Descriptive Instrumental Music in Nineteenth-Century Poland: Context, Genre, and Performance

Abstract

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.