violin Concerto was particularly well received. The audience enthusiastically demanded that the entire second movement be repeated. The evening also marked the culmination of Karłowicz’s compositional studies in Berlin. Two years later, the same works met with even greater success in Vienna.


Pictured: the former concert hall of the Berlin Philharmonic, where Karłowicz’s works were premiered (source: berliner-philharmoniker.de)

Warsaw Setbacks

His return to Warsaw and the premiere of his next work, the symphonic poem Returning Waves, at the Warsaw Philharmonic, were far less successful. Critics accused him of being derivative, lacking an individual musical language and overly dependent on Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss. One of his most personal works was met with incomprehension. Karłowicz himself was equally critical of the Warsaw Philharmonic, whose artistic standards he considered too low. He complained about the musicians’ lack of preparation and their lack of interest in his works.

Towards Maturity

Perhaps for this very reason, he chose to present his next symphonic poem, Eternal Songs (1906), to the world in Berlin, with the city’s Philharmonic Orchestra. The distinguished Grzegorz Fitelberg conducted, while Richard Strauss himself was among those in the audience. Karłowicz was pleased with the premiere and with the response from both audiences and critics. Like Returning Waves, Eternal Songs is an introspective work, but it explores universal themes and bears clear marks of the young composer’s mature style. The Warsaw critics, however, viewed the event ambivalently, if not outright unfavourably. For Karłowicz, this was the final proof that he should no longer place his hopes in the conservative capital of Poland. He withdrew to Zakopane, among his beloved Tatra Mountains.

But Warsaw eventually succumbed to the power of Karłowicz’s music. Further works, including two symphonic poems – his favourite genre – Stanisław and Anna Oświecim (1907) and A Sorrowful Tale (1908), were premiered at the Warsaw Philharmonic. This time, the reviews and audience response were enthusiastic. “Karłowicz’s work displays independence of thought, originality and freshness of themes, harmony of line alongside the richness of ornamentation of an extraordinary work,” wrote Warsaw critics. “The composer holds the listener and spectator of his creative visions in a constant state of attention, making them feel and think alongside him.” The works elicited similarly positive reactions in St Petersburg and Vienna.


Pictured: the Warsaw Philharmonic at the beginning of the 20th century (source: National Philharmonic)


Pictured: Mieczysław Karłowicz and an archival edition of the score of A Sorrowful Tale (source: wikipedia.org)

In 1909, Eternal Songs once again resounded at the Warsaw Philharmonic under the baton of Grzegorz Fitelberg, this time achieving spectacular success. The audience repeatedly called Karłowicz back to the stage, while critics praised a work they had not long before dismissed as “derivative” and “lacking individuality”. Karłowicz’s friends wrote that they had never seen him so happy. The concert was repeated, this time conducted by the composer himself, and the response was equally spectacular. He had waited a very long time for the recognition and appreciation of the Polish public, and enjoyed it only briefly. Twelve days after the repeat performance of Eternal Songs, Karłowicz was killed in an avalanche.

The Final Episode

Following his successes in Warsaw, he returned home to his beloved Zakopane, full of energy and musical ideas. His plan was to complete An Episode at a Masquerade – another of his symphonic poems – and test his new camera in the winter landscape of the Tatras. He abandoned a planned excursion to the Czerwone Wierchy because of the avalanche risk. A few days before his tragic death, Karłowicz told his mother that he had already completed most of the Episode. On February 8th, 1909, at 6 a.m., he set out on skis for Czarny Staw Gąsienicowy. He would never return home. He was killed by an avalanche beneath Mały Kościelec. He was 32 years old.


Pictured: Mieczysław Karłowicz on the summit of Szatan in the Tatras (source: Szlak znakomitych Zakopiańczyków)

Mieczysław Karłowicz: Timeline of Works (major works)

up to 1896 – Songs, including Speak to Me Still, On the Calm, Quiet Sea, Asleep in the Splendour of the Night,, Before the Eternal Night


1897 – Serenade for String Orchestra, Op. 2


1898 – Bianca da Molena (The White Dove), Op. 6


1899-1902 – Symphony „Rebirth” Op. 7


1902 – Violin Concerto, Op. 8


1904 – Returning Waves, Op. 9


1906 - Eternal Songs, Op. 10


1906 – Lithuanian Rhapsody, Op. 11


1907 – Stanisław and Anna Oświecim, Op. 12


1908 – A Sorrowful Tale, Op. 13


1909 – An Episode at a Masquerade, Op. 14 – unfinished