Chopin and the "Polish Race" - National Ideologies and Chopin Reception, Part I (Vol. 5, No. 4)

The focus of Chopin’s followers and devotees in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rested on his usefulness for their causes, not on a full understanding of his musical achievements.  Thus, Fryderyk Chopin held an elevated position in the national pantheon as a poet-prophet [wieszcz] whose musical statements equaled in significance the poetic proclamations of Adam Mickiewicz, expressing the true spirit of the nation.  Jan Kleczyński (1837-1895), Zygmunt Noskowski (1846-1909), Władysław Żeleński (1837-1921), Stanisław Przybyszewski (1868-1927), Jarosław de Zielinski (1847-1922), Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941), Stanisław Niewiadomski (1859-1936), and Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) were preoccupied with demonstrating the ways that identified Chopin and his oeuvre as truly and fully Polish.  Their essays contributed to a Polish tradition of constructing Chopin’s identity, a tradition that evolved through distinct stages of Polonizing the composer, based on shifting definitions of the essence of nationality.

In this essay I will trace the evolution of nationalist views of Chopin’s musical and personal Polishness, views of an increasingly all-embracing nature, connected to the Romantic idea of the “Polish spirit” (primarily expressed in Chopin’s music) and to the notion of the “Polish race” (exemplified by Chopin himself).  The conceptual background for this evolution is provided by ideas put forward by such European writers on nationhood and the arts as a German Romantic philosopher and critic, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), whose well-known idea of the “spirit of the people” i.e. Volksgeist, influenced the texts by Kleczyński, Noskowski and Żeleński; and a French philosopher and historian of social-Darwinist orientation, Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), whose theories of artistic expressions of the nation-race had an impact on writings by Przybyszewski, Niewiadomski, Zielinski, Paderewski, and Szymanowski.  The gradual replacement of the older German notion of the “national spirit” (Herder) with the more modern notion of the “national race and milieu” (Taine) is evident in the argumentation used in texts about Chopin’s place in Polish musical culture until the outbreak of World War II.

 Defining National Traits

In the process of depicting Chopin as Poland’s paradigmatic national composer, his followers expressed their beliefs about national messages that Chopin supposedly conveyed in his music.  Initially, their definitions of national identity, inspired by Herder’s notion of the Volksgeist, envisioned it as a spiritual phenomenon, centered on the experiences and productions of the Folk, i.e. the inhabitants of the countryside enjoying spontaneously creative lives in a close connection to nature, the pristine and enchanting fields and meadows of Poland.  In this interpretative tradition, Chopin’s music was valued not in and of itself; instead, its quality was construed as stemming from its closeness to Polish folk song and the landscape.  The Chopin essays, however, feature a wider variety of arguments while explaining the composer’s Polish identity and his significance for Polish culture.  It will be informative to briefly review the main criteria, or markers, for ethnic/national identity that recur in Polish writings addressing the national identity of Chopin and other composers and might be relevant to our discussion.

Selected Criteria for Defining the Polish Identity of Composers

A. Biographic Criteria (personal identity, background, and choices, defined by self and others)

1) “name”  – Polish forms of the first and last name 2) “family-of-origin” – Polish family background, typically patrilineal and at times connected to the notion of the “Polish race” 3) “psychosomatic identity” – being the embodiment of Polish traits in the whole person, body and spirit (given, not self-defined) 4) “emotional and patriotic identity” – having a “Polish heart” and displaying a deep attachment to Poland (chosen, self-defined) 5) “official identity” – with a Polish national identity and citizenship 6) “native language” – using Polish as the native language 7) “community” – engaged in the Polish community, through the place of residence, membership in organizations, and charitable activities for Polish causes

B. Musical Criteria (traits chosen by the composers or ascribed to their works by others)

1) “language” – the use of Polish texts and titles in works 2) “genre” – the use of Polish genres, e.g. the mazurka or polonaise 3) “quotation” – citing from Polish folk music, national songs or anthems 4) “style” – the presence of various melodic and rhythmic elements definable as ‘Polish’, especially originating from Polish dances 5) “content” – Polish subjects in explicit (defined by the composer) or implicit forms, the latter ‘heard’ by reviewers; themes borrowed from Poland’s history, mythology, literature, religion and customs, climate and geography, etc. 6) “spiritual content” – expressions of the “Polish spirit” in general terms, or in the form of a predominant character trait ascribed to the whole nation, such as “sorrow” [żal], or “arrhythmia” 7) “music community” – Polish performance and programming contexts, e.g. festivals of Polish music, concerts for Polish causes; the music being understood by Poles alone

 Both categories of this list include issues that composers have a degree of control over by consciously choosing to be Polish and compose Polish music filled with national traits.  Simultaneously, the list of biographic criteria includes characteristics that pre-date the composers’ birth and pre-define their identity as Poles in ways transcending the intentions of the composers’ themselves.  Furthermore, the composers’ lives and music may be depicted as far more Polish than those originally intended, especially when viewed from a posthumous perspective of “late grandchildren” who have the freedom of interpreting the composers’ biographical background and achievements without taking into account their wishes.  This openness to fanciful and arbitrary interpretations characterizes particularly the criteria of family-of-origin, psychosomatic identity and community in the area of biography, and the criteria of style, community, content, and spiritual content in the domain of music.  

 

The essays about Chopin have provided partial and contradictory answers to the following questions: Was Chopin a Polish composer?  Was Chopin a purely Polish composer, without a trace of French identity?  Was Chopin’s music entirely Polish and if so, why?  What Polish traits did Chopin capture and express?  What is the definition of being Polish in music?  Numerous thematic threads have been intertwined in these texts that could be given a collective subtitle of “How Polish was Chopin?” On the basis of scattered references in Chopin’s letters we might note that the composer’s self-definition during his years in Paris was as an exiled Pole.  Moreover, Chopin seemed to believe in distinct national emotional and personality traits, pointing to the essential character differences separating a Slav from a Scandinavian or a Spaniard.  

Yet, Chopin’s personal beliefs in this matter were immaterial for the authors of texts about him, texts that straddle the areas of music aesthetics, music biography and national ideology.  These narratives follow a twisted path through the list of criteria: the issue of Polonizing Chopin’s name came to the forefront of discussions in the 1930s (though it was initiated at the end of the 19th century; see the comments on Niewiadomski’s essays), while the awareness of the presence of a vaguely defined “Polish spirit” in Chopin’s music permeated the literature of this subject from its inception (see my comments about essays by Przybyszewski, Noskowski, and Paderewski, and chapter 10 in this collection).  Relying on the criteria described above to provide a general framework for conceptualizing the Polishness of Chopin’s music, I will follow a roughly chronological trajectory.  This approach will allow me to highlight the appearance of significant concepts and interpretations, in particular, the charged notion of the “Polish race.”

The Rise and Fall of the “Polish Race”

The tendency to circumscribe the national identity to common genetic origin and shared personality traits and define art as an expression of such narrowly described features increased in the Western world towards the end of the 19th century.  Europeans and Americans habitually described spiritual essences of their nations in terms of their shared genetic heritage.  Such descriptions permeate the aesthetic writings of Hyppolyte Taine which greatly influenced generations of Polish music critics and historians.  The concept of race itself was developed much earlier in Germany (by Johan Blumenbach, 1752-1840) and France (by Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, 1816-1862).  From its inception, it served to provide arguments about the supposed inequality of the world’s peoples and the superiority of Europeans, or, in particular, the French or the Germans.  Different genealogies were compiled for various national races and their hierarchies reflected the nationalistic and political views of the writers.  

The term “Polish race” referred to people of inherited Polish ethnicity, i.e. those who were born to Polish parents, who, in turn, were children of Polish parents, etc.  The chain of origin extended indefinitely back in time to the nation’s mythical birth from several Slavonic tribes who “dwelt from time immemorial” on the vast plain “between the Baltic sea and the Carpathian mountains.”  One could be Polish only when sharing the Polish genes; this heritage was thought to engender common psychological and spiritual traits of the Polish nation.  These racial definitions of Polishness were found in self-definitions proclaimed in Poland and abroad, as well as in descriptions offered by outsiders.   Jakob Riis saw “the thrifty Polish race” (1890) among impoverished emigrants to America; James W. Gerard mused about the great future of “the splendid Polish race” in its own, independent country (1918).

 A fascinating genealogy of the “Slavic or Slavonic race” precedes an account of musical achievements of the “Polish race” in a 1902 essay by an émigré composer and pianist, Jaroslaw de Zielinski (1847-1922).  The Slavic race includes Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Servians, Croatians, Carinthians, Illyrians, and Vends, but excludes the “Muscovites,” who claim to be Great Russians but—according to Zielinski—in reality are a Tartar race.  In this narrative, the Slavs’ history unfolds as a struggle against their neighbors in the south—Byzantine, and the west—Germanic.  The Germans, in addition to frequent military confrontations, crowded Poland as craftsmen, merchants, and teachers, thus having the opportunity to wreak havoc with national identity by prejudicing “their pupils against the Polish language.”  The theory that Poland had two enemies, Russians and Germans, stemming from the historical facts of Poland’s partitions by Russia, Prussia and Austria at the end of the 18^th-century, is given here a racial justification.  Similarly to Zielinski, Charles Phillips (1923) rhapsodized about the perennial “racial competition”—based on the principle of the “survival of the fittest”—between the races of the German (i.e. Teuton who was “steady, powerful, ponderous, self-righteous, self-satisfied, static”) and the Pole (“dynamic, flexible, un-self-satisfied, self-critical, idealistic and tenacious of his ideal”).

The notion of the “Polish race” appeared in various Polish-American writings; for instance in the amended 1914 Charter of a para-military youth association, The Polish Falcons of America whose main objective was “to regenerate the Polish race in body and spirit and create of the immigrant a National asset, for the purpose of exerting every possible influence towards attaining political independence of the fatherland.”  While the unabashed patriotism of the Polish Falcons seems praiseworthy, their goal of renewing and unifying the nation through strengthening its youth resembles the objectives of totalitarian organizations in various (actual or imagined) political systems, from Plato's Republic to Nazi Germany.  In this context, it is important to note that the concept of the “Polish race” found its demise at the outset of World War II, when the hard-won sovereignty of Poland was again under attack from Germany seeking to expand its territories.  On August 22, 1939, a week before the invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, Hitler addressed his military commanders ordering them “to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language.” Therefore, the term acquired a genocidal connotation which rendered the notion of the “Polish race” unacceptable, banishing it from respectable nation-building discourse.

Before it disappeared, though, the “Polish race” played an increasingly more prominent role in constructing the Polish identity of Chopin and his music.  In 1923 Charles Phillips ended his list of positive characteristics of the “dynamic and idealistic” Pole: “Chopin is an example.”  Let us begin the examination of this topic with a review of national traits associated with Chopin’s music.

Musical Evocations of Polish History and Landscape

The quest for Polish subjects in Chopin’s solo piano works (Musical Criterion 5: content) is a recurring topos in 19^th-century responses to his music.  Romantic writers provided fantastic descriptions of historical subjects hidden in purely instrumental compositions.  For instance, Marceli Antoni Szulc envisioned the Polonaise Op. 53 in A-flat major as an image of a national procession of hetmans and voivodas, colorfully costumed in precious garb of Polish 17^th-century noblemen (see also Kleczyński’s interpretation of this piece in chapter 10).  Writing in this vein, Stanisław Tarnowski (1837-1871) sought a connection between Chopin’s compositions and Polish poetry.  Not surprisingly, he found a direct patriotic inspiration in numerous pieces, including the Preludes Op. 24, many Mazurkas, and the Funeral March from the Sonata in B-flat minor.  Tarnowski saw the latter work as a “funereal conduct of the whole nation watching its own funeral.”  

A similar patriotic vision is captured on a late 19th-century postcard depicting pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski—a foremost Chopin interpreter of his time (see Figure 1).  Here, a solemn procession of Polish kings and noblemen arises above bluish light emanating from the keyboard; Paderewski’s outstretched hands and intensely focused face indicate that these great heroes of the past have been brought to life by his music.  This image reveals the role that music played in the cultivation of Polish culture and identity after Poland’s loss of sovereignty.  The postcard also illustrates a statement from Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s famous speech of 1910 that Chopin’s compositions truly contain “the spirit of the land of his fathers, the spirit of his nation."  Paderewski thus described a ghost-filled scene evoked by Chopin’s music: “Finally . . . spectres fulfill their shadowy rights. What ghost was that?  Whose spirit there went past?  Was this Żółkiewski?  Or Czarniecki’s noble shade?”

 While the Polish character of Polish dance genres, such as mazurkas and polonaises, could not be doubted (Musical Criterion 2: genre), these works themselves have been taken to a second level of Polishness by being read as programmatic representations of Polish landscape and village scenes (Musical Criterion 5: content).  Fifty years after the composer’s death, Zygmunt Noskowski took for granted a thesis that “Chopin’s melodies are poetic transformations of the sights that the master absorbed in his youth . . . From many a mazurka one can guess the color and light filling a landscape that the master saw with the eyes of his soul while writing his beautiful poem.”  Noskowski proceeded to associate particular images with individual mazurkas, impromptus, sonatas, and ballades.  The Impromptu in F-sharp Major was assigned the most elaborate program.  Noskowski interpreted this work as an extended “Sunday-in-a-village” scene, replete with “the voices of church bells calling to the service” over summer fields “covered with newly ripened wheat, gently swaying under a slight breeze.”  The commentator concluded: “Nature in its entirety is praying in this moment... and the holiday sentiment pervades everything.”  Thus, in Noskowski’s nationalistic/religious interpretation of Chopin’s piano compositions, a pastoral idyll arises from the music that perfectly captures the serenity of a people united with their land.  The music is important—and Polish—because it portrays the landscape of Poland and the religious moods associated with it.

The language of description used by Polish composers and music critics in the 19th and early 20th centuries often employs figures of speech equating folk song with field flowers.  The trope that Chopin’s folk-inspired music is, as it were, permeated with “the fragrances of delicate flowers of Polish meadows” first appears in Józef Sikorski’s article of 1849.  Sikorski discussed the national traits of Chopin music (seen in the use of genre, style and quotation; Musical Criteria 2-4) and his inspiration with Polish folk songs.  For Sikorski, these songs were elevated, charming and simple, while remaining as fleeting and ineffable as the “fragrance of a violet.”  This synaesthetic reference articulates a widespread belief that folk music belonged to the utopia of cultivated nature, the idyllic and serene “national garden of Eden.” 

Similarly, Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883), characterized Chopin (“a Varsovian by birth, a Pole by heart, and a citizen of the world by talent”) as someone who “knew how to gather field flowers, without shaking off even a slightest drop of dew, or a smallest speck of dust from them.” Norwid’s reference to folksong as “field flowers” articulates the connection between the beauty of Polish countryside and the music created by its inhabitants.  The association of Chopin with the lost paradise of the native country recurred in an essay by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812-1887) where Chopin himself (not just his music, but the whole person) became a “phenomenon, as it were, straight from our fields and meadows, those of old, those that blessed our evenings with a marvelous fragrance of the breath of our beloved soil.”  Zygmunt Noskowski also penned a noteworthy passage equating folksong with field flowers and describing Chopin as someone who “brought a breeze of fresh air” to the “atmosphere of exotic fragrances” of the Romantic salon.  The freshness and originality of Chopin’s music stemmed from his closeness to Nature, “his first mistress [whose] brilliance and beauty entranced him and left their traces deep in the soul.”  Finding inspiration in folk music, like painting landscapes outdoors, meant choosing the natural over the artificial.

Folk art as nature might be an environmental trope, rather than a national one, however in the Polish context it has strong nationalistic overtones.  Through the 19th century Poles were a nation without sovereignty over its territory, a nation reduced to the status of an ethnic minority in three different countries.  Since they lived under a constant threat from the occupying nations and struggled to regain ownership and control of their land (the Prussians being particularly eager to remove Poles from their farms and/or Germanize them), their attachment to the ancestral land was an expression of their patriotism.  These difficult circumstances engendered the myth-making process that transformed Chopin into “a singer of Polish fields and meadows” praised by Noskowski for the accuracy and authenticity of his musical landscape depictions.  The ecological nationalism of most “flower”-references reveals a dependency on Herder-sanctioned connection of a people to the land they inhabit.  In this style of nationalistic readings of Chopin’s music, both Polish folk song and Chopin’s music based on it have a straightforward link to the benevolent and nurturing Nature.

In other nationalistic interpretations, the same music may be seen as vehicle for conveying the national spirit and expressing the traits of the nation’s personality (Musical Criterion 6).  Arguments used in this area increasingly take Chopin’s personal characteristics and heritage into account (Biographic Criteria 2-4, pertaining to the family of origin, psychosomatic identity, and emotional identity of the composer).  Thus, through the 19^th century, nationalistic writers gradually shift their attention from generalized and colorful rhapsodizing about the Polish content of Chopin’s music (Musical Criteria 5-6) toward statements about his personal relationship to the “Polish race” and its musical manifestations.  Let us first examine the varieties of musical expressions of the Polish spirit.

............... to be continued

Excerpts from Maja Trochimczyk, "Chopin and the Polish Race" 

chapter in Halina Goldberg, ed.  The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004, 278-313.

Szymanowska and Chopin at the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana (Vol. 4, No. 7)

On June 30 at 1:30 p.m. at the Norma Kershaw Auditorium of the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana (2002 N Main St, Santa Ana, CA 92706; tel. 714 567 3600) I will present a lecture about "Maria Szymanowska - Court Pianist to the Tsarinas" and pianist Wojciech Kocyan will play piano music by Szymanowska and Chopin. This lecture performance is one of the events associated with an exhibit The Tsar's Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Decorative Arts Under the Romanovs on display at the Bowers Museum through the summer. The event will be sponsored by the Helena Modjeska Arts and Culture Club, with a small reception to follow. Books about Szymanowska by Slawomir Dobrzanski and a CD set with all of her piano music recorded by Dobrzanski in Poland will be available for purchase at the event.

The lecture will be richly illustrated with portraits of Szymanowska and European nobility, while the musical performance will bring her sound world to life, under the masterful fingers of Prof. Kocyan.  He will juxtapose Szymanowska's nocturnes and etudes with smaller works by Chopin, especially his waltzes - created for the same world of aristocratic salons that were inhabited by Szymanowska. The presentation is loosely based on my paper, read at the International Szymanowska Symposium in Paris, and published in the Annales de Centre de Academie Scientifique Polonaise a Paris, in 2012.

Fee: $7 Member/ $10 Non-member. Advance reservations: Visitor Services Desk, Tuesday – Sunday, 10 AM – 4 PM; bowers.org/tickets or bowers.org/calendar and fill out the reservation form or e-mail education@bowers.org. The event will begin promptly, please leave sufficient travel time.

Szymanowska's portrait by Walenty Wankowicz.

Collection of the Polish Library, Paris 

On Fashion, Portraits, and the Professional Image of Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831)

Fashion choices of classical musicians have recently attracted the interest of Mary E. Davis (Classic Chic, 2006). I bring this topic to the biography of Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831), a Polish pianist-composer who after her 1810 Parisian debut toured Europe in 1822-1826 before settling in St. Petersburg for the rest of her short life. A daughter of a Warsaw brewer, and a divorced mother of three (daughters Celina and Helena, and son Romuald), Szymanowska was able to ascend to an elevated position of the Court Pianist of the Tsarinas, and support her extended family with her music (i.e., concertizing and teaching children from aristocratic families). The pianist’s career benefited from ability to shape her “professional image” as a high-society lady of elegance and multiple talents. My project builds on the research of Anne Schwartz (2009), Sławomir Dobrzański (2007), and Benjamin Vogel (2012) that focused on Szymanowska’s talents as a savvy businesswoman and a musician with a love for English pianos. Through an analysis of her portraits by French and Polish artists (Henri Benner, Nicolas Jacques, Aleksander Chodkiewicz, Józef Oleszkiewicz, Aleksander Kokular, and Walenty Wańkowicz) revealing Szymanowska’s personal image and her fashion choices, I demonstrate that in this pianist we encounter one of the earliest instances of “professional image-making” (term from Laura Morgan Roberts, 2005).

Szymanowska's litograph based on Oleszkiewicz portrait
Collection of the Polish Library, Paris

Szymanowska created her positive image through “impression management” and “social re-categorization”- shifting the attention away from her humble roots to her preferred aristocratic milieu. The means for this transformation included appearance (clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry), carefully cultivated social networks, and virtuous conduct befitting a single mother of three, a teacher of princesses and nobles. The pianist was exposed to the attire of the nobility as a performer in aristocratic salons in Warsaw (in 1805-1806; 1812, 1823, 1827, and 1828), Paris (in 1810, 1824, 1825, and 1826), London (in 1818, 1824, 1825, and 1926), and St. Petersburg (in 1820, 1822, 1827, and 1828-31). The portraits provide an opportunity to compare her white muslin gowns, shawls, turbans, double sleeves, and jeweled belts with the predominant and changing French, Polish, English and Russian fashions of her time, including those of her mentors – Countess Zofia Zamojska, Duchess Maria Czartoryska Wirtemberg, and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna – as well as Queen Hortense, Duchess Laura Junot d’Abrantes, and Madame de Stael, among others.

The striking features of portraits by Kokular and Wańkowicz, both painted in Italy in 1825, point to a possible artistic “Agon” of the two artists who envisioned the pianist as a Queen of Tones in Rome (Kokular, the phrase was coined by Adam Mickiewicz) and a mythological goddess in Naples (Wańkowicz), thus furthering her elevated professional and social status. The ramifications of Szymanowska’s image creation that helped her to become a teacher and a role model for daughters of Russian aristocracy touch upon the concepts of “female genius” and “modesty” (the preferred virtue of society women in the early 19th century). The research for this paper, conducted at the Muzeum Literatury in Warsaw, Poland and Bibliothèque Polonaise in Paris was supported by Maria Szymanowska Society in Paris.



WOJCIECH KOCYAN



Wojciech Kocyan and Maja Trochimczyk after
a Chopin with Cherries Concert, Ruskin Art Club, May 2010



Wojciech Kocyan was praised for his “highly distinctive performances (…) superb, intelligent artistry (…)” (ClassicsToday.com) and “incisive temperament, impeccable technique and sumptuous tone” (Le Monde de la Musique.). He was born in Poland. He studied with two of the world’s most esteemed piano pedagogues: Andrzej Jasinski in Poland, where he received his Masters Degree and with John Perry at the University of Southern California, where he received a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree.

He is a laureate of several international piano competitions, including F.Busoni and Viotti, as well as a special prizes winner of the XI International Chopin Competition and the First Prize winner of the Paderewski Piano Competition. He performed in Europe, America, Australia and Japan, participating in music festivals such as Musica Antiqua Europae Orientalis, Capri Festival, Bydgoszcz International Music Festival, H.M.Gorecki Festival, Beethovenfest, Paderewski Festival, Liszt Festival in Vienna, San Francisco Liszt Festival, Cervantino International Music Festival, Morelia International Music Festival and the Chopin Festival in Paris. He has recorded for television, radio and film and his performances were broadcast in Europe, United States and Australia. His solo and chamber music recordings can also be found on DUX label. He was a subject of press articles in Poland, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, United States and Japan.

In September 2007 the Gramophone magazine, published in London and considered the world’s most prestigious classical music journal, chose Mr. Kocyan’s recording of Prokofiev, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff as one of 50 best classical recordings ever made, alongside recordings of such luminaries as Leonard Bernstein, Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau, Nicolaus Harnoncourt and Arthur Rubinstein. It also featured the cover headline “The genius of Wojciech Kocyan”. His latest CD, of music by Robert Schumann was released in June 2012.

Dr. Kocyan is much in demand as an adjudicator and lecturer. He has been invited to give masterclasses in France, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Mexico and the United States, including such prestigious venues as the Colburn School. He is the Artistic Director of the Paderewski Music Society in Los Angeles and the Artistic Director of the American Paderewski Piano Competition in Los Angeles.


Maja Trochimczyk, Jane Kaczmarek and Wojciech Kocyan,
First American Paderewski Piano Competition, 2010

Chopin's Prelude and the Prometheus, or Music vs. Aliens (Vol. 3, No. 8)

Of all the preludes by Chopin, the one in D-flat Major, op. 28 no. 15, known as the "Raindrop" prelude, has attracted the most attention - among the poets and filmmakers, at least. . . I think it is because it is relatively easy to play; even I could learn it! And I was known in my music-making days as having two left hands on the keyboard. ..

In any case, this sublime melody (or rather, the sostenuto themes appearing in the A-sections of the ABA form) has recently been used in a new sci-fi film by Ridley Scott, "Prometheus." This pre-quel to the alien trilogy, focuses on the attempts of totally evil, poisonous alien creatures, both grossly slimy and supremely intelligent, to take over and destroy humanity.

Apparently, Ridley Scott has loved this melody for a long time and decided to use it both in the film and in the final credits as a symbol of what matters. Chopin's miniature becomes here the most delicate sign of our shared humanity, threatened and attacked by unbearable screeches of the alien life-killing life forms. [An account loosely based on an article in the Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2012]

_______________________________

Let's listen to the Prelude played by pianists who did not have two left hands:

Arthur Rubinstein: Prelude in D-flat Major, op. 28 no. 15, a tad too fast to my taste...

Martha Argerich: Prelude in D-flat Major, op. 28 no. 15, with amazing rubatos!

Maurizio Pollini; Prelude in D-flat Major op. 28 no. 15, this one is a concert encore, a great way to end an evening...

________________________________

The "Raindrop" Prelude has been surrounded by stories and legends since its creation. Chopin wrote some of it during the fateful stay in the Monastery on the island of Mallorca, the city of Valldemosa in 1834. He got really sick and was suffering from hallucinations, nausea, and fevers. Some modern scholars claim that these were the symptoms of his poisoning with carbon monoxide, from a heater he had in the closed space of the cold cell where he was composing all day.

George Sand wrote in her Histoire de ma vie that Chopin had a very peculiar vision or dream, while playing the piano and working on this prelude:

He saw himself drowned in a lake. Heavy drops of icy water fell in a regular rhythm on his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water indeed falling in rhythm on the roof, he denied having heard it. He was even angry that I should interpret this in terms of imitative sounds. He protested with all his might – and he was right to – against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds."

__________________________________

Before the cosmic battle of Ridley Scott's aliens, film-makers used the Prelude in a variety of contexts, as listed on Wikipedia by anonymous sribes (thanks for all the work!):

• In the 1979 James Bond movie Moonraker, villain Sir Hugo Drax plays the Raindrop Prelude in his chateau on a grand piano when Bond comes to visit.

The raindrop prelude is also featured on the soundtrack of the 1996 Australian film Shine about the life of pianist David Helfgott.

The prelude appears in the "Crows" section of Akira Kurosawa's film Dreams.

The prelude plays a pivotal role in the 1990 film version of Captain America. The piece is played at a childhood piano recital by the young prodigy who would become the Red Skull, and a recording of this incident is later played by the titular hero to delay the now-70-year-old Red Skull from detonating a nuclear bomb that would destroy all of Southern Europe, the detonator for which was also concealed in a grand piano.

The dramatic bridge of the prelude was used in an elaborate pre-release commercial for the video game Halo 3 as a part of the $10 million "Believe" ad campaign. The piece plays over close-up footage of a highly detailed diorama of an historically pivotal battle in the game's universe.

The piece appears in the John Woo film Face/Off in a seduction scene between Castor Troy and Eve Archer.

The prelude appears in the fantasy video game Eternal Sonata, where Chopin's music plays a major part.

The piece is studied as a 'Set Work' in the English exam board Edexcel's GCSE in Music.

The piece is used in the film Margin Call, as Kevin Spacey's character sleeps in his office but is then woken up by the prelude's climax.

The prelude is used in the English trailer for the Japanese film Battle Royale.

In addition, a music blog, The World's Greatest Music, mentions yet another TV appearance of Chopin's Prelude, in the credits of a 1980s show, Howard's End.

If you know of more ways to "kill" this perfectly beautiful piece of music, let me know...

__________________________________  

The Prelude No. 15 has long been a favorite of poets. In the anthology "Chopin with Cherries," there are no fewer than ten poems inspired by or mentioning this particular prelude. Christine Klocek-Lim goes back to the story by George Sand.  

Prelude in Majorca  

Christine Klocek-Lim  

The wet day carried rain into night
as he composed alone.
With each note he wept
and music fell on the monastery,
each note a cry for breath
his lungs could barely hold.
Even as his world
dissolved around him
“into a terrible dejection,”
he played that old piano in Valldemosa
until tuberculosis didn’t matter;
until the interminable night
became more than a rainstorm,
more than one man sitting alone
at a piano, waiting
“in a kind of quiet desperation”
for his lover to come home
from Palma.
When Aurore finally returned
“in absolute dark”
she said his “wonderful Prelude,”
resounded on the tiles of the Charterhouse
like “tears falling upon his heart.”
Perhaps she is right.
Or perhaps Chopin “denied
having heard” the raindrops.
Perhaps in the alone
of that torrential night
he created his music simply
to hold himself inside life
for just one note longer.


Notes:
Prelude No.15 in D-flat Major, Op. 28. Quotes from Histoire de Ma Vie (History of My Life, vol. 4) by George Sand (Aurore, Baronne Dudevant).

 _______________________________  

Another contemporary poet, Carrie Purcell thought about her music lessons...  

Prelude in D-Flat Major, Opus 28, No. 15  

Carrie A. Purcell  

You have to
my teacher said
think of that note like rain,
steady, but who,
my teacher said
wants to hear only that?
On Majorca in a monastery
incessant coughing
covered by incessant composition
and everywhere dripping
sotto voce
move the rain lower
let it fill the space left in your lungs
let it triumph
We die so often
we don’t call it dying anymore

On Maria Szymanowska in Paris (Vol. 2, No. 11)

The year 2011 has been declared the Milosz Year, celebrating the Nobel-Prize-winning poet, and the Szymanowska Year, commemorating one of the first and most influential women composers of the romantic period. Thanks to the efforts of singer and President of Maria Szymanowska Society, Elizabeth Zapolska-Chapelle, a series of events will take place in the fall of 2011, as outlined below.

International Project of the Maria Szymanowska Society

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831), Woman of Europe

Honorary committee: Irena Poniatowska, Dominique Bertinotti, Elisabeth Chojnacka, Barbara Przybyszewska-Jarminska, Agata Preyzner, Monique Stalens, Maja Trochimczyk, Daniel Mesguich, Jerzy Pielaszek, Benjamin Vogel, C.Pierre Zaleski

Guest artists: Lowri Blake, Carole Carniel, Florence Launay, Maria Rose, Elisabeth Zapolska, Jean-Pierre Armengaud, Slawomir Dobrzanski, Jay Gottlieb, Bart van Oort

Partners: Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Festival Musique aux Sommets in Zakopane, Institut Polonais à Paris, Fondation Jan Michalski pour l’Ecriture et la Littérature, Fondation Marcelle et Robert de Lacour pour la musique et la danse, Société Historique et Littéraire Polonaise/Bibliothèque Polonaise à Paris, Centre de l'Académie Polonaise des Sciences à Paris, Association Mieczyslaw Karlowicz in Zakopane, Mairie du 4e arrondissement de Paris, Acte Préalable, Kulturalna Europa, Prince Henry Bred&Breakfest in Amsterdam, Air France, Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw

Media partners: Supermedia Interactive, Gazeta Paryska, Muzyka21, Polish Music Information Centre

Events 2011:

▲ Release of the CD Maria Szymanowska, Ballades & Romances (world premiere) by Elisabeth Zapolska, mezzosoprano & Bart van Oort, pianoforte Broadwood 1825 (collection Joop Klinkhamer, Amsterdam), publ.Acte Préalable

▲ Exhibition Maria Szymanowska and Her Times, 15 - 30 September, SHLP/Bibliothèque Polonaise à Paris

▲ Concert Maria Szymanowska, a Portrait of the Queen of Tones, 17 September, Festival Musique aux Sommets in Zakopane, Elisabeth Zapolska, mezzosoprano, Bart van Oort , pianoforte Jacob Weimes 1810 (collection Petr Šefl, Prague), Maciej Negrey, introduction

▲ International Conference Maria Szymanowska and her Times, 30 September - SHLP/Bibliothèque Polonaise à Paris, 1 October - Centre de l'Académie Polonaise des Sciences à Paris. Participants: Irena Poniatowska (Poland), Florence Launay (France), Elena Gretchanaïa (Russia), Maja Trochimczyk (USA), Anna Czarnocka (France), Ewa Talma-Davous (France), Maria Rose (USA), Elisabeth Zapolska-Chapelle (France), Jean Pierre Armengaud (France), Adam Galkowski (Poland), Benjamin Vogel (Sweden)

▲ Concert Salon of Maria Szymanowska, 14 December, Salle des Fêtes de la Mairie du 4e arrondissement de Paris

The conference will include a range of topics, from Szymanowska's pianos (Vogel) to her French contemporaries, Russian social networks, and gendered imagery. I wrote about Szymanowska's songs in the past (for an anthology of Women in Music by Hildegard Publishing Company and for Slawomir Dobrzanski's biography of Szymanowska).

I also looked at Szymanowska's connections to Chopin (in a study of his relationships with women composers) and on the societal constraints placed on her career, as well as careers of other women composers. At this conference, I will speak "On Genius and the Virtues of 'Sense and Sensibility' in the Image of Maria Szymanowska" and touch upon the following topics:


The dualistic feminist music theory of the 1990s represented by Susan McClary, Marcia Citron, Sally Macarthur, and rooted in the embodied feminist literary criticism of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, did not attract much attention among 19th-century scholars focusing on Polish artists and musicians. Its radicalism seemed too remote from the ideal feminine types encountered and discussed in Polish culture. The lives and careers of female musicians were interpreted in terms of cultural stereotypes that included the innocent youthful beauty of Zosia from Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz, a self-sacrificial and heroic “Polish Mother” (Matka-Polka), an equally self-sacrificial Romantic Beloved, or the hard-working and virtuous Strong Woman (Silaczka) of the positivistic era.

The validity of a less radical, yet still sophisticated feminist approach to studies of 19th century Polish women was recently proven by Beth Holmgren, the biographer of Helena Modjeska and interpreter of the actress’s continuous self-invention on the stage (Starring Madame Modjeska: On Tour in Poland and the U.S., forthcoming in 2011). Like Modjeska, but two generations earlier, Maria Szymanowska also “re-invented” herself for the music stage, whether that of the public concert hall or the private salon. After leaving her husband and establishing a women’s and children’s household with her sister, Kazimiera Wołowska, Maria created an artistic “persona” of a charming, independent, inspired, beautiful, sensuous musician that – unlike her male counterparts – was also full of feminine virtues of modesty, humility, and “sense and sensibility.”

Szymanowska’s letters as well as her portraits by others depict her as full of “charming modesty” and other feminine virtues articulated in 19th century continental and British novels by such authors as George Eliot, Jane Austen, and George Sand. These virtues, while espoused in the salon and on the recital stage of the stile brillante era, were incommensurable with the aesthetics of the “musical genius” and the sublime, divinely inspired, “absolute music.” Ultimately, they pushed Szymanowska’s oeuvre of mixed value into obscurity, as she lost her struggle to balance the requirements of feminine propriety/modesty and the transgressive nature of a musical talent.

__________________________________

Illustrations: Portraits of Maria Szymanowska by Henri Benner and Antoni Borel, a litograph based on a drawing by Józef Oleszkiewicz (National Museum, Warsaw). Photo of Elizabeth (Elzbieta) Zapolska-Chapelle, and the cover of an edition of Szymanowska's Romances for Voice and Piano.

List of Maja's Publications on Maria Szymanowska:

"From Mrs. Szymanowska to Mr. Poldowski: Careers of Polish Women Composers," in A Romantic Century in Polish Music, Maja Trochimczyk, ed., Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2009, 1-46.

"Maria Szymanowska's Vocal Music." In Slawomir Dobrzanski, Maria Szymanowska: Pianist and Composer. Los Angeles: USC Thorngton School of Music and Figueroa Press, 2006.

"From Art to Kitsch and Back Again? Chopin's Reception by Women Composers." In Irena Poniatowska, ed., Chopin and His Work in the Context of Culture [Proceedings of the Second International Chopin Congress, October 1999]. KrakĂłw: Musica Iagellonica, 2003, vol. 2, 336-353.

"Maria Szymanowska's Vocal Music (article and an edition of Six Romances)."
Chapter of Women Composers: Music Through the Ages, vol. 4, Composers Born 1700-1799, Vocal Music. Sylvia Glickman and Martha Furman Schleifer, eds. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1998, 396-600.

"Chopin and Women Composers: Collaborations, Imitations, Inspirations." (MAH). The Polish Review 45, no. 1 (2000): 29-52.