Barbara Milewski | Swarthmore College (original) (raw)
Papers by Barbara Milewski
Journal of Musicology , 2022
Music scholars, critics, and popular writers have for generations told and retold the same tale a... more Music scholars, critics, and popular writers have for generations told and retold the same tale about Fryderyk Chopin: namely, that the teenaged composer encountered Jewish folk musicians during his visits to the Polish countryside, was fascinated by their music, and even occasionally performed it. Our article endeavors to counter this and similar misconceptions about Chopin's connections to Jews and Jewish folk music, drawing on an array of historical, ethnographic, and literary sources previously discounted or overlooked by Chopin scholars, and freshly reexamining the composer's earliest correspondence. Having established an absence of primary documentation corroborating oft-repeated anecdotes about the young Chopin's interactions with Jewish music makers, we argue that the “Jewish tales” tenaciously clinging to the composer's biography reflect narratives rooted in later nineteenth-century nationalist rhetoric, anachronistic misreadings of Polish-Jewish relations, and unchallenged reliance on precedent writing. Finally, we offer a sampling of the folk and popular music Chopin would likely have heard, performed, and described to his family, citing material sourced from the work of the pioneering Polish ethnographer, and Chopin family friend, Oskar Kolberg.
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The Polish Review, 2000
Chopin released the poetic unknown which was only suggested in the original themes of Polish mazu... more Chopin released the poetic unknown which was only suggested in the original themes of Polish mazurkas. He preserved the rhythm, ennobled the melody, enlarged the proportions, and infused a harmonic chiaroscuro as novel as the subjects it supported all this in order to paint in these productions (which he loved to hear us call easel pictures) the innumerable and so widely differing emotions that excite the heart while the dance goes on-2
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swarthmore college bulletin Krystyna ŻywulsKa is best Known as the author of Przeżyłam Oświęcim (... more swarthmore college bulletin Krystyna ŻywulsKa is best Known as the author of Przeżyłam Oświęcim (I Survived Auschwitz), a candid and moving account of life and death in auschwitz-birkenau. Published in Poland in 1946, Żywulska’s memoir represents one of the earliest and most significant contributions to Polish literature on the Holocaust. less known, but no less important, are Żywulska’s songs and poetry created during her imprisonment. these works have lain dormant in neatly labeled folders in the aleksander Kulisiewicz archive at the united states Holocaust Memorial Museum in washington for the last 15 years. some have been tucked away further and longer still, in the archives of the auschwitz Museum in Poland. their neglect has at least two explanations. until very recently, musicologists have demonstrated a bias against “nonprofessional” utilitarian music, deeming songs created by ordinary prisoners in the camps as aesthetically inferior to so-called “art music.” Prisoners’ song...
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Music, Collective Memory, Trauma, and Nostalgia in European Cinema after the Second World War, 2019
Zakazane piosenki (1947, Forbidden songs) was the first feature film released in Poland after Wor... more Zakazane piosenki (1947, Forbidden songs) was the first feature film released in Poland after World War II. Conceived and written by Ludwik Starski, a Polish Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, the film remarkably adopted the genre of light musical comedy to portray the diverse experiences of Warsaw’s inhabitants during the period of Nazi occupation (1939–45). The film’s score, created by Roman Palester, draws heavily on authentic popular
sources, notably satirical Polish “street songs” banned by the Nazis but nonetheless performed as expressions of resistance and a means of psychological sustenance during this time of deprivation and terror. Today the film remains an important commemorative symbol of national survival, an iconic record of Polish wartime history. Yet for all its enduring popularity, neither scholars nor the public has heretofore recognized that the film’s music provides the key to a hidden story of Jewish survival, as well as a provocative public witnessing of Soviet—not just Nazi German—aggression. This essay explores the ways in
which Zakazane piosenki helped Polish Jews and non-Jews alike to reclaim, through music, notions of community in the immediate post-war years. Yet it also compels us to consider the tensions between personal and official acts of remembering—and forgetting—within the
contexts of Poland’s historically oppressive regimes and the nation’s contemporary politics.
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Program Book for the North American Premiere of CHOPIN WITHOUT PIANO, Swarthmore College, October... more Program Book for the North American Premiere of CHOPIN WITHOUT PIANO, Swarthmore College, October 24, 2015. Includes program essays by Barbara Milewski and Allen Kuharski and English version of the performance text revised and edited by B. Milewski. Online streaming video of the performance available on Naxos Video Library.
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Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture, 2014
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Nineteenth Century Music, 1999
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Overview of Choral Music in Eastern Europe and sub-category of Poland in 19th-Century Choral Musi... more Overview of Choral Music in Eastern Europe and sub-category of Poland in 19th-Century Choral Music, ed. Donna M. Di Grazia (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 381-386.
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Thesis Chapters by Barbara Milewski
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Conference Presentations by Barbara Milewski
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Book Reviews by Barbara Milewski
Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Nov 2017
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Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 2011
... Goldberg's book is organized into eight chapters, preceded by a thin introduction...
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Journal of Musicology , 2022
Music scholars, critics, and popular writers have for generations told and retold the same tale a... more Music scholars, critics, and popular writers have for generations told and retold the same tale about Fryderyk Chopin: namely, that the teenaged composer encountered Jewish folk musicians during his visits to the Polish countryside, was fascinated by their music, and even occasionally performed it. Our article endeavors to counter this and similar misconceptions about Chopin's connections to Jews and Jewish folk music, drawing on an array of historical, ethnographic, and literary sources previously discounted or overlooked by Chopin scholars, and freshly reexamining the composer's earliest correspondence. Having established an absence of primary documentation corroborating oft-repeated anecdotes about the young Chopin's interactions with Jewish music makers, we argue that the “Jewish tales” tenaciously clinging to the composer's biography reflect narratives rooted in later nineteenth-century nationalist rhetoric, anachronistic misreadings of Polish-Jewish relations, and unchallenged reliance on precedent writing. Finally, we offer a sampling of the folk and popular music Chopin would likely have heard, performed, and described to his family, citing material sourced from the work of the pioneering Polish ethnographer, and Chopin family friend, Oskar Kolberg.
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The Polish Review, 2000
Chopin released the poetic unknown which was only suggested in the original themes of Polish mazu... more Chopin released the poetic unknown which was only suggested in the original themes of Polish mazurkas. He preserved the rhythm, ennobled the melody, enlarged the proportions, and infused a harmonic chiaroscuro as novel as the subjects it supported all this in order to paint in these productions (which he loved to hear us call easel pictures) the innumerable and so widely differing emotions that excite the heart while the dance goes on-2
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swarthmore college bulletin Krystyna ŻywulsKa is best Known as the author of Przeżyłam Oświęcim (... more swarthmore college bulletin Krystyna ŻywulsKa is best Known as the author of Przeżyłam Oświęcim (I Survived Auschwitz), a candid and moving account of life and death in auschwitz-birkenau. Published in Poland in 1946, Żywulska’s memoir represents one of the earliest and most significant contributions to Polish literature on the Holocaust. less known, but no less important, are Żywulska’s songs and poetry created during her imprisonment. these works have lain dormant in neatly labeled folders in the aleksander Kulisiewicz archive at the united states Holocaust Memorial Museum in washington for the last 15 years. some have been tucked away further and longer still, in the archives of the auschwitz Museum in Poland. their neglect has at least two explanations. until very recently, musicologists have demonstrated a bias against “nonprofessional” utilitarian music, deeming songs created by ordinary prisoners in the camps as aesthetically inferior to so-called “art music.” Prisoners’ song...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Music, Collective Memory, Trauma, and Nostalgia in European Cinema after the Second World War, 2019
Zakazane piosenki (1947, Forbidden songs) was the first feature film released in Poland after Wor... more Zakazane piosenki (1947, Forbidden songs) was the first feature film released in Poland after World War II. Conceived and written by Ludwik Starski, a Polish Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, the film remarkably adopted the genre of light musical comedy to portray the diverse experiences of Warsaw’s inhabitants during the period of Nazi occupation (1939–45). The film’s score, created by Roman Palester, draws heavily on authentic popular
sources, notably satirical Polish “street songs” banned by the Nazis but nonetheless performed as expressions of resistance and a means of psychological sustenance during this time of deprivation and terror. Today the film remains an important commemorative symbol of national survival, an iconic record of Polish wartime history. Yet for all its enduring popularity, neither scholars nor the public has heretofore recognized that the film’s music provides the key to a hidden story of Jewish survival, as well as a provocative public witnessing of Soviet—not just Nazi German—aggression. This essay explores the ways in
which Zakazane piosenki helped Polish Jews and non-Jews alike to reclaim, through music, notions of community in the immediate post-war years. Yet it also compels us to consider the tensions between personal and official acts of remembering—and forgetting—within the
contexts of Poland’s historically oppressive regimes and the nation’s contemporary politics.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Program Book for the North American Premiere of CHOPIN WITHOUT PIANO, Swarthmore College, October... more Program Book for the North American Premiere of CHOPIN WITHOUT PIANO, Swarthmore College, October 24, 2015. Includes program essays by Barbara Milewski and Allen Kuharski and English version of the performance text revised and edited by B. Milewski. Online streaming video of the performance available on Naxos Video Library.
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Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture, 2014
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Nineteenth Century Music, 1999
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Overview of Choral Music in Eastern Europe and sub-category of Poland in 19th-Century Choral Musi... more Overview of Choral Music in Eastern Europe and sub-category of Poland in 19th-Century Choral Music, ed. Donna M. Di Grazia (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 381-386.
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Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Nov 2017
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Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 2011
... Goldberg's book is organized into eight chapters, preceded by a thin introduction...
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Booklet accompanying compact disc recording of archival songs by Aleksander Kulisiewicz created i... more Booklet accompanying compact disc recording of archival songs by Aleksander Kulisiewicz created in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
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