Chopin and Polish FOLK

• Authors: Ewa Dahlig-Turek
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

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.

Keywords

PL

Fryderyk Chopin; mazurkas; traditional music; folk music

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
• Year: 2010
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 343-356

Dates

published

2018-10-17

Contributors

author

Ewa Dahlig-Turek

• associate professor, habilitated doctor, ethnomusicologist, vicedirector of the PAN Institute of Art in Warsaw (since 2003), professor of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (since 2009); her academic interests initially centred on musical instruments, but are now focused on the analysis of rhythm, chiefly in relations to so-called “Polish rhythms” in the music of traditional folk culture and “high” culture. She is author of three monographs: Ludowa gra skrzypcowa w Kieleckiem [Traditional violin playing in the Kielce region] (Kraków, 1990), Ludowa gra skrzypcowa w Polsce [Traditional violin playing in Poland] (Warszawa, 2001) and „Rytmy polskie” w muzyce XVI-XIX wieku. Studium morfologiczne [“Polish rhythms” in music of the sixteenthnineteenth centuries. Morphological studies] (Warszawa, 2006), and co-author (together with Bj0rn Aksdal, Dan Lindberg and Rebecca Sager) of the monograph Glossing over rhythmic style and musical identity (Stockholm, 2005).