Eugeniusz Morawski-Dąbrowa
Eugeniusz Morawski-Dąbrowa was a Polish composer, music educator, and artist. He was born in Warsaw on November 2, 1876, and died there on October 23, 1948. He was buried at Old Powązki Cemetery.
In 1904, he graduated from the Warsaw Music Institute, where he studied composition with Zygmunt Noskowski. He also studied painting at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts. From 1908, he lived in Paris, continuing his musical training in counterpoint with André Gedalge and orchestration with Charles-Marie Chevillard. At the same time, he studied painting and sculpture under Émile Antoine Bourdelle.
In 1930, Morawski-Dąbrowa returned to Poland and became director of the conservatory in Poznań. From 1932 to 1939, he served as rector and professor of orchestration at the Warsaw Conservatory. He was a close friend of the Lithuanian artist and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis.
Morawski-Dąbrowa was a Romantic composer who used Romantic subjects in his programmatic works. His musical language is characterized by spiritual intensity and elevation. Some of his musical heritage was destroyed in Warsaw.
His operas included Lilla Weneda, based on a tragedy by Juliusz Słowacki; Aspasia; Salammbo, based on the novel by Gustave Flaubert; and the unfinished Pan Tadeusz. His ballets included Krak and the Dragon, Love, The Maiden of Lake Świteź, and Gothic Ballet.
His other works included the symphony Prometheus, the oratorio The Divine Comedy, the cantata Kordecki, the Częstochowa Mass, five symphonies including The Flowers of Evil after Charles Baudelaire, and the symphonic poems Don Quixote, Ulalume after Edgar Allan Poe, and Nevermore, based on Poe's poem The Raven. He also wrote piano and violin concertos, chamber works, eight piano sonatas, romances, sacred songs with organ, and music for dramatic theater.
He received the Polish State Music Prize in 1933 for The Maiden of Lake Świteź, the Officer's Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland in 1933, and the Golden Academic Laurels of the Polish Academy of Literature in 1935.