Frederic Chopin Research Articles

Przedpiekle sławy. Rzecz o Chopinie (review)

Reviewed by: Przedpiekle sławy. Rzecz o Chopinie Ewelina Boczkowska Przedpiekle sławy. Rzecz o Chopinie. By Piotr Witt. Warsaw: Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego, 2010. [368 p. ISBN 9788362622009. Ordering information available from the Polish Ministry of Culture: http://kolekcje.mkidn.gov.pl/kontakt.] Illustrations, bibliography, abstracts. Only a handful of letters survive from the first fifteen months after Chopin arrived in Paris in October 1831; this period, before he became the most sought-after pianist and teacher, still remains one about which we know very little. Historian Piotr Witt sheds new light on this neglected chapter in Chopin's biography in his book, Przed-piekle slawy. Rzecz o Chopinie (The Night Chopin Became Famous). Witt tells the story of struggle and impending success, focusing on Chopin's transition into adulthood as he journeys from Vienna via Stuttgart to Paris and his rite of passage as a pianist in the French capital. As Witt presses on with the story, he also explores concurrent topics and the historical backdrop to Chopin's Parisian debut. The book culminates with Witt's uncovering of the Hotel de Monaco concert on 30 December 1832, which he argues was the turning point in Chopin's career. This is a story Witt is particularly well placed to tell after years of research into the history of the Hotel de Monaco, the current Polish embassy. In the journal of Rodolphe Apponyi, the nephew of the Austrian ambassador then based at the Hotel de Monaco, Witt found a mention of the now largely forgotten Chopin concert alongside Liszt, Rossini, and others. The remark led Witt to revisit Chopin's undated letter in which the pianist describes doing well for himself in the aristocratic salons. Based on these two documents, Witt set out first to date the letter and second, to establish the importance of the concert. Chopin biographers never agreed on the letter's date but Frederick Niecks (Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, 2 vols. [London: Novello, 1888]) used as a clue Chopin's comment that Princess Vaudemont had died the previous week—a crucial detail Witt omits when he quotes from the letter—to date the correspondence to mid-January, a week after her obituary was published [End Page 610] on 6 January. Here Witt points back to Apponyi's note of 30 December, where it is stated that the princess had been paralyzed for two days and was not at the concert, and concludes that Chopin learned she had died that evening and wrote his letter most certainly on 7 January 1833. This detective work is surely captivating, yet the historical reasons remain largely inconclusive. Chopin may have learned about Vaudemont's death at the Apponyis' salon as well as from the papers or common acquaintances later in the week. Witt's larger case about the career-altering concert is equally hard to make because all the facts combined open more than one possibility of interpretation, including that Chopin was already doing well—building on his talent, invaluable contacts, and performing opportunities—by the time he played at the Hotel de Monaco. In the same letter, Chopin writes that other composers had dedicated their works to him, indicating he had inspired respect before 30 December. The book's underlying assumption, however, is that Chopin's fame came overnight. To prove this, Witt downplays the impact of Chopin's first Parisian concert at the Salle Pleyel in February 1832 and, in doing so, dismantles the myths propagated by Chopin biographers Maurycy Karasowski (Fryderyk Chopin: zycie, listy, dzieła [Warsaw: Gebethnera i Wolffa, 1882]), Niecks, and Adam Zamoyski (Chopin: A Biography [London: Collins, 1979]), who had tied Chopin's success to the piano manufacturer Pleyel or, alternatively, to his benefactor Walenty Radziwiłł and the banker Rothschild. Witt then proceeds to construct yet another version of the same myth of success. He shows that Chopin's earlier concert aimed at foregrounding Pleyel's pianos instead of the pianist; the venue itself was smaller than the hall later built for it in 1855; attendance was negligible due to competing events in Paris that week; and the press coverage was minimal and overall indistinct. As a result, Witt...

Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions (review)

Reviewed by: Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions Jonathan Kregor Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions. By Christophe Grabowski and John Rink. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [lxxxiv, 909 p. ISBN 9780521817176. $225.] Tables, bibliography, appendices. Over the last dozen years, Christophe Grabowski and John Rink have collected, arranged, annotated, and synthesized over four thousand separate copies of more than fifteen hundred unique impressions of "first editions released during Chopin's lifetime, posthumous first editions published between 1850 and 1878, [and] successive reprints of these editions until their eventual disappearance from the market" (p. ix). The result is the Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions, a true labor of love that runs more than nine hundred oversized pages and offers the most complete picture of Frédéric Chopin in the robust marketplace of the long nineteenth century. More importantly, its fulsome historical overviews, overall clear presentation, ambitiously exhaustive scope, and rigorous yet flexible methodology make it an ideal blueprint for those seeking to better assess an element of nineteenth-century life [End Page 398] that—for better or worse—affected almost every notable musician: the world of music publishing. Chopin is an ideal lens through which to view this world, since he was one of the most commercially sensitive composers of his generation. As Jeffrey Kallberg first explained nearly thirty years ago ("Chopin in the Marketplace: Aspects of the International Music Publishing Industry in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century," Notes 39, no. 3 [March 1983]: 535-69, Notes 39, no. 4 [June 1983]: 795-824), the almost nonexistent state of copyright in Chopin's day forced composers to devise creative ways of getting the most compensation out of each composition. In Chopin's case, this meant sending multiple copies of a composition to different European publishers—usually in London, Paris, and Vienna—for publication or archival deposit on the same day, in the hope that first publishing rights could be asserted simultaneously, thus discouraging piracy. Yet Chopin rarely sent the same reading of a composition to all of his publishers, resulting in multiple first editions that were all authorized but rarely identical. Grabowski and Rink argue that "[w]ithout thorough analysis of these sources as well as the nineteenth-century practices that gave rise to them, Chopin's output cannot be understood in its historical context nor its content accurately reproduced in any modern edition. The very identity of the Chopin work is at stake" (p. xxi). Each entry in the "Annotated Catalogue" (pp. 1-583) illustrates the snowball effect that then took place: Chopin's first editions begot new imprints, a small selection of which suffered various degrees of alteration. The three Nocturnes op. 9 are a case in point. Grabowski and Rink identify thirty-eight different impressions of either the set or a part thereof. The first French edition was published by Maurice Schlesinger in 1833, who published it two more times with changes only to the pagination. Schlesinger's successor, Brandus, republished the piece four more times, although his second printing—the fifth printing overall of the work in France—introduced three different readings in the music of the first and second nocturnes. Also in 1833, Friedrich Kistner, based in Leipzig, began issuing opus 9, and—in what Grabowski and Rink describe as a "highly complex" (p. 58) situation—would eventually publish three engravings of op. 9, nos. 1 and 3 and five engravings of op. 9, no. 2. To be sure, some of these engravings introduced errors, which were often later corrected, but some contain readings that may come from Chopin himself. Kistner's title pages obscure this complex transmission of opus 9 by routinely reprinting the same title page. Such detailed analysis of the source situation means that basic information about each composition—such as incipit, date(s) of composition, references in correspondence, early reviews, etc.—is not given in the Annotated Catalogue; rather, reference is made to Józef Michał Chominski and Teresa Dalila Turlo, Kata log dziel Fryderyka Chopina / A Catalogue of the Works of Frederick Chopin (Cracow and Warsaw: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne and Towarzystwo im. Fryderyka Chopina, 1990). As impressive as the "Annotated Catalogue" is, even...

Frédéric Chopin's 'Madness' Diagnosed

Frédéric Chopin's 'Madness' Diagnosed

Frederic Chopin and Michael Jackson: What could they have in common?

Frederic Chopin and Michael Jackson: What could they have in common?

Ken Russell: Musical Mythmaker

This semiannual column presents reviews of significant video releases of interest to the field of music and to music libraries, as well as occasionally briefly noting other interesting titles. All genres of music in all video formats will be covered, with a preference given to those in DVD. All Web sites accessed 28 May 2009. No film director has made as many films about classical music as Britain's Ken Russell. After joining BBC's arts program Monitor in 1959, replacing John Schlesinger, who left to make feature films, Russell went on to make groundbreaking, often controversial short films about composers and other musical topics, as well as art and literary topics, before launching a long and even more controversial career in feature films, which includes Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), Altered States (1980), Crimes of Passion (1984), and Gothic (1986). A true auteur he also writes or co-writes most of his films. The DVD release of four early music-related films as part of the six-film Ken Russell at the BBC (BBC Video 3000017038 [2008]; DVD) provides an opportunity to witness the development of this distinctive artist. Considering these early efforts more than forty years after they were first televised also sheds new light upon Russell's subsequent work. Filmmakers, especially in Hollywood, have always been fascinated by the romance of classical music composers. But until Russell came along, these biopics were too worshipful, often whitewashing their subjects, as with such examples as The Great Waltz (1938), with Fernand Gravey as Johann Strauss; A Song to Remember (1945), with Cornel Wilde as Frederic Chopin and Merle Oberon as George Sand; Song of Love (1947), with Paul Henreid and Katharine Hepburn as Robert and Clara Schumann, and Robert Walker as Johannes Brahms; and Song without End (1960), with Dirk Bogarde as Franz Liszt. Anyone familiar with the subjects, these performers, and the lavish production values of the time can imagine almost blow-by-blow accounts of the films without seeing them, though Wilde actually looks more like Beethoven. Some European efforts, as with Abel Gance's Un grand amour de Beethoven (1937), while romanticized, were at least less predictable. Taking slow steps at first and tackling subjects about whom he had passionate interests, Russell broke away from this reverential, gauzy approach with a vengeance, offering warts-and-all portraits, though some have complained he has provided too many warts. In Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography, John C. Tibbetts does not exaggerate when he claims that Russell made the first adult musical biopics. (1) According to Joseph Horowitz, only Stanley Kubrick, among major contemporary filmmakers, treats music with something like the respect and understanding Russell accords it. (2) Russell's contributions are significant because over the past half century he has given thousands of viewers their first exposure to Debussy, Delius, Elgar, Liszt, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and others. It is also interesting to contemplate the similarities between his treatments of these composers and his occasional forays into popular music. The BBC hired Russell on the basis of three amateur films he made while working as a photojournalist--one of which used a score by Benjamin Britten. His first significant BBC film about a musician was the forty-five-minute Prokofiev: Portrait of a Soviet Composer (1961). Other music-related television films, ranging from fifteen minutes to an hour, not included in Ken Russell at the BBC are Variations on a Mechanical Theme (1959), about musical instruments; Guitar Craze (1959), about folk musician Davy Graham; Gordon Jacob (1959); Marie Rambert Remembers (1960), about the ballet star; The Miners' Picnic (1960), about brass bands; Cranko at Work (1960), about choreographer John Cranko; The Light Fantastic (1960), a look at dance in England; Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill (1962); Bartok (1964); Don't Shoot the Composer (1966), about film composer Georges Delerue; The Dance of the Seven Veils (1970), about Richard Strauss; The Planets (1983), a look at the solar system inspired by Gustav Hoist; Portrait of a Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams (1986); Ken Russell's ABC of British Music (1988); Mephistopheles (1989), the Arrigo Boito work by the Geneose Opera; The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner (1990); The Secret Life of Arnold Bax (1992), with Russell himself as the composer; The Mystery of Dr. …

Préludes , and: Balladen = Ballades , and: Ballades Op. 23, Op. 38, Op. 47, Op. 52 (review)

Reviewed by: Préludes, and: Balladen = Ballades, and: Ballades Op. 23, Op. 38, Op. 47, Op. 52 Jonathan D. Bellman Frédéric Chopin. Préludes. Herausgegeben von = edited by Norbert Müllemann. Fingersatz von = Fingering by Hermann Keller. (Urtext.) München: G. Henle Verlag, 2007. [Preface in Eng., Fre., Ger., p. iv–xiv; sigla used in footnotes, p. 1; score, p. 2–59; commentary in Eng., Ger., p. 61–71 (detailed critical commentary in Ger. only at www.henle.de). ISMN M-2018-0882-6; ISBN 979-0-2018-0882-6; pub. no. HN 882 (paper), HN 883 (cloth). $25.95 (paper), $45.95 (cloth).] Frédéric Chopin. Balladen = Ballades. Herausgegeben von = edited by Norbert Müllemann. Fingersatz von = Fingering by Hans-Martin Theopold. (Urtext.) München: G. Henle Verlag, 2008. [Preface in Eng., Fre., Ger., p. v–xvii; sigla used in footnotes, 1 p.; score, p. 1–55; commentary in Eng., Ger., p. 57–74 (detailed critical commentary in Ger. only at www.henle.de). ISMN M-2018-0862-8; ISBN 979-0-2018-0862-8; [End Page 857] pub. no. HN 862 (paper), HN 863 (cloth). $28.95 (paper), $43.95 (cloth).] Fryderyk Chopin. Ballades Op. 23, Op. 38, Op. 47, Op. 52. Edited by = Herausgegeben von = éditée par Jim Samson. (The Complete Chopin: A New Critical Edition.) (Urtext.) London: Edition Peters, 2006. [Frontispiece (facsim.), p. [ii]; preface in Eng., Fre., Ger., p. iii–x; score, p. 1–57; notes on editorial method and practice in Eng., p. 59–60; critical commentary in Eng., p. 61–69. ISMN M-57708-258-5; ISBN 979-0-57708-258-5; pub. no. Edition Peters no. 7531. Paper. $19.95.] One of the standard components of undergraduate- and graduate-level bibliography classes is a unit examining a variety of contrasting editions of music: facsimile, diplomatic transcription, urtext, scholarly edition, performance edition, study score, and editions that seek to combine elements of two or more types. Such a pedagogical exercise underscores the validity of all of these different kinds of editions, depending on user need. One size does not fit all; the needs of a piano student playing her first Chopin prelude, for example, are not the same as those of the Chopin scholar, or the graduate student in musicology reviewing large portions of the repertoire for qualifying examinations. The lesson is that different kinds of editions are conceived with such different purposes in mind. Similarly, each new edition—particularly of Chopin, whose music is not exactly hard to find—should likewise have a reason for being. If there is to be a new performance edition of Chopin’s works, it ought to respond to a specific need, and to offer some improvement over previous editions: improved fingerings and editorial apparatus, better readability, perhaps a deeper-context approach to variants. If it is a new scholarly or scholarly-performance edition, it is reasonable to hope for new information: more up-to-date scholarship, reconsideration of sources or access to new ones, or perhaps a deeper editorial consideration before performance suggestions are made about the relevant historical-notational conventions and performance practices. Consider, for example, the ongoing Complete Chopin: A New Critical Edition of that composer’s works from Peters. As of this writing, four volumes are out: the preludes, edited by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger; the ballades, edited by Jim Samson; the Waltzes, edited by Christophe Grabowski; and the Piano Concerto no. 1, edited by John Rink. Future volumes will appear under the editorship of these same and others such as Anatole Leikin. The only fingerings that are included are those authentic to the composer, such as those he notated in his students’ scores. A philosophical statement (more on this matter shortly) is provided in each volume, and alternate versions of certain works are also included, in appendices. The entire project brings together many of the top names in contemporary Chopin scholarship. (For chopinistes of indefatigable curiosity, mention should also be made of the Chopin Early Editions project of the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library, http://chopin.lib.uchicago.edu/ [accessed 18 February 2009]. High-quality digital images of a variety of first and early...

"The Raising of the Cross" in the Exordium of Fryderyk Chopin's Polonaise in F sharp minor Op. 44

"The Raising of the Cross" in the Exordium of Fryderyk Chopin's Polonaise in F sharp minor Op. 44

The last-minute approach to terminal commissioning: Case study of Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport

The successful opening of a new terminal requires the completion of two key elements: operational readiness prior to opening, and a well planned and managed transition phase. This paper provides insight into the challenges associated with commissioning new terminals, especially when time is in short supply. It describes the last-minute operational readiness and transition approach developed by Hochtief AirPort, the airport management firm. This procedure was first implemented when Warsaw Airport's new terminal began operating in spring 2008.

Venerable Sonority in Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Kate Chopin's The Awakening is ostensibly a work of realism depicting the moral conflict that faces Edna Pontellier: selfhood in opposition to family. Edna's ultimate surrender to her emotional conviction signals more than the requisite ethical dilemma of a particular literary genre; it also contains strong elements of musical romanticism, which put a greater stress on human instincts and feelings than on intellect.1 The character piece for piano,2 a major contribution of this era, emphasizes spontaneous emotion, as do the Impromptus that Mile. Reisz plays for Edna. These compositions by Frederic Chopin underline the influence of the Polish pianist on the novel. Although allusions to operatic composers exist in the work, they are ancillary because on certain evenings during the week she [Edna] and her husband attended the opera.8 Essentially, this type of artistic expression is reserved for shared time with Mr. Pontellier whereas the intimate strains of

George Sand and Frederick Chopin in Majorca (review)

George Sand and Frederick Chopin in Majorca (review)

Preface

Abstract The 18th International Conference on Physical Organic Chemistry (ICPOC-18) took place at the Gromada Hotel in Warsaw, Poland on 20-25 August 2006 under the local auspices of Warsaw University and the Polish Chemical Society. It was organized by a local Organizing Committee from the Department of Chemistry of Warsaw University led by Prof. Tadeusz M. Krygowski. Although physical organic chemistry began in the 1930s and at the beginning was concerned mostly with the mechanisms and kinetics of organic reactions and their dependence on structural and medium effects, a great extension of the field toward bioorganic, organic, organometallic, theoretical, catalytic, supramolecular, and photochemistry has been observed for decades now. Representative topics for modern physical organic chemistry include: reaction mechanisms; reactive intermediates; bioprocesses; novel structures; reactivity relationships; solvent, substituent, isotope, and solid-state effects; long-lived charges; sextet or open-shell species; magnetic, nonlinear optical, and conducting molecules; and molecular recognition. Contributions from all of these fields were presented. About 220 researchers, representing 31 countries, participated in the conference. The following eight plenary lectures were presented: R. Huber (Nobel laureate, Germany): "Molecular machines in biology" A. Yonath (Israel): "The spectacular ribosomal architecture: Nascent proteins voyage towards folding via antibiotics binding-pockets" P. Coppens (USA): "Time-resolved diffraction studies of molecular excited states and beyond" K. S. Kim (South Korea): "De novo design based on nano-recognition: Functional molecules/materials and nanosensors/nanodevices" I. P. Beletskaya (Russia): "Mechanistic aspects and synthetic application of carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds formation in substitution and addition reactions catalyzed by transition-metal complexes" S. Fukuzumi (Japan): "New development of electron-transfer catalytic systems" D. Braga (Italy): "Making crystals from crystals: A green route to crystal engineering and polymorphism" L. Latos-Grażyński (Poland): "Carbaporphyrinoids: Exploring metal ion-arene interaction in a macrocyclic environment" Additionally, 17 invited talks and, during two parallel sessions, 51 oral communications were presented. There were more than 100 poster presentations. I am pleased to introduce a representative selection of outstanding papers based on plenary and invited lectures delivered at ICPOC-18. In addition to the contributions mentioned above, this volume contains: a discussion of modern understanding of aromaticity (P. Fowler, UK); fascinating studies of new mechanisms focused on reactive intermediates (R. Moss, USA); interpretation of acidity, basicity, and hydride affinity by the trichotomy paradigm (Z. Maksić, Croatia); a quantum approach to proton transfer across hydrogen bond (F. Fillaux, France); a discussion of self-assembly of nickel(II) pseudorotaxene nanostructures on Au surface (R. Bilewicz, Poland); a discussion of synthesis and properties of macrocyclic receptors for anions (J. Jurczak, Poland); a description of novel organic-inorganic frameworks (J. Klinowski, UK); an application of microemulsions as microreactors (J. R. Leis, Spain); a discussion of silicon rehybridization and molecular rearrangements in hypercoordinate silicon dichelates (D. Kost, Israel); and a description of solvation in pure and mixed solvents (O. El Seoud, Brazil). All of these papers exemplify the broad range and diversity of interests of the participants and characterize the present and future challenges in physical organic chemistry. The social program of the conference included: a welcome reception; a Chopin music concert organized in cooperation with the Frederic Chopin Society; conference excursions, including Warsaw Old Town and Żelazowa Wola, the house where Chopin was born; the Warsaw Uprising (1944) Museum and the Heroes of Ghetto Memorial; and folk music dances during the conference dinner. Because ICPOC-18 was attended by quite a number of young chemists from all over the world, it can be expected that the next conference in this series, ICPOC-19, which will be held in July 2008 and is being organized by Profs. J. Ramon Leis from the University of Santiago de Compostela and A. Santaballa from the University of A Coruna (Spain), will not only reflect recent developments and the rich potential of physical organic chemistry, but will also demonstrate the aspirations of younger generations of scientists in this field. Krzysztof Woźniak Conference Editor

The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries

Introduction: Then and Now: A Fantasy Daniel Stone Part I: Memories, Images, and Dreams 1: at Home Bozena Shallcross 2: Delacroix's Portrait of Chopin as a Surrogate Self-Portrait John Nici 3: Monument of Fryderyk Chopin: Concepts and Reality Waldemar Okon 4: 'Remembering that tale of grief': The Prophetic Voice in Chopin's Halina Goldberg Part II: Analytical Perspectives 5: Idiosyncrasies of Phrase Rhythm in Chopin's Mazurkas Carl Schachter 6: Dance and the Music of Chopin: The Waltz Eric McKee 7: Chopiniana and Music's Contextual Allusions Marianne Kielian-Gilbert Part III: Gender, Genre, Genius 8: 'Nuit plus belle qu'un beau jour': Poetry, Song, and the Voice in the Piano Nocturne James Parakilas 9: Gender and Genius in Post-revolutionary France: Chopin and Sand Whitney Walton Part IV: Chopin Appropriated 10: as Reflected in Nineteenth-Century Polish Periodicals: General Remarks Zofia Chechlinska 11: Polish of Chopin's Biography by Franz Liszt Irena Poniatowska 12: and the 'Polish Race': On National Ideologies and Chopin Reception Maja Trochimczyk 13: 'A composer known here but to few': and Performance Styles of Chopin's Music in America, 1839-1900 Sandra P. Rosenblum

Men, Microbes, and Medical Microbiologists: A Concise Pictorial History of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Han T. Siem

What do Hippocrates, Chekhov, Emily Bronte, Frederick Chopin, Mickey Mouse’s dog Goofy, Elizabeth Taylor, and Bill Clinton have in common? Well, they are all on postage stamps, and for one reason or another, which will only become evident when you read this book, their image on a stamp can be used to illustrate a point about infectious disease. Chopin and Bronte died of TB; Goofy is shown with a stethoscope; Elizabeth Taylor campaigns against AIDS; and so on. What is not clear from anything in the long title of this book is that it is actually a thematic illustration of microbiology through postage stamps—hundreds and hundreds of stamps. Dr. Siem, a microbiologist born in Indonesia and whose career over three decades was in the Netherlands, is not so much a historian but a remarkable thematic philatelist who has amassed an outstanding collection of stamps and postcards, postmarks and any other material related to infectious disease or any person or discipline field even faintly related, and the illustrations in this book must number in the thousands. A recognized microbiologist, he is also the delegate to an international commission on thematic philately. It is such a beautiful example of a thematic philately collection that it is unfortunate that he has not indicated this in the title as it may be missed by the many who collect medically related stamps, and there are many. The historical sweep over the centuries is necessarily cursory, and arranged by categories that do not hold well together chronologically or thematically, and tend to stand alone, but I am not sure of a better way to handle categories as disparate as microscopy, vaccines, the sanitary movement, all the major infectious diseases, and biological warfare. He sometimes wanders from the historical discussion to mention some peripheral aspect that makes the inclusion of a particular stamp relevant. Thus we see stamps of Italian statues and bridges, the Archangel Michael, Saint Roch and his dog, Napoleon, Franz Liszt, Albert Camus, and the Passion Plays at Oberammergau. This is an unusual but very interesting and captivating book, beautifully produced in a large format by Erasmus Press. So if you like history and you like stamps, this is the book for you.

Polish Music Since Szymanowski (review)

Polish Music Since Szymanowski. By Adrian Thomas. (Music in the 20th Century.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. [xxiii, 384 p. ISBN 0-521-58284-9. $100.] Music examples, index, bibliography, appendices. Adrian Thomas' newly published Polish Music Since Szymanowski offers a detailed and objective view of Polish music since the death of Karol Szymanowski in 1937 to the present day, including its interface with political and cultural turmoil. Thomas states that he does not attempt to be (p. xvii). First and foremost it is a survey of post-Szymanowski Polish music. A comprehensive study would really be impossible and, for that matter, unnecessary or possibly even detrimental to the objectives of this publication. Many Polish composers are unknown outside of Poland while recordings of their works are all too often difficult to find or nonexistent. Hence, instead of making long work lists, Thomas focuses on his objective of presenting a clear picture of the influences that seem to have shaped Polish music of the past sixty years in the contexts of musicology and theory as viewed through a socio-political lens and his own vast experience with Polish music. I personally would have welcomed the work lists, but their absence does not diminish the value of the publication. As only a few Polish composers have international reputations with Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Ignacyjan Paderewski (1860-1941), and Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) being the most well-known names of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries and Henryk Mikoiaj Gorecki (b. 1933), Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933) being the three most well-known names in the second half of the twentieth century, it is inevitable that a survey of Polish music includes their names. The rest of the composers included in the book are those whose works make up Thomas' personal 'canon' (p. xvii) of compositions that have caught his ear over the last forty years or so, especially at the Warsaw Autumn Festival of Contemporary Music in Poland that Thomas began frequenting in the 1970s. He is currently director of the Central European Music Research Center (CEMRC) established in 2000 at Cardiff University (see www.cardiff.ac.uk/music/cemrc.html), a great addition to the already established Polish Music Center founded in 1985 by Wanda and Stefan Wilk at the University of Southern California (see http://www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music [both Web sites accessed 23 November 2005]). Thomas writes critically from the objective viewpoint of a musicologist and music theorist who is thoroughly and purposefully interested in his subject. Let the reader be aware that this book assumes fluency in a good bit of technical music terminology. However, with the addition of a glossary, the general reader may find it more manageable and less intimidating. It would be an excellent text for a university survey course particularly if it were taught by Thomas. As in his monograph on Gorecki (Gorecki [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997]), Thomas' love of Polish music is infectious and inspires the reader to run to the nearest computer, music store, or concert hall to hear what he or she has been missing. Alas, the disappointing reality is that only the big names in Polish music have recordings in the bins of major record stores and the inclusion of Polish music other than Chopin on concert programs is difficult to come by. Purchasing a copy of Gorecki's Third Symphony is not a problem, nor a recording by Chopin, Lutoslawski, Paderewski, Penderecki, or Szymanowski. However, it seems that Hanna Kulenty, Elzbieta Sikora, and other fine Polish composers who have not had the benefit of exposure through widely disseminated recordings will sadly remain enigmas for most listening audiences in the world (by contrast, Gorecki's Third Symphony sold a million copies). A great supplement to this publication would be a recording of any of the ninety-one printed music examples it offers. …

Musical Biography and Film: John Tibbetts Interviewed by Jim Welsh

Prologue: This interview marks the publication of Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography, just published by Yale University Press, written by John C. Tibbetts of the University of Kansas. Dr. Tibbetts was interviewed by Jim Welsh for Film & History. Welsh recently retired as the co-founding editor of Literature/Film Quarterly. JW: Would you explain the genesis of your book? JCT: A personal note is in order. As a boy growing up in a small Kansas town, Leavenworth, I was greatly impressed by a late-night telecast of Charles Vidor's A Song to Remember (1944), a of the Polish pianist/composer, Frederic Chopin. Its vivid hues, heightened drama, and exciting musical presentation were unforgettable. That splash of Technicolor blood on the white piano keys during Chopin's (Cornel Wilde) fateful concert tour (surely the best remembered, albeit most notorious moment in the entire oeuvre) was particularly startling. I hungrily watched the newspapers for re-runs. For years thereafter I embarked on a search for more information about Chopin. I attended concerts and haunted record stores trying to identify the music I had heard. I even fell upon James Huneker's biography of Chopin and eagerly devoured its overheated effusions (which rivaled those of the film). As the years passed, I encountered more composer biopics and was similarly stunned by the delirious waltz sequences of Julien Duvivier's The Great Waltz (1938); James Cagney's recreation of George M. Cohan's Give My Regards to Broadway routine in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942); the paralyzed Frederick Delius' (Max Adrian) musical dictation to his amanuensis Eric Fenby in Ken Russell's Song of Summer, Mozart's (Tom Hulce) last gasps of the confutatus maledictus to Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) near the end of Amadeus; and Joseph Stalin's gigantic statue looming over the pathetic, shuffling figure of Dmitry Shostakovich (Ben Kingsley) in Tony Palmer's Testimony (1987). I am unabashed in my affection (and in some cases, guilty pleasures) for such films. And even in the most wretched of them, say, the Schubert biopic, New Wine (1940), I can find points worth talking about. JW: Do you consider the composer biopic as a distinct genre? If so, what specific rules does the follow? JCT: The better question is, are BIOPICS in general a distinct genre? I would prefer to see them as a subset of the GENRE OF HISTORICAL FILMS, i.e., those which mandate at least a casual adherence to the historical record and to real-life historical figures. Further, within the subset of BIOPICS we have the ARTIST BIOPICS, which are distinguished by their preoccupation with creative agency and artistic invention. The remaining question is, should we then separate the COMPOSER biopics from other ARTIST BIOPICS about painters, writers, sculptors, dancers, etc. Do the COMPOSER BIOPICS' audio-visual depiction of musical creativity differ from the depiction of literary, painterly, and other creative activities? I, for one, hesitate to keep breaking down these films into ever diminishing subsets. However, I do feel there has not been enough discussion of biopics in general as either a genre or a part of a genre. As for a formula of the general category of biopics, I offer the following: They reveal the following commonly held agendas: 1. They adapt and rewrite the narrative structures and formulas common to romantic melodramas, musicals, westerns, horror films, etc. 2. They normalize and contain the artist's life-depicting him or her, on the one hand, as a somewhat marginalized individual struggling against stifling societal conformism; and, on the other, as a citizen striving to compose a song of the people that reflects and confirms the community's own commonly held experiences. 3. They tailor the artist's life to the prevailing screen images of the actors that appear in the cast. 4. They cater to the prestige ambitions of the studio producers. …

Ken Russell's The Debussy film (1965)

First telecast on 18 May 1965 as part of the BBC's Monitor series, The Debussy Film was Ken Russell's first fully-realized composer biopic—‘one of Russell's major contributions to the art of film b...

Tales from a Suitcase: Chopin's Early C-sharp Minor Nocturne

According to Fryderyk Chopin's sister, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, the Nocturne in C-sharp minor (Lento con gran espressione) was sent to her by her brother in an enclosure with a letter from Vienna in 1830. Chopin's letters from this time are full of lively and witty accounts of new musical experiences, but with an undercurrent of extreme homesickness. It would not be surprising, therefore, if his musical works of the time reflected something of this state of mind and it is argued in this essay that this work in particular might be read as a highly personal musical postscript to the letter it accompanied. As such, its informal and intimate nature might offer rare insights into Chopin as he behaved ‘at home’ among his family and friends, and also reveal something of his style of improvisation.

Multifunctional Chopin: the representation of Fryderyk Chopin in Polish films

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes To stress that Chopin in this paper will be discussed as a character in Polish films, I will use the Polish version of his name—Fryderyk. See Hanna Milewska, Adam Wyzynski, Chopin na ekranie, Kino (March 2002), p. 13. Ibid., pp. 13–16. Griselda Pollock, Artists mythologies and media genius, madness and art history, Screen, 21, (1980), p. 62. Ibid., p. 65. John A. Walker, Art and Artists on Screen (Manchester, 1993), p. 16. Quoted in Jerzy Toeplitz, Mlodosc Chopina, Kwartalnik Filmowy, 5/6 (1952), p. 118. Ibid., p. 118. Ibid., p. 118. It could be argued that some of the requirements are incompatible, for example, ‘being great’ and ‘being a typical representative of his class and nation’. Persuasive criticism of psycho‐biography and an apology of a ‘mature’, complex historical approach to an artist's life are found in two articles by a veteran of Polish film criticism, Zygmunt Kaluzynski: Muzycy bez muzyki, Video Club, 12 (1996), pp. 40–41 and Kizior, Beethoven i Chopin suchotnik, Polityka, 18 (2002), pp. 55–56. See Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (London, 1979). Compare Arthur Hedley, Chopin: the man, in Alan Walker (ed.), Frédéric Chopin: Profiles of the man and the musician (London, 1966). There are over a hundred films with Chopin's music used in the soundtrack. Source: Polish Film Archive. Hedley, op. cit., p. 8. Ibid., p. 6. Adam Zamoyski, Chopin, powsciagliwy romantyk (Krakow, 2002). A perfect case in point is the director Andrzej Wajda, regarded as the main representative of romanticism in Polish cinema. See Andriej Zdanow, Przemowienie na Pierwszym Wszechzwiazkowym Zjezdzie Pisarzy Radzieckich (17 sierpnia 1934), in his Przemowienia o literaturze i sztuce (Warszawa, 1954). Konrad Nalecki and Andrzej Wajda, O wykorzystaniu tradycji malarstwa w sztuce filmowej. Na przykladzie filmu Milosc Chopina, Nowa Kultura, 30 (1952), p. 26. See Wieslaw Chelmniak, Pragnienie mdlosci, Wprost (10 March 2002), p. 111; Hanna Milewska, Adam Wyzynski, op. cit., pp. 14–15. In this respect The Youth of Chopin is an achievement comparable with Ford's The Teutonic Knights. See Jacek Marczynski, Lodowaty spokoj aniola, Rzeczpospolita (28 February 2002), p. SA11; Liliana Snieg‐Czaplewska, Romantyczna goraczka, Viva, 6 (2002), p. 30. See Ewa Mazierska, In the land of noble knights and mute princesses: Polish heritage cinema, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 21 (2001), pp. 167–182. Some of the reasons are discussed in greater detail in Ewa Mazierska, op. cit. Such an opinion can be regarded as evidence that Poles prefer to live out their national identity by means of some surrogate. Such an approach to national identity, in my opinion, could be understood and excused in times when Poland did not exist as an independent state, but at present it largely signifies the artists' conservatism and inability to come to terms with reality. See Zbigniew Pietrasik, Pan Chopinowski, Polityka, 9 (2002), Wieslaw Chelmniak, op. cit., pp. 110–111. Hedley, op. cit., p. 7. Compare Elzbieta Ostrowska, Filmic representations of the ‘Polish mother’ in post‐Second World War Polish cinema, The European Journal of Women's Studies, 5 (1998), pp. 419–435. See Bozena Janicka, Chopin—pragnienie milosci, Film, 3 (2002), p. 48. See Zbigniew Pietrasik, Pan Chopinowski, Polityka, 9 (2002), Wieslaw Chelmniak, op. cit., pp. 110–111, Andrzej Kolodynski, op. cit., p. 38.

The Parisian Worlds of Frédéric Chopin by William G. Atwood (review)

1 1 6 Women in French Studies extreme right wing in its various forms: the Vichy government, the Dreyfus Affaire, and more recently by the Front National with Le Pen at the helm. Similar to a number of the other contributors to this collection, Leibovici suggests the malleability ofJoan's image according to the political climate of the moment. This collection is a wonderful resource for students and scholars of Joan and the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It provides a culturally diverse cross-comparison of the multiple interpretations and representations of one of the most important figures in French as well as European history. Lorie Sauble-OttoThe University of Northern Colorado 19™-Century French Literature William G Atwood. The Parisian Worlds of Frédéric Chopin. New Haven , CT. : Yale University Press, 2000. ISBN : 0-300-07773. Pp. 416. $35.00. The Parisian Worlds ofFrédéric Chopin immerses the reader in the Paris of the 1830s and 1840s. It is a very amusing bath. Devoting chapters to Louis Philippe, English influences, the salons, the opera, the art world, the theatre world, the Polish community, the world of literature, médecine, utopias , Bohemia and the Demimonde, and the legend of Napoléon, Atwood systematically explores each, describing its major characters and analyzing its events and trends. These are illustrated by charming anecdotes taken from Chopin's correspondence, George Sand's correspondence, or Thackery's The Paris Sketchbook, and Mrs. Trollope's Paris and the Parisians. Atwood, who has previously produced two books on Chopin, The Lioness and the Little One: The Liaison ofGeorge Sand and Frédéric Chopin (1980) and Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw (1987), was clearly intrigued by Galignani 's New Paris Guide (1841) which he calls "an AngloItalian guide to the French capital for the English-speaking tourist." One wonders whether this guide did not furnish the inspiration for Atwood's Parisian Worlds since the author uses it to introduce the reader to Paris of the 1 830s and 40s and returns to it in chapters six and seven. Although centered on Chopin, The Parisian Worlds of Frédéric Chopin provides a serious social history of Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century. All that is missing is the Parisian proletariat which receives a cursory nod in the chapter devoted to utopias. While there is no doubt that the book provides very entertaining reading to anyone interested in Paris or nineteenth-century France, Francophiles could wish that the author had privileged sources in French rather than the English ones. The underlying sub-text is "Chopin's Paris as seen by English people." In spite of its small inaccuracies, i.e., Georges Lubin's edition of George Sand's Correspondance is listed as having 9 volumes rather than 26 (butAtwood surely Book Reviews1 1 7 stopped reading when Chopin died), the book is a broad mural of Parisian manners, preferences, interests, preoccupations, and dreams in this period. This portrait of an era contains many curious little known facts. How many Americans realize that, before inventing the telegraph, Samuel F.B. Morse was an art student in Paris or that he, along with James Fenimore Cooper, helped Lafayette to raise money for displaced Poles after the fall of Warsaw to the Russians in 183 1? How many French people know that both Hector Berlioz and Alfred de Musset were destined for medical careers and abandoned them when faced with the horror of the dissecting room? This work shows evidence of being carefully researched from many sources, and one suspects that quite a few of the chapters could stand alone as an introduction to opera, theatre, or art, etc. in the nineteenth century. The only unifying theme for the disparate essays is the presence ofChopin in their midst. Nevertheless, the book is quite enjoyable and permits one to image s/ he is actually living in the Paris ofthe nineteenth century. Lucy M. SchwartzBuffalo State College (SUNY) Alison Finch. Women's Writing in Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0-521-63186-6. Pp. 316. $57.47. Alison Finch's Women s Writing in Nineteenth-Century France is breathtaking in scope...

A Passover in Mallorca

While the illustrious crowd may frequent Mallorca for some sophisticated sun, I convinced my wife that the island also represented the perfect, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime Passover plan. In mid-winter, a colleague, Gloria Mound, informed me that she was organising Passover in Mallorca for the local descendants of the island's Jews, who had converted to Catholicism some willingly but most under duress beginning in the fourteenth century. Gloria and her husband Leslie direct Casa Shalom, an institute in Gan Yavneh, Israel that researches the worldwide descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, many of whom converted to Catholicism. A vacation they took in Ibiza turned into a three-year stay. A friend, Rabbi Toledano of London, suggested they explore the history of the converted Jews there, advice that turned into a decades-long labour of love. Gloria's experience in the field and scholarly initiative have yielded a career with Casa Shalom and beyond; since 1988 she has been a research fellow in the Hispanics Department of the University of Glasgow. In Ibiza, Gloria and Leslie had held Passover seders which were wellattended by locals of Jewish descent. They now wished to hold them in Mallorca, to include the local conversos . Additionally enticing, a British Jewish hotelier donated to Casa Shalom partial use of one of his Mallorcan hotels, lowering the costs tremendously. Given my own interests in the converted Jews and their experiences I am a historian of Jews in the early modern Atlantic world an opportunity to spend Passover in Mallorca could not be passed up. The riveting, mythic, conflicted history of conversos promised to be a fascinating unanticipated field trip as well as a moving backdrop for this festival of Jewish liberation and identity. My title, of course, plays with the title of George Sand's famous memoir of a visit to the island with Frederic Chopin, A Winter in Mallorca , a copy of which I dutifully bought in preparation. My title also invokes the less-known