The poet of the piano in the Romantic age of Nationalism

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 11 May 2008 23:24.

As it did with Beethoven and Bach, so BBC Radio 3 is dedicating a period of unbroken play-time to the greatest of piano composers, Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849). The Chopin Experience will last be broadcast over 17-18 May 2008. It will include all his compositional output, about which a fellow genius wrote:-

He did not task himself, nor study to be a national musician. Like all truly national poets he sang spontaneously without premeditated design or preconceived choice all that inspiration dictated to him, as we hear it gushing forth in his songs without labor, almost without effort. He repeated in the most idealized form the emotions which had animated and embellished his youth; under the magic delicacy of his pen he displayed the Ideal, which is, if we may be permitted so to speak, the Real among his people; an Ideal really in existence among them, which every one in general and each one in particular approaches by the one or the other of its many sides. Without assuming to do so, he collected in luminous sheaves the impressions felt everywhere throughout his country - vaguely felt it is true, yet in fragments pervading all hearts. Is it not by this power of reproducing in a poetic formula, enchanting to the imagination of all nations, the indefinite shades of feeling widely scattered but frequently met among their compatriots, that the artists truly national are distinguished?

... Chopin must be ranked among the first musicians thus individualizing in themselves the poetic sense of an entire nation, not because he adopted the rhythm of POLONAISES, MAZOURKAS, and CRACOVIENNES, and called many of his works by such names, for in so doing he would have limited himself to the multiplication of such works alone, and would always have given us the same mode, the remembrance of the same thing; a reproduction which would soon have grown wearisome, serving but to multiply compositions of similar form, which must have soon grown more or less monotonous. It is because he filled these forms with the feelings peculiar to his country, because the expression of the national heart may be found under all the modes in which he has written, that he is entitled to be considered a poet essentially Polish. His PRELUDES, his NOCTURNES, his SCHERZOS, his CONCERTOS, his shortest as well as his longest compositions, are all filled with the national sensibility, expressed indeed in different degrees, modified and varied in a thousand ways, but always bearing the same character.

From Franz Liszt’s Life of Chopin.

The Chopin Experience can be appreciated on-line, of course, and for 7 days after broadcast.

Tags: Music

Comments:

Posted by Marge O'Brien on Mon, 12 May 2008 17:11 | #

*That’s* not Chopin!!! Here he is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNzwcFihh5I

http://www.amazon.com/Song-Remember-Paul-Muni/dp/630242500X

Editorial Review

The short life and passionate music of romantic composer Frédéric Chopin provide the foundations for this 1945 drama, which proved influential in its gaudy, undeniably watchable formula of historical exaggeration and shrewdly simplified motives for its principals. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Cornel Wilde presents the Polish native as a passionate nationalist driven by his love of his native country and his hatred of its czarist regime, a thematic focus that can be forgiven in light of the political backdrop at the time of the production. Already a prodigy in his native land, where he’s mentored by a shamelessly scenery-chewing Paul Muni as Professor Elsner, Chopin flees to Paris where his flashing eyes, dark nimbus of curls, and florid technique earn him stardom, while his involvement with the writer George Sand (a beautiful Merle Oberon, even when draped in then-provocatively masculine garb) introduces a romantic crescendo. Still, the tortured pianist-composer pines for his homeland, frets about its political fate, and begins to wither under the rigors of his new career as ur-superstar; in a typically over-the-top but riveting image, we see drops of blood spatter across the keyboard as he thunders through a recital, gallantly ignoring his failing health to spread his music and, by extension, awareness of Poland’s fate. Numerous subsequent musical dramas (including two more Song-titled biographies from the same studio) would ply a similar mix of grand gestures and larger-than-life emotions, yet the most interesting comparison to be made is with 1991’s Impromptu, a more acerbic spin through the Sand/Chopin affair (and the Parisian demimonde including Alfred DeMusset, Franz Liszt, and Eugene Delacroix) directed by frequent Stephen Sondheim collaborator James Lapine.—Sam Sutherland

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 13 May 2008 03:45 | #

Notice the clothing Chopin is wearing in the photo is esthetically superior to men’s clothing of today. Not only has our ability to run our countries declined, so has our taste in clothes. .

Posted by Marge O'Brien on Tue, 13 May 2008 11:20 | #

If you zoom the photo of George Sand on this page:
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/sand_g.html

you’ll see her dress, too, was in fine taste. Also that she didn’t look like Merle Oberon. : )

George Sand became my first female role model, passionately so, when I read her biography entitled Lelia, taken from the title of her first published book. She would certainly be considered a feminist, and though it went over my head at the time, she was also a socialist. What so fascinated me about her was her active engagement with her world—its politics and its arts—writing newspaper columns as well as novels and plays and associating with leading figures of the day. She was also a good mother and grandmother, and I noted she was the only female on a list of super high IQ people from the past that circulated on the web a few years ago.

I wasn’t making light of Chopin or his music when I posted the link to the movie. Paul Muni and Nina Foch, the true idealist, faithful friends, were both Jews, of course, and the Chopin/Sand relationship was fictionalized for dramatic effect. But the film was saturated with Chopin’s music, which overshadowed all the rest.

The demise of good tailoring in America occurred during the 60s. Although much attention was paid to hemlines, the most symbolic change was in the shoulders, which shifted from fitted to drooping, signifying the corresponding change in society from idealism to mediocrity. I read once that it was a reaction to the militaristic mindset of the war years. I doubt that’s all it was.

MOB

Posted by Laptoper on Thu, 15 May 2008 10:01 | #

Poets is senders from a God!