Poland Is Not Yet Lost - Music

Music

The melody of the Polish anthem is a lively and rhythmical mazurka. Mazurka as a musical form derives from the stylization of traditional melodies for the folk dances of Masovia, a region in central Poland. It is characterized by a triple meter and strong accents placed irregularly on the second or third beat. Considered one of Poland's national dances in pre-partition times, it owes its popularity in 19th-century West European ballrooms to the mazurkas of Frédéric Chopin.

The composer of Mazurek Dąbrowskiego is unknown. The melody is most probably Wybicki's adaptation of a folk tune that had already been popular during the second half of the 18th century. The composition used to be erroneously attributed to Michał Kleofas Ogiński who was known to have written a march for Dąbrowski's legions. Several historians confused Ogiński's Marche pour les Légions polonaises ("March for the Polish Legions") with Wybicki's mazurka, possibly due to the mazurka's chorus "March, march, Dąbrowski", until Ogiński's sheet music for the march was discovered in 1938 and proven to be a different piece of music than Poland's national anthem.

The first composer, who used the anthem for an artistical music piece, was Karol Kurpiński. In 1821 he composed his piano/organ Fugue on "Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła" (it was published in 1821 in Warsaw; the first modern edition by Rostislaw Wygranienko was printed only in 2009).

Wojciech Sowiński was the next who arranged Mazurek Dąbrowskiego for the piano. The arrangement, accompanied by the lyrics in Polish and French, was published 1829 in Paris. The current official musical score of the national anthem was arranged by Kazimierz Sikorski and published by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Sikorski's harmonization allows for each vocal version to be performed either a cappella or together with any of the instrumental versions. Some orchestra parts, marked in the score as ad libitum, may be left out or replaced by other instruments of equivalent musical scale.

In 1908, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, later to become the first Prime Minister of independent Poland, quoted the anthem in a disguised way in his Symphony in B minor "Polonia". He scored it in duple meter rather than its standard triple meter.