Romantic Polish organ music

[Contrabombarde]

I've recently come across a few Youtube recordings of Polish composers including Konstanty Gorski (most famous work apparently Fantasie in F minor) and Mieczyslaw Surzynski (most well known for
Improwizacje on Święty Boże). "Most well known" is relative given the comparative obscurity of these composers and others of their period (late 19th and early 20th century) and the only score I've found online is for Święty Boże, which is a relatively easy but very beautiful and impressive-sounding set of variations on the Polish theme "Holy God".

 

Has anyone else come across music from the Polish romantic organ school, and particularly, can anyone help me find scores for any other pieces by these or similar composers?

 

Contrabombarde

[John Furse]

You could do worse than this site and composer:

http://www.pwm.com.pl/__list__gp1.html

 

Go into the 'Publishing house', then 'Composers', then 'N', then 'Feliks Nowowiejski'.

 

Disappointingly, although the blurb trumpets his NINE organ symphonies, none seem to be in print !

 

The two composers you mention are not here, though. (Polish music publishing has some remarkable lacunae.) You could trawl through all the likely individuals.

 

This: http://www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music/catalog/scoredis.html doesnt give much hope, either.

 

As an aside, the canzoni and concerti of the wonderful Adam Jarzębski (ca. 1590-1649) deserve to be as well known in the west as the works of, say, Biber or Zelenka- but promotion of such does not seem to be a priority.

 

[Pasting from my Word doc was imprecise.]

[Contrabombarde]

Thanks very much - I trawled through those links but the only piece I found listed (which I already have a pdf score of thanks to imslp) was Święty Boże. Short of a visit to Poland in search of music libraries it doesn't look like there's much prospect of finding this music in or out of print elsewhere unfortunately. But the Święty Boże is well worth learning.

[SlowOrg]

Go into the 'Publishing house', then 'Composers', then 'N', then 'Feliks Nowowiejski'.

Disappointingly, although the blurb trumpets his NINE organ symphonies, none seem to be in print !

 

This is not entirely correct. His 8th Symphony (along with some other pieces of music) is available from IMSLP and, since there is a recording of all Nowowiejski's organ symphonies, I would assume that the rest is also available in print.

 

M

[John Furse]

“NINE organ symphonies, none seem to be in print”

 

Perhaps, ‘no longer available from the publisher’ would have been more accurate, still; but thanks for the links, SlovOrg.

 

I note that the 3-CD set of “Nowowiejski: Complete Organ Symphonies” is (used) at just over £17 from a well-known online supplier, whose name is that of the longest South American river.

 

I also note that searches using his first name “Feliks” produce different results from using “Felix” !

 

Do we have any Polish members who could help ?

 

As for “the wonderful Adam Jarzębski”: I was not directly comparing him with Biber and/or Zelenka, who were later in the Baroque. His music is much more akin to that of Dario Castello.