Karol Szymanowski's musical language in "Myths" for violin and piano, Op. 30

Abstract

In his second period work, Myths for violin and piano, op. 30, Karol Szymanowski created an innovative musical language by synthesizing different styles and aesthetics. In Myths, Szymanowski expanded his early compositional style, which was heavily influenced by contemporary Germans, developing an individual style which adopted and integrated distinctive stylistic and nationalistic compositional techniques that he discovered from the fin de siecle. The paper proceeds to discuss Szymanowski's innovation in a number of stylistic aspects, including program, form, theme, texture, harmonic language, and large-scale bass motion.