Szeluto, Apolinary (EN)

Szeluto, Szeluta, Scheluta, Apolinary, *23 July 1884 St. Petersburg, †21 August 1966 Chodzież, Polish composer. He started attending the Warsaw Conservatory in 1901, where he studied instrumentation with R. Statkowski and composition with Z. Noskowski. He studied law at the university in parallel from 1902. After the Warsaw universities were closed by the Tsarist authorities, he interrupted his studies in both fields in 1905. He met K. Szymanowski in 1904, and he became one of the members of the Publishing Company of Young Polish Composers in 1905. He studied in the master piano class of L. Godowski in Berlin in 1906–09; he completed his law studies in Dorpat in 1911. He worked as a lawyer in Remontnoye near Astrakhan, in Warsaw (1918–33) and in Słupca near Poznań (from 1934). He spent the last ten years of his life in the Social Welfare Home for the chronically ill in Chodzież, but he composed almost until the last weeks of his life. Since 1968, Szeluta’s artistic legacy has been kept at the Polish National Library in Warsaw.

In Szeluta’s rich but qualitatively very diverse output, three periods can be distinguished: early, with classical-romantic features (1905–24); middle, marked by attempts to create his own national style (1925–48); and late, realising of the directives of socialist realism in music (since 1949). He created Preludes Op. 5, Piano Sonata No. 1 and Cello Sonata from a clear fascination with the work of A. Scriabin. Szeluto believed that the creator should strive to gain a wide audience. This view, crystallised in Szeluto’s youth, fell on fertile ground in the second period of his work, and especially in the third when the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic imposed the doctrine of socialist realism on artists. Szeluto turned towards the national style around 1925 and composed 50 piano mazurkas over four years. Of the over one hundred piano works created at that time, Four Polonaises “Four Seasons of the Year” Op. 58 are noteworthy and may indicate his attempt to create a separate national style. Szeluto focused on rhythmic aspects, striving rather to subtly blur rather than sharpen the choreic outline of the composition.

Szeluta’s orchestral output includes the symphonic poem Cyrano de Bergerac, which is distinguished by a great melodic sense inspired by R. Strauss’s Don Juan and the ability to artistically adapt the musical character to the key moments of the literary programme. The manifestation of the conservative attitude, avoiding creative exploration, was the instrumental line-up preferred by Szeluta (double line-up of woodwind instruments, two trumpets, four trombones, harp, celesta and strings), the same regardless of the forms practised. Cyrano de Bergerac, based on the classical model of a two-theme sonata allegro, with a clearly dominant first theme of a marching nature, became, to a certain extent, a formal and instrumental “matrix” for later orchestral works, both the symphonic poem Macbeth (1933) and the one-movement nine symphonies (II–IV, VI, VII, IX, XI–XVII) orchestrated after 1945. Symphonies XVIII–XXVIII, written in the years 1951–53, which have survived only in piano reductions, and mass songs reflect the ideology of socialist realism.

The fundamental flaw of Szeluta’s operas, left mainly in piano reductions, is their trivial plot, linguistic incompetence and unconvincing characterisation. In his operas, Szeluto tended to blur the numerical model, usually using several leading motifs and often introducing separate dance sections (mainly polonaises, mazurkas and waltzes).

Literature: J. Kański Apolinary Szeluto 1884–1966, “Ruch Muzyczny” 1967 no. 2; J. Dobrowolski Katalog utworów fortepianowych Apolinarego Szeluty, “Muzyka” 1973 nro. 4; K. Winowicz Apolinary Szeluto 1884–1966 w setną rocznicę urodzin, Słupca 1984; Apolinary Szeluto o Noskowskim i Szymanowskim, “Ruch Muzyczny” 1984 no. 16; Marcin Gmys Harmonie i dysonanse. Muzyka Młodej Polski wobec innych sztuk, Poznań 2012; Aleksandra Kamińska-Rykowska Pieśni Apolinarego Szeluty w kręgu Młodej Polski, Toruń 2017.