Did Szymanowski foresee ambient music? Testing the ‘design thinking’ method

Abstract

This article proposes looking at Karol Szymanowski’s Słopiewnie from the perspective of ambient music, characteristic of modern times. The retrospective character of this thesis is expressive of free interpretation, going beyond the sphere of traditional analyses of Szymanowski’s work. It is the result of the application of the design thinking method in the field of music analysis, breaking with traditional approaches. This method is used to design innovative solutions for business and social services, but it has not previously been used in music analysis. The author uses a five-stage design thinking model based on the following phases: empathising, defining the problem, generating ideas, building prototypes, testing. She also uses re-framing the problem, brainstorming, storyboard and 5xwhy as supporting methods. She discovers areas of Słopiewnie that have not been analysed so far, close to ambient music, such as forging a specific atmosphere, immersion in sound, landscape, visualisation, permanence, duration and naturally shaped music, relating them to specific features of Julian Tuwim’s poetic text as a linguistic experiment, in which the poet addresses not the readers’ intellect, but their senses, using neologisms.