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1

Chopin on the cinema screen. Aesthetic and cultural determinants

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Kornacki K.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

317-342

PL

As with most film subjects, the way Chopin has been presented in the cinema has been the result of a particular poetic (depending on the genre) and cultural context. The author classifies cinematographic Chopinalia on the basis of the former determinant, although without neglecting entirely, in some sections of the text, to treat film as a text of culture. The clear majority of documentary and educational films about Chopin have been made in Poland (as a form of promotion for the country, which does not boast too many icons of world culture). For both aesthetic and cultural reasons, the boundary between documentary and educational film has become blurred. Historical documentaries have used the same iconographic material, film shots and utterances, and also - for the purposes of musical illustration - the same Chopinworks as educational films. Cultural considerations have affected the thematic restrictions in respect to silver screen discourse about Chopin: in both genres, it reflects a rather stereotypical approach to the composer’s life story, with no room for the “Chopin mysteries” (e.g. his fascination with Tytus Woyciechowski) that have long been addressed in the literature. In experimental and animated film, the accent has been shifted - in keeping with the essence of those genres - from Chopin’s biography to his music. Nevertheless, here too the pressure of cultural (national) context has determined the choice of film material accompanying particular works. At the same time, experimental films have become anti-war or political films (as in the case of Eugeniusz C^kalski’s Utwory Chopina w kolorze [Chopin’s works in colour], from 1944 or Andrzej Panufnik’s Bailada f moll [Ballade in F minor], from 1945), whilst the presentation of Chopin’s music in animated films has been full of iconographic clichés and pleonasms (a Mazovian landscape with cleft willows, carriages speeding along in the background, dancing ballerinas, falling leaves and so on), creating a schematic visual code that is automatically associated with the compositions of the brilliant Pole. By way of contrast, it is worth emphasising that a few foreign experimental films (Max Ophiils’s La Valse Brillante de Chopin, Germaine Dulac’s Dysk 927) have illustrated Chopin’s music with images of “universal” objects (piano, gramophone, rain) associated more with music than with feelings, and not with Poland. The dozen or so feature films about Chopin have mainly belonged to popular cinema. For that reason, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the film-makers have turned to biographical facts which possess a suitable dramatic potential. Feature films about Chopin have treated history as a background - a costume in which to dress a tale about universal cultural myths: the myth of love (the relationship with George Sand, which has dominated Chopin films), the pseudo-Romantic myth of the great artist and the patriot myth (prime examples being Charles Vidor’s A Song to Remember and Jerzy Antczak’s Chopin. Pragnienie miłości [Chopin. Desire for love]). Some films - albeit few in number - have adopted a different strategy. One such picture attempted to exploit Chopin’s life story to exemplify Marxist historiosophy and a socialist- realist poetic (Aleksander Ford’s Młodość Chopina [Chopin’s youth]); another- Andrzej Żulawski’s Błękitna nuta [La note bleue] - is a truly original picture about the composer and, like almost every original film, tells us as much about the director as about Chopin himself.

2

Chopin and jazz. The case of Andrzej Jagodziński’s arrangement ofthe Prelude in E minor

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Madeła P.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

371-382

PL

The current of jazz interpretations of Chopin’s music appeared in Polish jazz in the early 1990s. On the one hand, it is the most original and native stylistic trend of all trends influencing jazz in Poland. On the other, it is an exceptional phenomenon internationally, since no works of classical music have received so many jazz arrangements worldwide. The achievements of Polish jazz pianists in this regard have become most representative, since piano texture and the process of improvisation on a given theme show the most obvious references - not only musically, but also emotionally- to the musical language of Chopin. The recording of the award-winning album Chopin by the Andrzej Jagodziński Trio in December 1993 triggered a host of artistic arrangements of Chopin works by Polish jazz pianists, each of which constitutes an individual approach to the Chopin material, reflected in basic factors such as the criteria for the selection of compositions or themes and the process of the original’s transformation. Most jazz arrangements of Chopin’s music involve the piano miniatures that dominate the composer’s oeuvre. This is due to the clarity of the melodic lines, which inspire artists to turn them into themes for jazz standards. The Prelude in E minor, Op. 28 No. 4 has become the most frequently arranged piece of Chopin’s music in the field of jazz. The numerous arrangements are also stylistically diverse. Jagodziński’s arrangement is an example of this pattern being adapted for use in a jazz context. For him, the themes and mood of Chopin’s music have become a pretext for the creation of his own jazz compositions largely inspired by Chopin’s melodies and harmonies, but also by symmetrical form. Arrangements of Chopin’s music have been continually criticised by purists, who regard such procedures as a sort of profanation (any patriotic content in Chopin’s original compositions seems to vanish in the chaos of jazz improvisation, which disturbs the integral form of the originals). The basic problem here seems to be ignorance of the fact that Chopin’s music is essentially only a pretext, a kind of external emblem, for the creation of entirely new compositions, carrying different content, characterised by the author’s individuality.

3

Chopin and Polish FOLK

100%

Dahlig-Turek E.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

343-356

PL

Although Chopin’s music is continually analysed within the context of its affinities with traditional folk music, no one has any doubt that these are two separate musical worlds, functioning in different contexts and with different participants, although similarly alien to the aesthetic of mass culture. For a present-day listener, used to the global beat, music from beyond popular circulation must be “translated” into a language he/she can understand; this applies to both authentic folk music and the music of the great composer. In the early nineties, when folk music was flourishing in Poland (I extend the term “folk” to all contemporary phenomena of popular music that refer to traditional music), one could hardly have predicted that it would help to revive seemingly doomed authentic traditional music, and especially that it would also turn to Chopin. It is mainly the mazurkas that are arranged. Their performance in a manner stylised on traditional performance practice is intended to prove their essentially “folk” character. The primary factor facilitating their relatively unproblematic transformation is their descendental triple-time rhythms. The celebrations of the bicentenary of the birth of Fryderyk Chopin, with its scholarly and cultural events of various weight geared towards the whole of society, gave rise to further attempts at transferring the great composer’s music from the domain of elite culture to popular culture, which brings one to reflect on the role that folk music might play in the transmission and assimilation of artistic and traditional genres.

4

Jak Norwid projektował swój powrót zza grobu

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Fabianowski A.

Przegląd Humanistyczny

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2017

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vol. 61(4 (459))

19-28

PL

In the Romantic period, death and resurrection belonged to the most important categories of artistic reflection. Norwid also explored the thanatic and resurrection topics, however he was more interested in the aesthetic dimension than the theological aspect of returning from beyond the grave, namely how the values of truth, goodness and beauty initially become the cause of the artist’s suffering to become later a guarantee of his immortality. From the first emigration poem titled “Adam Krafft” till late works, the poet presented the fate of artists and the works they created as the operative substance for testing the destruction and rebirth principle. Norwid believed that his work, which transcended the rigid confines and obsessions of its own era, would resurrect in the future.

5

The Role of Jane Wilhelmina Stirling in Fryderyk Chopin’s Life and in Preserving Memory and Legacy of the Composer

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Pieńkowska P.

Kwartalnik Młodych Muzykologów UJ

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2017

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issue 1(32) Eng

5-27

EN

The role of Jane Wilhelmina Stirling in Fryderyk Chopin’s life as well as in preserving his legacy is nowadays underestimated. Jane Stirling was not only Chopin’s pupil, but also his patron. She organized a concert tour to England and Scotland for him and tried to support the composer financially. Moreover, she defrayed the costs of the composer’s funeral and erecting his gravestone. After his death, she focused on what Chopin had left passing away. It is thought that she purchased most of the items from his last flat; she acquired also the last piano the composer had played. She tried to protect the autograph manuscripts he had left, and attempted to arrange the publication of compositions that had been retained only in a sketch form.

6

Życzenie

100%

Stawicka E.

Głos Prawa. Przegląd Prawniczy Allerhanda

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2020

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vol. 3

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issue 1(5)

232-235

EN

Another column by attorney Ewa Stawicka. This time it is devoted to the situation related to musical culture, the Chopin Competition canceled due to COVID-19, and to Chopin and the protection of his heritage. The column features graphics created by Judge Arkadiusz Krupa.

7

Napłakać się z Chopinem. Stefana Witwickiego śpiew przez łzy

89%

Łoboz M.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

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2017

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issue 7(10)

363-379

EN

The article focuses on the artistic collaboration of the Romantic poet Stefan Witwicki with Frederic Chopin. Chopin’s compositions called Polish Songs (op.74) are the most noteworthy example of the correspondence of music and literature in Polish Romanticism. The first seven songs inspired by Witwicki’s lyrics were created between 1828 and 1831 (the composer, however, had never played them during his concerts). The fact that Chopin’s songs combine both the sentimental and the insurgent tradition is essential for the understanding of the compositions. The interpretation of the selected poems of Witwicki shows that one can distinguish at least three types of nostalgia present in his works. They are as follows: nostalgic love, the nostalgic feeling connected with the collapse of the November Uprising and nostalgia caused by parting with family. It was observed that Chopin and Witwicki easily succumbed to the feeling of nostalgia. Witwicki dedicated his Pastoral Songs to Chopin in 1830 and the composer began to write music for ten of Witwicki’s songs. His first composition was called The Wish. After leaving Warsaw, Chopin continued his work and composed A Fickle Maid, The Messenger, The Warrior, Drinking Song, Witchcraft. Other songs such as Troubled Waters, The Bridesgroom Return, The Ring, and Spring were written in Paris in the years 1838 – 1840. Witwicki’s death in 1847 came as a great shock for Chopin, he often complained about his loneliness. The close relationship of Chopin and Witwicki manifested itself not only in their artistic collaboration but also in their private lives.

8

Chopin, polska kultura narodowa a kwestia „czystości rasy”: głos Zofii Lissy w debacie wokół kwestii rasowych w latach 1930.

89%

Tuchowski A.

Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny

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2021

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vol. 19

90-103

EN

The question of racial “purity” or “identity” was part of the fashionable discussion on human races in the 1930s. In 1938 a debate over Chopin’s “racial identity” took place in the Warsaw press, triggered by the publication a book entitled Polacy-chrześcijanie pochodzenia żydowskiego [Poles – Christians of Jewish Origin] by Mateusz Mieses, an outstanding Judaist and representative of one of Poland’s Jewish communities. Mieses’ aim was to familiarise the Polish reader with the very little-known scale on which the ethnically Jewish element had penetrated over the many centuries into the families of the Polish landed gentry, intelligentsia and even aristocracy. As a result, Mieses claimed, many eminent Poles known in Polish history had some Jewish blood in their veins. In addition to the more or less convincing examples of such assimilation, Mieses also quotes some rather dubious ones, including the genealogy of Chopin. On the basis of unconfirmed rumours and the composer’s facial features in some unidentified portrait he claims that Chopin was half Jewish through his mother Justyna Krzyżanowska. Mieses’ conclusions - as well as his entire methodology - were sharply criticised by the reviewer of Wiadomości Literackie as well as by Zofia Lissa, at that time a young scholar at the threshold of a brilliant musicological career. Lissa pointed out that establishing Chopin’s “racial affiliation” is difficult for a lack of reliable and objective sources. For a long time all images of Chopin available to researchers had been either portraits or sculptures, which - as artistic creations - used to deform his face. However, Lissa argued that most of his portraits point to his Dinaric characteristics, which were also confirmed by the two surviving real-life likenesses of the composer (referred to by the author as “racially unprejudiced” sources) - namely, his death mask and the only surviving daguerreotype. Taking into account the findings of contemporary (mainly German) anthropology, Lissa concluded that Chopin was a typical Dinaric with some Nordic features, and it was from his mother that Fryderyk inherited his few physical traits characteristic of that type. On the other hand, Lissa denied that there was any connection between Chopin’s music and his “racial identity”. It seems a paradoxical that Lissa - a scholar of Jewish descent - drew on Nazi theories formulated by German anthropologists to show that Chopin had no demonstrable Jewish ancestors. But if we place this debate in the context of its time, and of one specific period in the ideological and scholarly evolution of Zofia Lissa herself - things do not look so simple any more. Her emphasis on the role of the social environment and her rejection of Eichenauer’s theses concerning the impact of “race” on the character of music testify to Lissa’s intensifying links to the Marxist-Leninist ideology, which she most likely began to absorb in that very period.

PL

Modne w latach 30. XX wieku rozważania na temat właściwości ras ludzkich obejmowały również kwestie „czystości”, względnie „tożsamości rasowej”. W 1938 roku tego rodzaju debata pojawiła się w związku z postacią Chopina, stanowiącego w okresie międzywojennym główną ikonę polskiej kultury narodowej. Debata ta miała miejsce na łamach warszawskiej prasy za sprawą książki Polacy-chrześcijanie pochodzenia żydowskiego Mateusza Miesesa - wybitnego judaisty, przedstawiciela jednego z polskich środowisk żydowskich. Mieses podjął określoną tytułem tematykę ze względu na znikomy stopień wiedzy na temat skali wielowiekowego przenikania etnicznego żywiołu żydowskiego do polskich rodzin ziemiańskich, inteligenckich, a nawet arystokratycznych. Obok mniej lub bardziej przekonujących przykładów asymilacji, znaleźć można w książce Miesesa wiele tez podjętych pochopnie, czego przykładem jest wzmianka na temat genealogii rodziny Chopina. Opierając się na niesprawdzonych pogłoskach oraz na wyglądzie twarzy kompozytora, przedstawionej na bliżej nieokreślonym portrecie, Mieses wnioskuje, iż poprzez matkę - Justynę Krzyżanowską - wpisuje się Chopin w szerokie grono tych luminarzy polskiej kultury narodowej, którzy mieli w sobie „domieszkę żydowskiej krwi”. W dyskusji, jaka rozgorzała na łamach „Wiadomości Literackich”, głos zabrała Zofia Lissa - wówczas młoda uczona, będąca na progu błyskotliwej kariery naukowej. Wskazawszy na zawodność portretów, postanowiła Lissa oprzeć się na źródłach „nieuprzedzonych rasowo”, a więc na zachowanym dagerotypie i masce pośmiertnej. Na tej podstawie, posiłkując się osiągnięciami ówczesnej (głównie niemieckiej) antropologii, dokonała ustaleń zaprzeczających tezom Miesesa i określiła Chopina jako typowego dynara z domieszką cech nordyckich, odziedziczonych po matce. Lektura powyższego tekstu może dziś budzić zdumienie. Na pierwszy rzut oka zakrawa na paradoks, że badaczka wywodząca się ze społeczności żydowskiej - i przyszła komunistka - odwołuje się do teorii nazistowskich antropologów niemieckich (Hans Günther), aby dowieść, że nic nie wskazuje na to, iżby Chopin miał przodków pochodzenia żydowskiego. Jednak wpisując tę debatę w realia epoki, a także w określony punkt na drodze ideologicznych przemian w życiu samej Lissy, widać, że sprawa nie jest tak prosta. Podkreślenie wpływu środowiska, z jednoczesnym zaprzeczeniem tez Eichenauera o wpływie „rasy” na charakter twórczości muzycznej, świadczy o krystalizującym się - prawdopodobnie właśnie w tym czasie - wchodzeniu Lissy w orbitę ideologii marksistowsko-leninowskiej.

9

Chopin as Romantic narrator (in his youth)

88%

Nowicka J. C.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

69-82

PL

One can find the same features in Chopin’s correspondence as in his music. They share a wealth of emotions, expressivity and lightness, and also narrative and speech-like qualities. Far from programmicity and illustrative explicitness, Chopin the composer articulates musical content with an almost verbal force of transmission; his letters, meanwhile, bear the same distinct stamp of his personality that marks out his piano works. In both domains, Chopin may be called a narrator, but particularly interesting proves to be analysis of his correspondence, from the point of view of the narration of a Romantic ironical poem. Although one would be hard pressed to speak of an exact equivalence, it is worth taking into account the strong subjectivity, combined with irony and the writer’s self-irony, but above all his affinity with Schlegelian Romantic irony. This notion is of fundamental significance for changes to the subject in Romantic poetry and for the emergence of the form of the ironical poem. The creativeness of the text, the exposure of the subject, digressions, humour, leaps of thought and style, and a variability and transformation of content - those are just some of the characteristics of the ironical narrator. Also crucial to these considerations is the Romantic aesthetic of the fragment.

10

Chopin na barykadach, czyli o socrealistycznych narracjach w 1949 roku1

88%

Bruliński M.

Kwartalnik Młodych Muzykologów UJ

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2018

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issue 1(36)

75-109

EN

The main aim of this paper is to examine the discourse on Frédéric Chopin that took place in Poland in 1949, when the 100th anniversary of his birth coincided with the culmination of the socialist realist propaganda in the field of Polish culture. The discourse, initiated and moderated under effective surveillance of the Polish People’s Republic’s government, was filled with communist ideology. The authorities aimed at creating a sense of communion in the Polish nation, therefore they undertook numerous actions in the area of cultivating memory of Chopin and reception of his works. The composer was used as a banner under which culture of socialist realism was to be consolidated. Chopin was presented by the narrators in the socialist realist context in various dimensions. “Deep humanism”, “truth”, “optimism”, “sincerity” and “democratic features” of Chopin’s music were the crucial notions used by them. Chopin was depicted, among others, as a revolutionist and a prophet of triumph of communism. The oeuvre of Chopin was said to bring together “fraternal countries and nations”, Polish People’s Republic and Soviet Union, while being simultaneously a crucial element of class conflict. The authorities had a tendency to overemphasize folk roots of his compositions, thus among musical genres composed by Chopin the importance of Mazurka was exaggerated. Other genres without such strong folk connotations, as sonatas, ballades and scherzos, were marginalized in the discourse.

11

Chopin on Barricades: About the 100th Anniversary of Chopin’s Birth (1949) and Socialist Realism Doctrine in Poland1

88%

Bruliński M.

Kwartalnik Młodych Muzykologów UJ

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2018

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issue 1(36) Eng

77-114

EN

The main aim of this paper is to examine the discourse on Frédéric Chopin that took place in Poland in 1949, when the 100th anniversary of his birth coincided with the culmination of the socialist realist propaganda in the field of Polish culture. The discourse, initiated and moderated under effective surveillance of the Polish People’s Republic’s government, was filled with communist ideology. The authorities aimed at creating a sense of communion in the Polish nation, therefore they undertook numerous actions in the area of cultivating memory of Chopin and reception of his works. The composer was used as a banner under which the culture of socialist realism was to be consolidated. Chopin was presented by the narrators in the socialist realist context in various dimensions. “Deep humanism”, “truth”, “optimism”, “sincerity” and “democratic features” of Chopin’s music were the crucial notions used by them. Chopin was depicted, among others, as a revolutionist and a prophet of triumph of communism. The oeuvre of Chopin was said to bring together “fraternal countries and nations”, Polish People’s Republic and Soviet Union, while being simultaneously a crucial element of class conflict. The authorities had a tendency to overemphasize folk roots of his compositions, thus among musical genres composed by Chopin the importance of Mazurka was exaggerated. Other genres without such strong folk connotations, as sonatas, ballades and scherzos, were marginalized in the discourse.

12

Literature reflecting on Frederic Chopin’s visits to the spa towns of western Czechia

87%

Martinek L.

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2019

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vol. 52

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issue 1

325-344

PL

Fryderyk Chopin związany jest z Czechami poprzez liczne wizyty w tamtejszych uzdrowiskach (Karlowe Wary, Praga, Děčín, Cieplice i Marienbad). W Czechach poznał i zakochał się nieszczęśliwie w Marii Wodzińskiej. W Pradze zapoznał się z Václavem Hanką, reprezentującym czeskie odrodzenie narodowe, a także ze słynnymi kompozytorami tamtych czasów. Kompozytor został zaproszony do koncertowania w kilku czeskich zamkach; otrzymał szczególnie ciepłe powitanie w Děčínie. Jego nauczyciele muzyki w Warszawie byli pochodzenia czeskiego. Liczne relacje Chopina z Czechami przyczyniły się do powstania Towarzystwa Fryderyka Chopina, międzynarodowego festiwalu odbywającego się w Mariańskich Łaźniach (dawniej Marienbad), a także do organizacji sympozjów muzycznych. Osoba i twórczość Chopina zainspirowała licznych czeskich twórców i artystów (m.in. Kamila Bednářa, Jiří Karena, Josefa Páveka, Oldřicha Zemka oraz Vladislava Mareša). Uzupełniający charakter mają uwagi dotyczące interpretacji relacji między literaturą a muzyką w twórczości polskich pisarzy (m.in. Jarosława Iwaszkiewicza, Tadeusza Łopalewskiego, Marii Kuncewiczowej, Juliusza Kadena-Bandrowskiego).

EN

The composer Frederic Chopin is connected with Czechia through a number of visits (in Carlsbad, Prague, Děčín, Teplice, and Marienbad) which he spent joyfully meeting his family, who lived in the Russian-occupied Poland. In Czechia, he met and fell deeply in love with Maria Wodzińska, who, unfortunately, did not reciprocate his feelings. In Prague, he became acquainted with Czech national revivalists (Václav Hanka, among others) and with famous composers of the time. In Vienna, the centre of the Habsburg monarchy, he met many Czech composers and befriended the violinist Josef Slavík. Chopin was invited to play in several Czech castles; he received a particularly warm welcome in Děčín. His music teachers in Warsaw were of Czech origin. Chopin’s numerous relationships with Czechia inspired the establishment of the Frederic Chopin Society, the international festival held in Mariánské Lázně (formerly Marienbad), and even musicological symposia. Many Czechs – poets, fiction writers, literary historians, musicians, and music scholars – emphasised how Chopin and his music influenced them. They were inspired by the many notable facts associated with Chopin’s visits and experiences in Czechia and in other locations throughout the Austrian Empire; by his romantic life, democratic thinking, personal qualities, and artistic skills. Various interesting literary works include poetry collections by Kamil Bednář, Jiří Karen, Josef Pávek, Oldřich Zemek, Karla Erbová, and a collection of three novellas by Vladislav Mareš. Apart from writing about Czech Chopin-related works and translating key Polish chopiniana into Czech, the author of this study focuses mainly on the interpretation of the relations between literature and music in the works of the these Polish writers: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Tadeusz Łopalewski, Janina Siwkowska, Maria Kuncewiczowa, Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski, Jerzy Broszkiewicz, Mira Jaworczakowa and more.

13

The play of nerves. Chopin in the era of mental disorder

75%

Okulicz-Kozaryn R.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

177-194

PL

This article concerns the neurotic image of Chopin that took shape in the 1880s and became popular during the Young Poland period. At that time, features highlighted from earlier descriptions of the composer’s character - over-sensitivity, over-sentimentality, excessive delicacy, emotional instability and inner complexity - were most spectacularly portrayed in the works of painters and sculptors such as Władysław Podkowiński, Wojciech Weiss, Bolesław Biegas and the designer of the monument in the Łazienki Royal Baths Park in Warsaw - Wacław Szymanowski. Critics and writers also helped to form the new portrait of the composer: Stanisław Przybyszewski, Cezary Jellenta, Wacław Nałkowski and Antoni Potocki. Their utterances allow us to grasp the dependency of the new picture on the theory of neuroses, advanced in 1881 by George Miller Beard and then developed and popularised during the last quarter of the nineteenth century by Richard Kraff-Ebing and Paolo Mantegazza, among others. Nervousness was considered to be the dominated feature of modern civilisation. These concepts were also influential in music criticism. Representatives of nervousness in music proved to be the Richards - Wagner and Strauss - and also Juliusz Zarębski and Ignacy Jan Paderewski. The latter, in a speech from 1911, depicted Chopin implicitly in terms of nervousness, which was also becoming a feature of the Polish national character. However, theories of neuroses were applied first and foremost to the individual psyche. The fundamental inner conflict of modern man, exposed to a surfeit of external stimuli, supposedly arose between the over-developed brain and the rest of the nervous system, as the centre of feelings and will. And it was the paresis of emotions and volition that brought a growth in the role of music, which, depending on a particular author’s assessment, either was itself the result and expression of nervous disturbance and contributed to the further deepening of the process of destruction (the stance of Antoni Sygietyński) or else filled the space left by subordinated emotions and enabled them to rebuild (the opinion of the novelist Eliza Orzeszkowa). The view of Chopin as a eulogist of new sensitivity was made manifest in Maurice Rollinat’s volume of poetry Les Nervoses, which caused quite a stir in the mid 1880s, and it was represented in Poland by Zenon Przesmycki’s Życie, and a philosophical treatise by Jean-Marie Guyau published in that periodical in 1887.

14

Accents of Chopin anniversaries in territories annexed by Prussia

75%

Piotrowska M.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

165-176

PL

This article discusses the way in which the Chopin Year of 1910 was celebrated in Wielkopolska. It presents a script prepared in the nineteenth century and shows similarities with celebrations of Mickiewicz and other Polish heroes and artists. Invariably used in such commemorations was a “symbolic capital” that made it easier to create an intergenerational code, thereby disseminating knowledge of national culture and history. A significant role was played in 1910 by a centenary panel, which produced “Guidelines for popular Chopin celebrations” and also many occasional, popular materials. Chopin’s induction into the national pantheon involved the use of audio material (vocal and instrumental concerts), verbal material (articles, poems, lectures and brochures) and also a visual code (anniversary window stickers, tableaux vivants or tableaux illuminés). Illuminated pictures - recommended by a catalogue of slides produced in Poznań - stimulated the imagination of the masses and served as a guide through the composer’s life and work, and their impact was enhanced by a commentary. Most of the living pictures were probably inspired by Henryk Siemiradzki’s canvas Chopin grający na fortepianie w salonie księcia Radziwiłła [Chopin playing the piano in Prince Radziwill’s salon] and Józef Męcina Krzesz’s painting Ostatnie akordy Chopina [Chopin’s last chords]. This combination of codes made it possible to create a model adapted to the times and to the expectations of a mass audience. The Chopin anniversary, in which admiration was inseparably intertwined with manipulation, was a pretext for strengthening the national identity.

15

Chopin - Grottger

75%

Poniatowska I.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

101-114

PL

Is Stanisław Tarnowski’s linking of Fryderyk Chopin and Artur Grottger in his Dwa szkice [Two sketches] justified? Well, the connection is substantiated by the “Romantic-leaning” point of view and the idea of the correspondance des arts that characterised the nineteenth century in which the two creative artists (and Tarnowski himself) lived, although they represented different creative fields. Both the musician Chopin and the artist Grottger were regarded as poets. The former on account of the poetic of his piano playing and musical works, the latter for the poetical dimension of his pictures devoted to the January Rising. Tarnowski called Chopin the fourth bard of Poland, alongside Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński, and Grottger the poet of the Rising, since - as he paradoxically stated - the poetical narrator of those events could only be an artist. Terminology of a literary character belonged to the lexicon of notions employed by critics of art and music at that time. Besides this, the national character is inscribed in the idiom of the work of both these creative artists - the thoroughly patriotic stance that was so strongly manifest in the output of Polish romanticism. Another common denominator in their work is the concept of the cycle. With Chopin, the 24 Preludes, Op. 28 comprise a cycle in which the bonding element is the succession of major keys and their relative minor keys according to the circle of fifths, but they are also an expressive cycle of various states of mind, from despair to joyous reverie. The Preludes show both the semantic capacities and the suppleness of Chopin’s musical language; that is, the ability to express the same feelings through various purely musical means, without any programmatic motto. With Grottger, we have the cycles Warszawa [Warsaw] (two cycles), Polonia, Lituania and Wojna [War]. In them, the metonymy of the narrative sequences is coupled with the notional exposition, with the symbolism. Grottger portrays not the historical scenes of the Rising, but the feelings of grief, despair and fear of individual people, reflecting their experiences. And so the concept is similar. Chopin’s Preludes are like sketches, aphoristic utterances; sketches are also important in the work of Grottger, partly as a self-contained genre. A third plane of analogy is the reduction of media. Chopin confines himself essentially to the piano, from which he produces startling tonal qualities, although he did write several works for chamber or orchestral forces. Grottger, meanwhile, draws his cycles solely in black pencil, using white only to heighten contrasts and give the effect of chiaroscuro. He did not wish to distract the attention of viewers, but wanted them to concentrate on the symbol.

16

Chopin in the music culture of Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. From Glinka to Scriabin

75%

Baranowski T.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

139-150

PL

This article deals with the reception of Chopin’s music in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century, as broadly understood. The Chopin cult that developed in Russia was not only genuine, it was exceptional in Europe, giving rise to numerous artistic achievements in many complementary areas, above all composition, pianism and music publishing. The author discusses the issue from an historical perspective, presenting profiles of six outstanding Russian composers in whose life and work the influence of Chopin was at its greatest. The first is Mikhail Glinka, a pioneer of the national orientation in Russian music, who drew abundantly on Chopinian models. The next generation is represented by Anton Rubinstein, the most famous Russian pianist of his times, and two of the Mighty Handful, Mily Balakirev and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Among the last heirs to Chopin in Russia, pursuing their artistic careers around the turn of the twentieth century, are two composers who masterfully assimilated the stylistic idiom of the composer of the Polonaise-Fantasy, namely Anatoly Lyadov, known as the “Russian Chopin”, and Alexander Scriabin.

17

Chopin and the Warsaw literati - part two

75%

Nowicka E.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

31-52

PL

Chopin’s life in Warsaw fell at a time of important phenomena and processes in history, the arts, aesthetics, etc. This article deals with the artistic and social milieu to which the composer belonged and looks at the question of the common artistic imagination and aesthetic ideas elaborated within that environment, based on the example of Chopin and two poets: Stefan Witwicki and Dominik Magnuszewski. Chopin’s relationship with Witwicki, which gave rise to his songs to the poet’s texts and lasted into their time in exile, is considered in respect to discussion on folk culture that was on-going at that time. That culture was treated as a sign of the nobly archaic or else as a manifestation o f modern art, of the “art of the future”. These convictions did not function as alternatives; their overlapping characterised various aspects of early romanticism. The output of Magnuszewski, meanwhile, shows the transformation of traditional figures of rhetoric into Romantic means of expression. It displays a style of writing that constitutes an act o f Romantic hermeneutics in respect to the language of tradition. Avoiding simple comparisons of works of very different artistic level and significance, the author analyses Chopin’s relationships with the two poets by reference to the generational experience - as variously understood - of creative artists born during the first decade of the nineteenth century, which connected artists of different levels of talent and varying individual fortunes.

18

Slowacki’s Chopin

75%

Seweryn A.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

53-68

PL

Supposed analogies between Fryderyk Chopin and Juliusz Słowacki form a recurring thread that runs through the subject literature o f Romantic culture. Legions of literati, critics, literary scholars and musicologists have either attempted to find affinities between Chopin and Słowacki (on the level of both biography and creative output) or else have energetically demonstrated the groundlessness of all analogies, opinions and assumptions. Consequently, stereotypes have been formed and then strengthened concerning the relations between the two creative artists, particularly the conviction of Slowacki’s dislike of Chopin and his music, which - in the opinion of many scholars - the poet simply did not understand. Considerations of this kind most often centre on a famous letter written by Słowacki to his mother in February 1845. However, a careful reading of this letter and its comparison with Slowacki’s other utterances on the subject of Chopin shows that opinions of the poet’s alleged insanity, petty-mindedness or lack of subtlety in his contacts with Chopin’s music are most unjust. The analysed letter is not so much anti-Chopin as anti-Romantic. It inscribes itself perfectly in the context of the thinking of “the Słowacki of the last years”, since the poet negates crucial aesthetic features o f Romantic music, but at the same time criticises his own works: W Szwajcarii [In Switzerland] and, in other letters, Godzina myśli [An hour of thought] and the “picture of the age”, the poetical novel Lambro. It also turns out that what Słowacki says about the polonaises tallies with the opinions of musicologists and musicians writing about “late Chopin”.

19

Chopin: Visual Contexts

75%

Szerszenowicz J.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

297-316

PL

The drawings, portraits and effigies of Chopin that were produced during his lifetime later became the basis for artists’ fantasies on the subject of his work. Just after the composer’s death, Teofil Kwiatkowski began to paint Bal w Hotel Lambert w Paryżu [Ball at the Hotel Lambert in Paris], symbolising the unfulfilled hopes of the Polish Great Emigration that Chopin would join the mission to raise the spirit of the nation. Henryk Siemiradzki recalled the young musician’s visit to the Radziwiłł Palace in Poznań. The composer’s likeness appeared in symbolic representations of a psychological, ethnological and historical character. Traditional roots are referred to in the paintings of Feliks Wygrzywalski, Mazurek - grający Chopin [Mazurka - Chopin at the piano], with a couple of dancers in folk costume, and Stanisław Zawadzki, depicting the composer with a roll of paper in his hand against the background of a forest, into the wall of which silhouettes of country children are merged, personifying folk music. Pictorial tales about music were also popularised by postcards. On one anonymous postcard, a ghost hovers over the playing musician, and the title Marsz żałobny Szopena [Chopin’s funeral march] suggests the connection with real apparitions that the composer occasional had when performing that work. In the visualisation of music, artists were often assisted by poets, who suggested associations and symbols. Correlations of content and style can be discerned, for example, between Władysław Podkowinski’s painting Marsz żałobny Szopena and Kornel Ujejski’s earlier poem Marsz pogrzebowy [Funeral march]. The testimony of people who visited the Cracow apartment of Stanisław Przybyszewski suggests crucial links between Wojciech Weiss’s lost painting Chopin that hung there and the host’s aesthetic writings and legendary sessions of nocturnal improvisations. Against the background of that iconography, Jerzy Duda-Gracz’s idea of painting all Chopin’s works, subsequently brought together in the cycle Chopinowi Duda-Gracz [From Duda-Gracz for Chopin], is quite exceptional, in terms of its genesis, the extent of Chopin’s oeuvre and also the way in which music is transformed into painting. The artist attempted to capture the atmosphere of Polish landscapes visited by the composer, linking them to particular works. The Chopin cycle possesses a clear stylistic and symbolic identity, although it is impossible to establish a universal pattern for translating music into visual art. Although Zbigniew Rybczyński employed a camera and advanced cinematographic techniques, his depiction of Chopin’s Marche funebre from the Sonata in B flat minor (in his suite of films The Orchestra) refers to Romantic-symbolic interpretations and to previous pictorial visualisations. The director dresses his actors in historical costumes and places them in front of the Paris Opera. To the rhythm of Chopin’s music, they play out - using theatrical expression typical of silent film, pantomime, ballet and tableaux vivants - a story of maturing and ageing.

20

Water, time and a dark-green coat. On Chopin’s Barcarolle

75%

Czaja D.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

283-296

PL

The Barcarolle, Op. 60 is a late (1846) Chopin masterpiece. The shrewdest interpreters (Maurice Ravel, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz) immediately understood that this miniature represents something much deeper than just a skilful stylisation based on Italian (Venetian?) melody. The author presents and discusses in detail several hermeneutic attempts at interpreting the meanings of the Barcarolle, devoting particular attention to Iwaszkiewicz’s sketch ‘Barkarola Chopina’. He also draws attention to the peculiar rhetoric of the text (strongly marked aquatic motifs, accentuated polyvalence and the shimmering of meaning). He goes on to reveal striking connections between the semantics of Iwaszkiewicz’s essay on the Barcarolle and his texts devoted to Venice. In the final section, he puts forward the hypothesis that the Barcarolle can be interpreted as a musical portrait of Venice - a portrait made of sounds, and so by definition vague, allusive and symbolic; a portrait in which the rocking and shimmering of the notes is also the shimmering of meaning.

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