Adam Harasowski

Adam Jerzy Harasowski (16 September 1904 – 16 June 1996) was a Polish composer, conductor, pianist, Frédéric Chopin scholar, mechanical engineer, and polyglot. From 1939, he lived in the United Kingdom. He served as a technical officer in the Polish Air Force and subsequently as an officer and instructor in the Royal Air Force. Harasowski conducted Polish and British choral and operatic ensembles and authored works promoting Polish music to English-speaking audiences. He was married to the publisher and journalist Jadwiga Harasowska.

Biography

Pre-war period

Adam Jerzy Harasowski was born in Deliatyn. He was the son of (1872–1945), a physician with diverse interests that included music, and Roberta Nałęcz-Udrycka. On his father's side, he was related to (1823–1892), the author of the first biography of Frédéric Chopin. He was also the brother-in-law of the composer Tadeusz Szeligowski (1896–1963).

Harasowski completed his matura exams in Nowy Sącz. Between 1923 and 1929, he studied at the conservatory of the Polish Music Society in Lviv, where he was a student of . To support himself during this period, he performed as a piano accompanist for silent films. He subsequently received private lessons in composition from Karol Szymanowski. In 1927, he met G. K. Chesterton.

At the recommendation of Adam Sołtys, Harasowski composed incidental choral music drawn from classical Greek drama for a production of Sophocles' Antigone, using a modern Polish translation by Tadeusz Węclewski. In 1928, his work Obrona Lwowa (Defense of Lviv), a setting of a text by Artur Oppman for male choir and orchestra, was awarded second prize in a competition held by the Polish Singing Society "Echo-Macierz" in Lviv.

Harasowski began piano lessons at the age of five and belonged to the Lviv piano school of Karol Mikuli, a direct link to the lineage of Chopin.

Concurrently with his musical studies, Harasowski enrolled at the Mechanical Faculty of Lviv Polytechnic, graduating in 1931 with a diploma "in the field of machine and motion sciences". During his studies, he undertook annual internships abroad, including in Sweden (1929), France (1930), and England (Balderton in 1927 and 1930; Basingstoke in 1928). While in Balderton, he formed a friendship with Rita and Fred Wand, who later assisted him upon his arrival in England in late 1939. The group's traditions were later continued (from 1946) by the Academic Choir of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. The choir embraced the traditional Polish choral motto: "Through song to the heart, through the heart to the Fatherland". In 1927, it performed at events commemorating the 77th birthday of Czechoslovak Tomáš Masaryk. In May 1929, Harasowski's composition Lwów (Lviv), sung by the choir, "received a positive reception" at the Pan-Slavic Congress of Singers in Poznań. in Katowice. A concert in May 1937 featuring works by under his direction was described in contemporary reviews as "a refined musical event", and Harasowski "proved to be an excellent conductor". The "Echo" choir broadcast on Polish Radio, presenting programs of Polish folk songs alongside English repertoire. In 1935, he composed the song Do polskiego morza (To the Polish Sea), with text by .

Harasowski maintained correspondence with Bolesław Wallek-Walewski, a conductor and director of the Conservatory of the Musical Society in Kraków. In 1938, he married Jadwiga Zbrożek, who worked as editorial secretary for the Kraków-based publishing house Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny and collaborated with Marian Dąbrowski. where he presented a paper on the Polish foundry industry. The paper was subsequently published in 1940 in the British Foundry Trade Journal and noted in a German specialist publication.

Wartime period

Following the outbreak of World War II, Harasowski, as a Polish officer, was interned in late September 1939 in a prisoner-of-war camp in Balş, Romania. There he met , author of the song Modlitwa Obozowa (Camp Prayer), known also as Modlitwa AK, Modlitwa partyzancka, or by its opening line O Panie, któryś jest na niebie. Harasowski arranged the song for male choir, and the arrangement was performed at a soldiers' concert on the second Sunday of October 1939. The piece subsequently gained popularity among the Polish Armed Forces in the West and in the Polish resistance, and it continues to be performed. Commonly referred to as the song of the 2nd Polish Corps, it is incorporated into the liturgy of Polish émigré parishes for commemorative and funeral services.

Harasowski and his wife Jadwiga arrived in Glasgow, Scotland, in early 1940, where they "engaged in efforts to foster Polish-Scottish cultural relations". Jadwiga owned the Książnica Polska publishing house until 1953, The couple jointly authored a practical guide for Polish servicemen on British social customs and daily life.

Harasowski composed and arranged numerous works aimed at both Polish military personnel and British audiences, primarily to familiarize English-speaking listeners with Polish musical traditions; accordingly, much of this output was in English. On 27 September 1943, the 95th anniversary of Frédéric Chopin's recital in Glasgow, he appeared as solo pianist in a commemorative concert organised by Jadwiga, held in the same venue and at the same hour as the historic performance.

Harasowski served as the fourth conductor of the Polish Armed Forces in the West Choir, succeeding , , and Otto Schaffer. Under his direction and over seven years, the ensemble presented more than 600 concerts across England, Scotland, and Wales. He also led the Frédéric Chopin Choir, established in Scotland in 1940 by .

As a technical officer in the Polish Air Force, Harasowski specialised in aero-engine construction and aircraft instrumentation. He was employed at various British military aviation establishments, principally for an extended period at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough. as well as the British Defence Medal and the War Medal 1939–1945. He assumed responsibility for aircraft technical maintenance at RAF St. Athan in Wales. Between 1949 and 1952, he was posted to British air bases in Habbaniya (Iraq), Amman (Jordan), and Mauripur (Pakistan), before returning to postings in England at RAF Topcliffe, Swinderby, and again St. Athan.

During his Near East service, he studied Arabic. Harasowski was a polyglot,

From 1958 to 1980, he resided in Balderton, a district of Newark-on-Trent. Between 1958 and his retirement in 1970, he was employed as an engineer at Worthington-Simpson Ltd., a manufacturer of marine pumps where he had previously undertaken pre-war internships. He directed the company's translation office and an in-house design school for engineers. In 1961, the society's choir, under his direction, performed excerpts from the opera Halka with symphony orchestra, using an English translation. His arrangements of Polish songs with English texts were included in a music album issued repeatedly in the United States.

Adam Harasowski's main work was the monograph The Skein of Legends Around Chopin, published in Glasgow in 1967. focusing especially on controversies surrounding the letters allegedly exchanged between Chopin and Delfina Potocka, which had implied an intimate relationship. Harasowski categorised Chopin scholarship into "works that propagated legends and those that debunked them". The volume included a foreword by Arthur Hedley and was reprinted in New York in 1977 and 1980. It received an extensive review in the London-based journal Wiadomości in 1968, and is considered a classic in the field. A debate between Harasowski and Hedley on the authenticity of the letters was broadcast on BBC Two on 21 April 1968. A portion of his subsequent, unfinished book on Chopin's music appeared in English in 1981.

Harasowski contributed numerous articles on Chopin's work to periodicals including Music and Musicians, Piano Quarterly, The Musical Times, and the Polish journal Ruch Muzyczny, as well as popularising pieces in Wiadomości. He corresponded on Chopin-related topics with scholars such as Arthur Hedley, Maurice Brown, Jerzy Waldorff, Krystyna Kobylańska, and Nicolas Slonimsky; Brown regarded him as "one of the leading authorities in England" on Chopin. In 1970, Harasowski and his wife Jadwiga established the London Chopin Society and the Scottish-Polish Chopin Circle in Edinburgh. and moved to Rownhams, near Southampton. He continued active involvement in the local Polish community, including events of the Polish Club, charitable concerts titled "To Poland with Love", and the Southampton New Music Weeks. In 1989, he was awarded an honorary diploma by the for his contributions to promoting and preserving Chopin's heritage. and was buried in Newark-on-Trent cemetery. Following his death, Joyce Harasowska donated the archives of both Jadwiga and Adam to the Emigration Archive at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, where they remain a resource for researchers. One historian of wartime and postwar Polish-Scottish-English relations has noted that "Jadwiga née Zbrożek and Adam Harasowski certainly deserve a separate monograph".