already stamped with a clear mark of the composer's ever stronger personality. Despite his accession to the musical avant-garde, Tansman's style was never characterised by any particular radicalism, though he applied polytonality as early as 1916 (The Polish Album) and in the following years strongly contributed to its popularization worldwide. His original style, that has already manifested in the early 1920s – what was especially emphasized after the Paris premiere of his String Quartet no. 2 (1922) – was often characterised as a combination of expressive colouring, intense lyrical qualities and prolific melodic inventiveness with the ideal clarity, aristocratic elegance and precision of structure. A number of French, Belgian, Dutch, German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish and American critics admired his mastery in orchestration, instrumentation and the use of counterpoint. They spoke of the "Tansman phenomenon" and pointed to his sophisticated music language, including such of his trademarks as individual approach to form, where he introduced the so-called "bridges" or "pliers", his own expanded harmonic structures called "Tansman chords" or "the skyscrapers" and later the characteristic Tansmanian rhythmic structures. According to Alejo Carpentier Tansman was "one of the most gifted musical personalities of our times". He was indeed one of these Polish artists whose music truly injected itself into the circulation of the international concert life. It is Tansman – along with Karol Szymanowski, who was fifteen years his senior – who was the first composer to interweave Polish music with a new modern language and aesthetics of the 20th century. However, Tansman went beyond the 19th century musical poetics and German patterns much more than Szymanowski. Moreover, Tansman became the first composer in the history of Polish music, to combine an overt and predominantly classicist orientation with such a wide output and substantial achievements in contemporary art. Tansman always described himself as a Polish composer: "It is obvious that I owe much to France, but anyone who has ever heard my compositions cannot have doubt that I have been, am and forever will be a Polish composer". After Frédéric Chopin, Tansman may be considered as one of the leading proponents of traditional Polish forms such as the mazurka or the polonaise. They were often inspired by and written in homage to Chopin. For these works, which ranged from lighthearted miniatures to virtuoso showpieces, Tansman drew on traditional Polish folk themes, adapted them to his style, thus enriched melodic and harmonic means