Much ado about Chopin. Discussion in the Warsaw press from 1830

• Authors: Mirosław Strzyżewski
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

During his Warsaw period, the music of the young Chopin was enthusiastically and even feverishly received. And it drew considerably interest from the critics. However, attention should be drawn to the crucial cultural factors that largely determined the quality of that critical reflection. Above all, this was a quite specific period in the history of the nation. The language o f criticism gives a fair reflection of moods in the country: growing patriotic emotions, freedom rhetoric and Romantic spirituality. Added to this, Polish music criticism (in contrast to German criticism) had yet to develop distinctive forms of discourse, but was still seeking a suitable language for the description of music. One may even gain the impression that music criticism was maturing together with the young virtuoso and offering a “youthful” discourse strung out between literary metaphor depicting the scale of listeners’ emotions and impressions and specialist description of playing and composition technique. One also notes a growing tension between “amateurs” and “professionals”, leading to polemic and discussion. It was a most interesting period in the history of Polish critical reflection, one which obliges the scholar to maintain a broad humanistic perspective over the many cultural phenomena of that time (philosophical, literary, artistic and political) which helped to forge the spirituality of Polish romanticism.

Keywords

PL

history o f criticism; history of aesthetics; discourse; critical language; Chopin reception; Warsaw culture prior to the November Rising

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
• Year: 2010
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 19-30

Dates

published

2018-10-17

Contributors

author

Mirosław Strzyżewski

• associate professor of the Institute of Polish Literature of Copernicus University in Toruń, a literary historian and editor, head of the School of Textology and the Editing of Literary Works, director of Toruń university’s academic publishing firm, and author of Działalność krytyczna Maurycego Mochnackiego [The critical work of Maurycy Mochnacki] (Toruń, 1994), Michał Podczaszyński. Zapomniany romantyk [Michał Podczaszyński. A forgotten Romantic] (Toruń, 1999), Maurycy Mochnacki. Rozprawy literackie [Maurycy Mochnacki. Literary essays] (Wrocław, Kraków and Warszawa, 2000; in the series Biblioteka Narodowa), Mickiewicz wśród krytyków. Studia o przemianach i formach romantycznej krytyki w Polsce [Mickiewicz and his critics. Studies of the forms o f Romantic criticism in Poland and its changes] (Toruń, 2001), Henryk Elzenberg i literatura [Henryk Elzenberg and literature] (Toruń, 2003), Romantyczna nieskończoność. Studium identyfikacji pojęcia [Romantic infinity. Identifying the notion] (Toruń, 2010), Romantyczne sfery muzykalne. Literackie konteksty idei „musica instrumentalis” [Romantic musical spheres. Literary contexts of the idea of “musica instrumentalis”] (Toruń, 2010) and scholarly director of the collective volumes Polska krytyka literacka w XIX w. [Polish literary criticism in the nineteenth century] (Toruń, 2005), Z warsztatu edytora dzieł romantyków [On the editing of Romantic works] (Toruń, 2008) and Rozmaitości warsztatowe [A craftsman’s miscellany] (Toruń, 2010); author of many essays, articles, reviews and sketches of literary criticism.