The Birch Grove
for Soprano and Piano
Zygmunt Mycielski composed Brzezina [The birch grove] in 1951, while staying with Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz in Stawisko. He took the words from a short story of the same title that Iwaszkiewicz had written before the war. In the story, it is a song sung by a country lass, Malina, keeping the dying hero company. In Mycielski’s setting, the simple folk-style lamentation assumes a highly artistic dimension. The melody exudes emotion; it is lyrical and full of melancholy, with forceful expression. The melismatically treated solo part is woven freely around the central notes, bringing out the refined melodic contour. The piano part provides a harmonic complement to the leading voice. Engaging in a continuous dialogue with the solo line, it also helps to forge the deeply expressive narrative. Particularly moving is the opening of the song, where the soprano intones a painful lament in the highest register. With subsequent repeats, the composer reduces the intensity of emotion, passing into a mood of sadness and at the same time acceptance of the inevitable. Although the keen lament refers to traditional funeral songs, The Birch Grove is far from plain traditional music. It is dominated by the despair of lost love and the presentiment of death, couched in an artistic form. (...)
Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska
translated by John Comber
- Words: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz
- Series: Canto
- ISMN 979-0-2740-3861-8
- Number of pages: 12
- Cover: softcover
- No. of edition: 1
- Published: 2026
- Type: score and parts
- Size: N4 vertical (235x305 mm)
