Apolinary Szeluto
Apolinary Szeluto was a Polish pianist and composer. He was also a music educator and lawyer.
He began his musical education as a pianist under Stanisław Exner at the Russian Musical Society’s Saratov Music School. From 1902 to 1905, he studied composition with Roman Statkowski and Zygmunt Noskowski at the Warsaw Conservatory while studying law at the University of Warsaw. From 1906 to 1908, he continued his piano training with Leopold Godowsky in Berlin.
In 1906, Szeluto joined Karol Szymanowski, Grzegorz Fitelberg, and Ludomir Różycki in forming the Young Poland composers’ group, which advocated national roots in academic music. In 1910, he went to Tartu to complete his legal education, and from 1911 to 1918 he worked as an investigator in the village of Remontnoye in Astrakhan Governorate.
After returning to Poland in 1918, Szeluto headed the statistics department of the Ministry of Justice. In 1934, he settled in Słupca, where he worked as a notary while devoting increasing attention to composition. His compositions achieved their greatest success in the late 1930s. After the Second World War, he settled in Warsaw and held various legal positions.
Szeluto left an extensive body of work, much of it composed during the last 25 years of his life. It includes 24 symphonies, 14 operas, and numerous choral works, most of which were never performed. His principal works include the symphonic poems Cyrano de Bergerac and Macbeth, both composed in 1933, as well as a string quartet and a violin sonata with piano, both from 1931, and a piano trio from 1940.