Zofia Lissa i Włodzimierz Iwannikow — polska muzykolog i radziecki kompozytor we wspólnej walce o nowy, lepszy ład

Zofia Lissa and Vladimir Ivannikov — A Polish Musicologist and Soviet Composer Fighting Together for a New, Better Order

Zofia Lissa’s biography contains many well-documented facts, but there are also numerous gaps. These are periods described the least in the known sources: childhood (including her stay in Austria during the First World War) as well as the escape and first months after leaving Lviv (following Germany’s attack on the USSR in 1941). Let us hope that material that will enable us to fill these gaps will be found. However, in addition to complete gaps there is also a lot of incomplete information. It concerns, for example, the period Lissa spent in Moscow. There are more sources dealing with that time, but they have not been studied in detail and this has paved the way for sensational rumours. The present article is an attempt to disperse the fog and clear the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the matter.

The thesis of the article is as follows: throughout her stay in Moscow Lissa, with her customary naivety, worked as best as she could for the benefit of Polish music. Her interests were wide-ranging — from early to contemporary music, with the latter being a subject with which she was particularly familiar. In addition to promoting professional music, Lissa tackled questions relating to the dissemination of music in general. She believed that as a musicologist she had a mission and that the best way to accomplish it was to collaborate closely with composers who would “implement” her guidelines in their music. In this context Lissa’s return to Poland may seem as an attempt to put similar ideas into practice on a much broader scale: from then on she would no longer represent herself but the entire Polish musicology, and one composer would be replaced by the entire Polish Composers’ Union.