The graphic design of sheet music covers for popular songs by Władysław Szpilman as an example of artistic and publishing practices and cover design evolution

Abstract

This paper discusses the graphic design of sheet music covers for popular songs by Władysław Szpilman, focusing on various decoration patterns and design trends as well as on the evolution of the design of Polish popular sheet music covers.

A selection from a large body of Szpilman’s sheet music is investigated, published before World War II by privatively-owned or cooperative publishers such as Nowa Scena, Arct’s Music Publishing House (Wydawnictwo Muzyczne Arcta), E. Kuthan’s Publishing House (Wydawnictwo E. Kuthana), and Ton, which, after 1945, were displaced by state-owned businesses. The author discusses different decoration styles typical for different periods, e.g. the publicity style, the bordure-vignette style, the lettering-typographic style, and the poster style, exploring the complexities of the processes of ideologizing the role of art (e.g. the different ways of illustrating Socialist Realist period songs for individual customers and for musical groups; Czytelnik’s modest and graphically uniform publications). After World War II, Szpilman was among the proponents of the idea of creating a newspaper-type popular music series, which would keep abreast of the times by publishing music sheets for currently popular songs. At the same time, covers for Szpilman’s sheet music were designed by eminent graphic designers working for the Polish Music Publishing House (Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne): W. Skulicz, J. Bruchnalski, A. Darowski, A. Kowalski, K. Wojtanowicz, and J. Kurkiewicz, among others. After examining a wide variety of sheet music covers, the author identified a number of publishing practices (such as creating a series or a sheet music collection), noticing an aesthetic evolution of cover design for particular publishers and over time (e.g. in the way music for children and adolescents was illustrated), and a migration of modern graphic motifs from other musical genres, such as Sonorism.