Tadeusz Szeligowski

Tadeusz Szeligowski (13 September 1896 - 10 January 1963) was a Polish composer, educator, lawyer and music organizer.

His works include the operas The Rise of the Scholars, Krakatuk and Theodor Gentlemen, the ballets The Peacock and the Girl and Mazepa ballets, two violin concertos, chamber and choral works.

As a music teacher, Szeligowski was very well established in Vilnius, Lublin, Poznań and Warsaw.

He was also a respected music writer who frequently wrote for journals and magazines specialized in music such as the Kurier Wileński, Tygodnik Wileński, Muzyka and the Kurier Poznański.

Tadeusz Szeligowski was born on 13 September 1896 in Lemberg, then in Austro-Hungarian Galicia and now in western Ukraine.

Szeligowski's first music and piano teacher was his mother.

Later he began studying music at the Conservatory of Music of the Polish Society in L'vov in the years 1910–1914, where he studied piano under the direction of Vilem Kurz, and then from 1918 to 1923 in Kraków, where he studied piano with H. Peters, and composition with Bolesław Wallek-Walewski.

Szeligowski's further education included musicology with Zdzisław Jachimecki and law at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where he received his doctorate in 1922.

There he found work as repetiteur at the Kraków Opera House, allowing him to become well acquainted with the opera repertoire.

In 1923 Szeligowski worked in Vilnius, Lithuania (then part of the Second Polish Republic), as lawyer and lecturer at the Conservatory of Music.

There he met Karol Szymanowski and became a great admirer of his music.

He also worked with a dramatic theatre called Reduta, composing music for many of its productions.

He complemented his studies in music in the years 1929–1931 in Paris, where he met many composers of his time such as Sergei Prokofiev, George Enesco and Arthur Honegger.

There he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and orchestration with Paul Dukas.

There he attended many concerts and intensely experienced the latest compositions by Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, ballet productions of many famous companies, as well as highly acclaimed performances by Jascha Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein and Ignacy Jan Paderewski.

Shortly after his return to Poland in 1931, he began teaching music in Poznań until 1939, and then moved to Lublin for a little while after World War II.

His achievements include the creation of the Poznan´ Philharmonic, where he served as its first director between the years 1947–1949, and the founding of the Poznań Musical Spring, one of the most important festivals of contemporary music at the time.

From 1947 to 1962 he worked for The State Higher School Of Music (Państwowa Wyzsza Szkoła Muzyczna) in Poznań, and from 1947 to 1950 he became director of the National Opera Academy, when on his own initiative the Poznań Philharmonic was created.

In addition, he was the initiator of the festival of contemporary music, the "Poznań Musical Spring", where modern music was then presented in all its glory, and one of the organizers of the H. Wieniawski International Violin Competition.

From 1951 to 1962 Szeligowski worked in Warsaw, first for the faculty of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, and later as director of the Polish Society of Composers.

A large group of his graduates on composition include: Zbigniew Bargielski, Augustyn Bloch, Joanna Bruzdowicz, Wojciech Lukaszewski, Tadeusz Wojciech Maklakiewicz, Boleslaw Ocias, Witold Rudzinski, Marek Sart, Janina Skowronska, Aleksander Szeligowski and Antoni Szuniewicz.

Lvov's musical scene at that time included a city opera, a symphonic orchestra, a music society and also a conservatory of music, and there Szeligowski was very active as a social organizer.

Musicians such as Felix Weingartner and Oscar Nedbal usually visited the city and frequently performed works by Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner.

From 1951 to 1954 he served as chairman of the Polish Composers Union, and from 1953 he worked for the Board of Polish Music Publishers and the Central Pedagogical Office for Arts Education (COPSA).

Tadeusz Szeligowski died in Poznań on 10 January 1963 and since 1965 he has been buried in the Poznań Skalka crypt of Merit.

Szeligowski received numerous awards, among them:

Also, he received numerous prizes and awards, including: