Halina Goldberg | Indiana University (original) (raw)
Papers by Halina Goldberg
Princeton University Press eBooks, Aug 15, 2017
This chapter talks about how the conventional practices and values of classical performance today... more This chapter talks about how the conventional practices and values of classical performance today differ radically from those of Chopin's musical world. Perhaps the most fundamental difference concerns the significant role played by improvisation in public and private musical circles during the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Whereas modern performers tend to ascribe authority to the inferred intentions of composers and to the notational artifacts that have been handed down over successive generations, musicians some two hundred years ago approached written texts with much greater flexibility and freedom. The chapter shows how, during Chopin's lifetime, professional performers sought to dazzle their audiences with daring improvisations on themes proposed by individual listeners and on familiar melodies drawn from folk traditions or the latest operas.
Princeton University Press eBooks, Aug 15, 2017
This chapter studies the work of one of Poland's leading opera composers, Karol Kurpińnski, w... more This chapter studies the work of one of Poland's leading opera composers, Karol Kurpińnski, who devoted a good deal of thought to the relationship between text and music. Kurpińnski's observations often concerned broader questions of mimesis and expression, especially as they relate to music's ability to convey national sentiments. Kurpińnski wanted to understand how music can portray a specific character or narrative whether text is present or absent. In his writings, Kurpińnski advocated the use of familiar musical gestures and topics, as well as musical quotations, to create musical narratives, but he warned that they needed to be used in a manner that results in a continuous, flowing speech.
Chopin and His World, 2017
This chapter explains why Chopin's music has always been so readily appreciated by listeners—... more This chapter explains why Chopin's music has always been so readily appreciated by listeners—far more even than that of still-popular contemporaries such as Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt. The answer hinges on musical language: the gestures heard moment to moment on the musical surface rather than longer-term structural relationships. Chopin's music is disarmingly accessible, and his influences—the music he most enjoyed—explain how his style evolved this way. These repertories include far more than a familiar selection of revered masterworks, as scholars tend to conceive historical music today, or familiar pedagogical curricula, and it takes nothing from his music to ask which part of it was acquired outside the classroom.
The Musical Quarterly, 2019
Studia Chopinowskie
Artykuł przedstawia zarys życia muzycznego warszawskich Żydów postępowych w XIX wieku. Poczynając... more Artykuł przedstawia zarys życia muzycznego warszawskich Żydów postępowych w XIX wieku. Poczynając od około 1800 roku, haskala (żydowski ruch oświeceniowy) przyczyniła się do modernizacji bytu Żydów zamieszkujących ziemie polskie. Zmiany dotyczyły zarówno muzyki towarzyszącej żydowskiej liturgii w postępowych synagogach warszawskich, jak i udziału maskilów (zwolenników reform religijnych i społecznych) w życiu muzycznym miasta. Badając te zmiany poprzez pryzmat debaty na łamach czasopisma „Izraelita” o wprowadzeniu organów do żydowskiego obrządku, autorka zgłębia cztery zagadnienia, które były często podejmowane przez redakcję tygodnika. Pierwszym jest znaczenie muzyki świeckiej w żydowskim Bildung dla procesu emancypacji i integracji. Drugie dotyczy reform liturgicznych, które obejmowały wprowadzenie do nabożeństwa nowej muzyki i instrumentów. Trzecie skupia się na nasycaniu wyrażanych w piśmie poglądów estetycznych pojęciami romantycznego idealizmu, które nakłaniały do zatarcia gra...
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2020
During the nineteenth century, major composers—such as Schubert, Schumann, Wieck Schumann, Mendel... more During the nineteenth century, major composers—such as Schubert, Schumann, Wieck Schumann, Mendelssohn, Mendelssohn Hensel, Liszt, and Chopin—contributed musical compositions to a kind of volume known as a friendship album (also keepsake album, album amicorum, or Stammbüch). Album inscriptions penned by Fryderyk Chopin provide a lens through which we can study these compositions, thereby gaining an understanding of the ways in which musical meaning, genre, and text were governed by conventions of gift exchange. Complete compositions, musical fragments, and performative flourishes left in albums by music lovers as well as professional composers and performers took on the function of secular relics that were understood to preserve metaphysical traces of the inscribers, while handwriting was believed to represent the writer's character or momentary state of mind. These ideas intersect with a broader Romantic culture of collectorship. To invoke experiences and memories shared by the...
Chopin and His World
This chapter demonstrates how, while in the French capital, Chopin immersed himself in the world ... more This chapter demonstrates how, while in the French capital, Chopin immersed himself in the world of opera and developed friendships with numerous opera stars. The French grand opéra influenced his harmonic and dramatic language, but it was the Italianate bel canto style that nourished his predilection for the singing tone. Yet, however French his disposition, the seeds for all these elements of Chopin's musical aesthetic and pianism were sown in Warsaw, long before he ever sought the wider world. In his early years, Chopin would also have had the opportunity to learn from performances by other first-rate artists, a host of opera stars, and several pianists in Warsaw whose performance styles he is known to have admired.
Chopin and His World
This chapter presents reproductions of four studies of hands that have been attributed to Maurice... more This chapter presents reproductions of four studies of hands that have been attributed to Maurice Sand-Dudevant. If these drawings—or even a single one of them—indeed portray the hand of Chopin, at present they are the only ones known to have been made during the pianist's lifetime. Whatever the case, these drawings were done early in Maurice's artistic career, when he studied with Eugène Delacroix and copied many anatomical studies, especially those of hands. Finding them gathered in this way suggests that all the drawings were based on the same model, as seen through certain details—especially the shape of the fingernails, which are cut short.
Chopin and His World, 2017
Chopin and His World
This chapter talks about how the Gothic angle has not been explored as one of Chopin's probab... more This chapter talks about how the Gothic angle has not been explored as one of Chopin's probable literary inspirations. The main reason for such an omission is that until the 1970s most critics and commentators considered Gothic literature a sideshow of Romanticism at best or an embarrassing and destructive cultural phenomenon at worst. When the Gothic was not vilified, it was either politely ignored or offhandedly dismissed as a poor relation to the Romantic movement. However, early Gothic writers in England eagerly absorbed and expanded the themes and the moods of their forerunners. English readers met new Gothic fiction with delight and a growing demand for more. After Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the throng of authors included Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Charles Maturin, along with many others.
Chopin and His World, 2017
Chopin and His World, 2017
This chapter discusses how the polonaise served as an emblem of Poland's ruling class or as a... more This chapter discusses how the polonaise served as an emblem of Poland's ruling class or as a template for genteel behavior. It also represented the nation of Poland, its people, customs, and history. Well aware of their shared noble associations, Polish dance commentators often began their discussion of the polonaise by comparing it to the minuet. Their endgame was to show how native Polish elements made the polonaise far superior, in their view, to the more theatrical and artificial minuet. The chapter also explores several of the polonaise's expressive and cultural associations in currency during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and beyond: national identity, otherness, and the Polish nobleman.
19th-Century Music, 2016
The traditional musicological perspective on Chopin's slow, minor-key mazurkas and mazurka se... more The traditional musicological perspective on Chopin's slow, minor-key mazurkas and mazurka sections—that he modeled these episodes on the kujawiak, a Polish folk dance from Kujawy region — is plagued by contradictory statements. Re-evaluation of source material reveals that the kujawiak, as it is understood in relation to Chopin's mazurkas, is largely a creation of Polish nationalism after Chopin's time. In Chopin's own time, the term kujawiak is used only sporadically and appears to be interchangeable with mazur; by the end of the nineteenth century, however, the kujawiak becomes an important marker of Polishness for which authors offer specific but widely diverging musical characterizations. It is around this time that writers also begin to emphasize the kujawiak's impact on Chopin's mazurkas, forging a persistent link between this imagined “national dance” and his compositions. In place of these vague and conflicting constructs, it is proposed that Chopin ...
Journal of Musicological Research, 2015
Descriptive instrumental works composed in nineteenth-century Poland do not easily fit classifica... more Descriptive instrumental works composed in nineteenth-century Poland do not easily fit classification as consumer music, as they fulfilled important patriotic and commemorative functions. While these pieces, like descriptive works composed elsewhere, employ topical gestures and melodic quotations, in the Polish works, patriotic songs are used intertextually to construct coherent historical or allegorical narratives of the nation through music. In Jankiel’s “Concert of Concerts,” an excerpt from the epic poem Pan Tadeusz, the poet Adam Mickiewicz describes a performance of such musical narrative of events in Polish history. Thus Mickiewicz apotheosized the then-popular descriptive pieces and inspired future compositions in the same genre. These pieces cross generic boundaries and interact in unexpected ways with the canonic repertory, offering insights into compositional techniques and strategies used by composers such as Fryderyk Chopin and illuminating modes of listening familiar to their audiences.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford Univer... more OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid ...
The Slavic and East European Journal, 2006
Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Chopin Then and Now: A Fantasy Daniel Stone... more Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Chopin Then and Now: A Fantasy Daniel Stone Pan I. Memories, Images, and Dreams 1. Chopin at Home Bozena Shallcross 13 2. Delacroix's Portrait of Chopin as a Surrogate Self-Portrait John B. Nid 22 3. The Monument of ...
Chopin and His World, 2017
This chapter focuses on “Recollection of Chopin” by Józef Sikorski, the earliest extended essay o... more This chapter focuses on “Recollection of Chopin” by Józef Sikorski, the earliest extended essay on the composer's life and works. The author's emotional language captures the immediacy and poignancy of the response to the news of Chopin's death in the composer's Warsaw circles. A close reading, however, also reveals striking similarities between Sikorski's effusive prose and the overlapping metaphoric vocabularies of German Idealism and Polish political messianism: the figurative language is deployed to locate Chopin and his artistic achievement within these two philosophical frameworks. Moreover, Sikorski was among the first critics to offer perceptive analytical observations on Chopin's compositional strategies and his innovative musical language.
Princeton University Press eBooks, Aug 15, 2017
This chapter talks about how the conventional practices and values of classical performance today... more This chapter talks about how the conventional practices and values of classical performance today differ radically from those of Chopin's musical world. Perhaps the most fundamental difference concerns the significant role played by improvisation in public and private musical circles during the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Whereas modern performers tend to ascribe authority to the inferred intentions of composers and to the notational artifacts that have been handed down over successive generations, musicians some two hundred years ago approached written texts with much greater flexibility and freedom. The chapter shows how, during Chopin's lifetime, professional performers sought to dazzle their audiences with daring improvisations on themes proposed by individual listeners and on familiar melodies drawn from folk traditions or the latest operas.
Princeton University Press eBooks, Aug 15, 2017
This chapter studies the work of one of Poland's leading opera composers, Karol Kurpińnski, w... more This chapter studies the work of one of Poland's leading opera composers, Karol Kurpińnski, who devoted a good deal of thought to the relationship between text and music. Kurpińnski's observations often concerned broader questions of mimesis and expression, especially as they relate to music's ability to convey national sentiments. Kurpińnski wanted to understand how music can portray a specific character or narrative whether text is present or absent. In his writings, Kurpińnski advocated the use of familiar musical gestures and topics, as well as musical quotations, to create musical narratives, but he warned that they needed to be used in a manner that results in a continuous, flowing speech.
Chopin and His World, 2017
This chapter explains why Chopin's music has always been so readily appreciated by listeners—... more This chapter explains why Chopin's music has always been so readily appreciated by listeners—far more even than that of still-popular contemporaries such as Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt. The answer hinges on musical language: the gestures heard moment to moment on the musical surface rather than longer-term structural relationships. Chopin's music is disarmingly accessible, and his influences—the music he most enjoyed—explain how his style evolved this way. These repertories include far more than a familiar selection of revered masterworks, as scholars tend to conceive historical music today, or familiar pedagogical curricula, and it takes nothing from his music to ask which part of it was acquired outside the classroom.
The Musical Quarterly, 2019
Studia Chopinowskie
Artykuł przedstawia zarys życia muzycznego warszawskich Żydów postępowych w XIX wieku. Poczynając... more Artykuł przedstawia zarys życia muzycznego warszawskich Żydów postępowych w XIX wieku. Poczynając od około 1800 roku, haskala (żydowski ruch oświeceniowy) przyczyniła się do modernizacji bytu Żydów zamieszkujących ziemie polskie. Zmiany dotyczyły zarówno muzyki towarzyszącej żydowskiej liturgii w postępowych synagogach warszawskich, jak i udziału maskilów (zwolenników reform religijnych i społecznych) w życiu muzycznym miasta. Badając te zmiany poprzez pryzmat debaty na łamach czasopisma „Izraelita” o wprowadzeniu organów do żydowskiego obrządku, autorka zgłębia cztery zagadnienia, które były często podejmowane przez redakcję tygodnika. Pierwszym jest znaczenie muzyki świeckiej w żydowskim Bildung dla procesu emancypacji i integracji. Drugie dotyczy reform liturgicznych, które obejmowały wprowadzenie do nabożeństwa nowej muzyki i instrumentów. Trzecie skupia się na nasycaniu wyrażanych w piśmie poglądów estetycznych pojęciami romantycznego idealizmu, które nakłaniały do zatarcia gra...
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2020
During the nineteenth century, major composers—such as Schubert, Schumann, Wieck Schumann, Mendel... more During the nineteenth century, major composers—such as Schubert, Schumann, Wieck Schumann, Mendelssohn, Mendelssohn Hensel, Liszt, and Chopin—contributed musical compositions to a kind of volume known as a friendship album (also keepsake album, album amicorum, or Stammbüch). Album inscriptions penned by Fryderyk Chopin provide a lens through which we can study these compositions, thereby gaining an understanding of the ways in which musical meaning, genre, and text were governed by conventions of gift exchange. Complete compositions, musical fragments, and performative flourishes left in albums by music lovers as well as professional composers and performers took on the function of secular relics that were understood to preserve metaphysical traces of the inscribers, while handwriting was believed to represent the writer's character or momentary state of mind. These ideas intersect with a broader Romantic culture of collectorship. To invoke experiences and memories shared by the...
Chopin and His World
This chapter demonstrates how, while in the French capital, Chopin immersed himself in the world ... more This chapter demonstrates how, while in the French capital, Chopin immersed himself in the world of opera and developed friendships with numerous opera stars. The French grand opéra influenced his harmonic and dramatic language, but it was the Italianate bel canto style that nourished his predilection for the singing tone. Yet, however French his disposition, the seeds for all these elements of Chopin's musical aesthetic and pianism were sown in Warsaw, long before he ever sought the wider world. In his early years, Chopin would also have had the opportunity to learn from performances by other first-rate artists, a host of opera stars, and several pianists in Warsaw whose performance styles he is known to have admired.
Chopin and His World
This chapter presents reproductions of four studies of hands that have been attributed to Maurice... more This chapter presents reproductions of four studies of hands that have been attributed to Maurice Sand-Dudevant. If these drawings—or even a single one of them—indeed portray the hand of Chopin, at present they are the only ones known to have been made during the pianist's lifetime. Whatever the case, these drawings were done early in Maurice's artistic career, when he studied with Eugène Delacroix and copied many anatomical studies, especially those of hands. Finding them gathered in this way suggests that all the drawings were based on the same model, as seen through certain details—especially the shape of the fingernails, which are cut short.
Chopin and His World, 2017
Chopin and His World
This chapter talks about how the Gothic angle has not been explored as one of Chopin's probab... more This chapter talks about how the Gothic angle has not been explored as one of Chopin's probable literary inspirations. The main reason for such an omission is that until the 1970s most critics and commentators considered Gothic literature a sideshow of Romanticism at best or an embarrassing and destructive cultural phenomenon at worst. When the Gothic was not vilified, it was either politely ignored or offhandedly dismissed as a poor relation to the Romantic movement. However, early Gothic writers in England eagerly absorbed and expanded the themes and the moods of their forerunners. English readers met new Gothic fiction with delight and a growing demand for more. After Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the throng of authors included Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Charles Maturin, along with many others.
Chopin and His World, 2017
Chopin and His World, 2017
This chapter discusses how the polonaise served as an emblem of Poland's ruling class or as a... more This chapter discusses how the polonaise served as an emblem of Poland's ruling class or as a template for genteel behavior. It also represented the nation of Poland, its people, customs, and history. Well aware of their shared noble associations, Polish dance commentators often began their discussion of the polonaise by comparing it to the minuet. Their endgame was to show how native Polish elements made the polonaise far superior, in their view, to the more theatrical and artificial minuet. The chapter also explores several of the polonaise's expressive and cultural associations in currency during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and beyond: national identity, otherness, and the Polish nobleman.
19th-Century Music, 2016
The traditional musicological perspective on Chopin's slow, minor-key mazurkas and mazurka se... more The traditional musicological perspective on Chopin's slow, minor-key mazurkas and mazurka sections—that he modeled these episodes on the kujawiak, a Polish folk dance from Kujawy region — is plagued by contradictory statements. Re-evaluation of source material reveals that the kujawiak, as it is understood in relation to Chopin's mazurkas, is largely a creation of Polish nationalism after Chopin's time. In Chopin's own time, the term kujawiak is used only sporadically and appears to be interchangeable with mazur; by the end of the nineteenth century, however, the kujawiak becomes an important marker of Polishness for which authors offer specific but widely diverging musical characterizations. It is around this time that writers also begin to emphasize the kujawiak's impact on Chopin's mazurkas, forging a persistent link between this imagined “national dance” and his compositions. In place of these vague and conflicting constructs, it is proposed that Chopin ...
Journal of Musicological Research, 2015
Descriptive instrumental works composed in nineteenth-century Poland do not easily fit classifica... more Descriptive instrumental works composed in nineteenth-century Poland do not easily fit classification as consumer music, as they fulfilled important patriotic and commemorative functions. While these pieces, like descriptive works composed elsewhere, employ topical gestures and melodic quotations, in the Polish works, patriotic songs are used intertextually to construct coherent historical or allegorical narratives of the nation through music. In Jankiel’s “Concert of Concerts,” an excerpt from the epic poem Pan Tadeusz, the poet Adam Mickiewicz describes a performance of such musical narrative of events in Polish history. Thus Mickiewicz apotheosized the then-popular descriptive pieces and inspired future compositions in the same genre. These pieces cross generic boundaries and interact in unexpected ways with the canonic repertory, offering insights into compositional techniques and strategies used by composers such as Fryderyk Chopin and illuminating modes of listening familiar to their audiences.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford Univer... more OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid ...
The Slavic and East European Journal, 2006
Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Chopin Then and Now: A Fantasy Daniel Stone... more Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Chopin Then and Now: A Fantasy Daniel Stone Pan I. Memories, Images, and Dreams 1. Chopin at Home Bozena Shallcross 13 2. Delacroix's Portrait of Chopin as a Surrogate Self-Portrait John B. Nid 22 3. The Monument of ...
Chopin and His World, 2017
This chapter focuses on “Recollection of Chopin” by Józef Sikorski, the earliest extended essay o... more This chapter focuses on “Recollection of Chopin” by Józef Sikorski, the earliest extended essay on the composer's life and works. The author's emotional language captures the immediacy and poignancy of the response to the news of Chopin's death in the composer's Warsaw circles. A close reading, however, also reveals striking similarities between Sikorski's effusive prose and the overlapping metaphoric vocabularies of German Idealism and Polish political messianism: the figurative language is deployed to locate Chopin and his artistic achievement within these two philosophical frameworks. Moreover, Sikorski was among the first critics to offer perceptive analytical observations on Chopin's compositional strategies and his innovative musical language.
Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews and Music in Polish Cities Sunday, November 18, 2018 The Center fo... more Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews and Music in Polish Cities
Sunday, November 18, 2018
The Center for Jewish History
15 W. 16th St.
New York, NY 10011
7:00 p.m.
FREE
RSVP
“Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews and Music in Polish Cities” presents music of Polish Jews that is little known to American audiences—choral pieces from 19th-century progressive (“Reform”) congregations, compositions associated with Jewish music societies, and avant-garde works by Jewish composers.
Recently performed at Rutgers University, "Soundscapes of Modernity" was enthusiastically received:
“[The concert] was quite brilliant and reminded me not only of how much I love listening to live musical performances but also of how music can be an important window into a complex and contested past.”
“We know what we lost in the ‘old country,’ but we are always hoping against hope to find any trace of the magnificent culture that existed among the Jews of Poland. You gave us a magnificent portrait of the differing styles that were popular during that entire inter-war period.”
Join us for this fantastic exploration of Jewish music in 19th- and 20th-century Polish cities.
FREE
Doors open at 6:30
Concert begins at 7:00
RESERVE TICKETS HERE
The Digital Scholarly Commons: Jewish Life in Interwar Lodz (Jewish Lodz DSC) is a multifaceted w... more The Digital Scholarly Commons: Jewish Life in Interwar Lodz (Jewish Lodz DSC) is a multifaceted website that combines the functions of a virtual museum, a digital archive, an online exhibit, and a platform for scholarly communication. The Jewish Lodz DSC offers multiple levels of access and multiple paths—pedagogic and scholarly—for engagement. https://jewish-lodz.iu.edu/
“Centering the Periphery: Polish Jewish Cultural Production Beyond the Capital,” the 5th Annual P... more “Centering the Periphery: Polish Jewish Cultural Production Beyond the Capital,” the 5th Annual Polish Jewish Studies Workshop, will be held March 5-6, 2018 at Rutgers University—the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick. It will focus on Jewish cultural production, but also on cultural collaborations and tensions between Christians and Jews in the years of Poland’s partitions and independence (1772-1939) in urban centers other than Warsaw—especially Wilno, Lwów, Kraków, and Łódź. We will explore these topics through fresh approaches and methodologies.
The format of the 2018 PJSW is designed to maximize scholarly exchange. We are convening roundtable discussions engaging with six distinct thematic constellations:
Translations
Geographies
Traditions
Audiences
High and Low Cultures
Embodiments and Spaces
A concert, “Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews and Music in Polish Cities,” featuring an important, but little-known repertoire of choral pieces from “Progressive” synagogues, compositions associated with Jewish music societies, and avant-garde works by Jewish composers, will be held on Monday, March 5, at 7:30 p.m. at the Kirkpatrick Chapel in New Brunswick.
All events are free and open to the public. For more information, and a full list of participants, please see:
http://www.sas.rutgers.edu/cms/ces/polish-jewish-workshop/workshop
Fifth Annual Polish Jewish Studies Workshop
www.sas.rutgers.edu
The School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
A new look at the life, times, and music of Polish composer and piano virtuoso Fryderyk Chopin F... more A new look at the life, times, and music of Polish composer and piano virtuoso Fryderyk Chopin
Fryderyk Chopin (1810–49), although the most beloved of piano composers, remains a contradictory figure, an artist of virtually universal appeal who preferred the company of only a few sympathetic friends and listeners. Chopin and His World reexamines Chopin and his music in light of the cultural narratives formed during his lifetime. These include the romanticism of the ailing spirit, tragically singing its death-song as life ebbs; the Polish expatriate, helpless witness to the martyrdom of his beloved homeland, exiled among friendly but uncomprehending strangers; the sorcerer-bard of dream, memory, and Gothic terror; and the pianist's pianist, shunning the appreciative crowds yet composing and improvising idealized operas, scenes, dances, and narratives in the shadow of virtuoso-idol Franz Liszt.
The international Chopin scholars gathered here demonstrate the ways in which Chopin responded to and was understood to exemplify these narratives, as an artist of his own time and one who transcended it. This collection also offers recently rediscovered artistic representations of his hands (with analysis), and―for the first time in English―an extended tribute to Chopin published in Poland upon his death and contemporary Polish writings contextualizing Chopin's compositional strategies.
The contributors are Jonathan D. Bellman, Leon Botstein, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Halina Goldberg, Jeffrey Kallberg, David Kasunic, Anatole Leikin, Eric McKee, James Parakilas, John Rink, and Sandra P. Rosenblum. Contemporary documents by Karol Kurpiński, Adam Mickiewicz, and Józef Sikorski are included.
Książka kreśli polityczne i kulturalne tło Warszawy młodzieńczych lat Fryderyka Chopina. Autorka ... more Książka kreśli polityczne i kulturalne tło Warszawy młodzieńczych lat Fryderyka Chopina. Autorka wnikliwie bada i przedstawia środowisko muzyczne, w jakim wzrastał. Dowodzi, że pomimo trudnej sytuacji politycznej stolica była tętniącym życiem europejskim ośrodkiem. Zawarta w publikacji bogata ikonografia pobudza wyobraźnię i przenosi czytelnika w muzyczny świat młodego Chopina.
http://www.rp.pl/Muzyka/308219887-Miasto-ktore-uksztaltowalo-mlodego-Fryderyka.html#ap-1
This multidisciplinary collection addresses Chopin’s life and oeuvre in various cultural contexts... more This multidisciplinary collection addresses Chopin’s life and oeuvre in various cultural contexts of his era. Fourteen original essays by internationally-known scholars suggest new connections between his compositions and the intellectual, literary, artistic, and musical environs of Warsaw and Paris. Individual essays consider representations of Chopin in the visual arts; reception in the United States and in Poland; analytical aspects of the mazurkas and waltzes; and political, literary, and gender aspects of Chopin’s music and legacy. Several senior scholars represent the fields of American, Western European, and Polish history; Slavic literature; musicology; music theory; and art history.
Music in Chopin's Warsaw examines the rich musical environment of Fryderyk Chopin's youth--largel... more Music in Chopin's Warsaw examines the rich musical environment of Fryderyk Chopin's youth--largely unknown to the English-speaking world--and places Chopin's early works in the context of this milieu. Halina Goldberg provides a historiographic perspective that allows a new and better understanding of Poland's cultural and musical circumstances. Chopin's Warsaw emerges as a vibrant European city that was home to an opera house, various smaller theaters, one of the earliest modern conservatories in Europe, several societies which organized concerts, musically active churches, spirited salon life, music publishers and bookstores, instrument builders, and for a short time even a weekly paper devoted to music.
Warsaw was aware of and in tune with the most recent European styles and fashions in music, but it was also the cradle of a vernacular musical language that was initiated by the generation of Polish composers before Chopin and which found its full realization in his work. Significantly, this period of cultural revival in the Polish capital coincided with the duration of Chopin's stay there--from his infancy in 1810 to his final departure from his homeland in 1830. An uncanny convergence of political, economic, social, and cultural circumstances generated the dynamic musical, artistic, and intellectual environment that nurtured the developing genius. Had Chopin been born a decade earlier or a decade later, Goldberg argues, the capital--devastated by warfare and stripped of all cultural institutions--could not have provided support for his talent. The young composer would have been compelled to seek musical education abroad and thus would have been deprived of the specifically Polish experience so central to his musical style.
A rigorously-researched and fascinating look at the Warsaw in which Chopin grew up, this book will appeal to students and scholars of nineteenth century music, as well as music lovers and performers.
Music in Chopin's Warsaw, 2008
Music in Chopin's Warsaw, 2008
Music in Chopin's Warsaw, 2008
Music in Chopin's Warsaw, 2008
Music in Chopin's Warsaw, 2008
Music in Chopin's Warsaw, 2008
Music in Chopin's Warsaw, 2008
Music in Chopin's Warsaw, 2008
Concert Program: includes program notes for the concert "Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews & Music i... more Concert Program: includes program notes for the concert "Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews & Music in Polish Cities"
Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews and Music in Polish Cities” presents music of Polish Jews that is ... more Soundscapes of Modernity: Jews and Music in Polish Cities” presents music of Polish Jews that is little known to American audiences—choral pieces from 19th-century progressive (“Reform”) congregations, compositions associated with Jewish music societies, and avant-garde works by Jewish composers.