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SUMMARY
Irena Wieniawska’s songs to words by Paul Verlaine
This article presents the interpretation of 21 songs (composed between 1911 and 1927)
by Irena Wieniawska (1879-1932) based on Paul Verlaine’s poems. The composer, also
known as Poldowski or Lady Dean Paul, was a daughter of a famous Polish artist and violinist
– Henryk Wieniawski, and Isabelle Hampton-Wieniawska. She lived and worked in Belgium
and England. It is worth mentioning that Madame Poldowski knew some impressionistic
works (among others Maurice Ravel’s) in France and these experiences influenced on her
artistic idiom.
Firstly, the author analyzes the lyrics (main themes as well as the structure of Verlaine’s
texts). Then the attention is paid to the music layer: the author subsequently describes the
basic musical elements such like melody, piano accompaniment, harmony, texture, form. In
the third part of this article, following some of the rules (so-called corollaries) by Henry
Woollett, the problem of word-music relationships in Wieniawska’s songs is discussed. In
conclusion the author suggests that Madame Poldowski’s vocal-instrumental pieces represent
the genre of French mélodie because of verbal transparency (recitative and syllabic treatment
of text) as well as harmonic and formal complexity, variability. It is put a hypothesis that this
aesthetics is a reinterpretation of symbolist common features in music.