The Songs of Józef Zygmunt Szulc (1875-1956)

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) INTRODUCTION AS WE GO ABOUT OUR DAILY TEACHING, we long to introduce something new, something unknown, and we often turn to anthologies. Forty French Songs, published in two volumes by International Music Company, is one such source. It is available in high, medium, and low voice. We glance at the names of the composers and realize that Sergius Kagen, the editor, left out all of the great song composers. Or did he? In his introduction, Kagen defends his choices, saying that other volumes are dedicated to melodies of Chausson, Faure, Debussy, and Ravel. Glancing down the list of names, we realize that not all of these composers are French. While in volume one Kagen includes mainly French composers, in volume two he makes a dramatic departure. Poldowski and Szulc are included in volume two, and here begins the phenomenon of the one-hit mystery composers. BIOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND Looking through Biografia Polskiego Pismiennictwa Muzicznego (Polish New Grove's) of 1955 and the supplemental volumes from 1964 and 1978, one is unable to find Jozef Zygmunt Szulc .... Why would he not be included? Even more perplexing is that the musical history his family had in Poland was neither acknowledged nor celebrated. (I was recently reminded that all three of these publications took place during the communist regime.) Szulc is seemingly not on the radar of the Polish Music Group at University of Southern California, either. He is included on a website featuring Jewish composers, Lexicon of Jewish Musicians in Poland, where he is merely noted as a master pianist. By looking in New Grove's and a small article by Graham Johnson in The French Song Companion (OUP), it became more obvious why Szulc was essentially a man without a country: he was from a family of German Jews. His father, Henryk, was born in Warsaw in 1836. Henryk was the conductor of the Teatr Wielki (the Polish Bolshoi) in Warsaw for nearly thirty years and taught double bass at the Warsaw Music Institute. He was also a composer of dance music and chamber miniatures. All of Henryk's sons were respected musicians. Jozef studied composition with Noskowski at the Warsaw Music Institute, and later moved to Berlin where he studied at the Stern Conservatory with Jedlicek, Schramke, and Moszkowski. In 1897, he worked as a piano teacher at the conservatory and conducted opera in Stuttgart. He had some works published in Berlin under the name Joseph Schultz, including Zwei Lieder, opus 33. La Legend du Rhin and Copain-Copine (from his operetta Le petit Choc) were published as sheet music in 1923 by Salabert under the name Joseph Szulc. These, and the opus 33, were the only compositions of Szulc available from the National Library in Warsaw as of 2008. Much information is available on the covers of this sheet music. At the bottom of each page are incipits, inviting us to order other pieces of music by this melodist. Copies of these pieces were generously sent to the writer by Joseph Herter, a Polish music scholar, based in Warsaw. While researching the works of Jozef Szulc in libraries in the United States and Canada, I found a treasure trove of operettas by Szulc at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. The librarian there told me about a donation to the university library of nearly 6,000 scores from Jack Rokahr. A telephone conversation with this gentleman led to a discussion about his passion for collecting opera and operetta scores. Now in his 80s, Mr. Rokahr donated them to the school, making them available through interlibrary loan, providing they are in good enough shape to make the journey through the mails. To render a search even more complicated, we know that Szulc composed using at least three names; Szulc, Schultz, and Jan Sulima. He also varied the spelling of his first name. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Szulc moved to Paris, but still kept some of his connections to the East. …

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