Age of Chopin

Halina Goldberg is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Indiana University. Her research centers on the musical and cultural environment of Chopin's Warsaw, performance practice issues, questions of reception, and the musical, social, and political creation of national constructs.

"Emanating from a 1999 interdisciplinary conference at Indiana University, Bloomington, these 13 essays are grouped under four headings: Memories, Images, and Dreams, Analytical Perspectives, Gender, Genre, Genius, and Chopin Appropriated. Likely of interest to inexperienced readers will be the comparison of Eugène (Eugene) Delacroix's 1837 self-portrait with his incomplete 1838 portrait of Chopin; the history of Waclaw Szymanowski's Chopin monument in Warsaw, which was unveiled in 1926, destroyed by the Germans in 1940, and reconstructed in 1958; the reception of Chopin's music with its national character as reflected in 19th-century Polish periodicals; and the spreading popularity of Chopin's music in the US from 1839 to 1900. More specialized essays propose that waltzes Chopin chose to publish were those depicting dancers' physical motions; describe contexts in which Chopin's music is found in ballet, cinema, and television; and examine the Polish spirit, Polish race, and Chopin as a wieszes, or prophet/patriot. Other articles propose that the forerunner of Chopin's nocturnes was the Italian vocal nocturne and investigate the meanings of 19th-century French thinking and whether it was exclusively masculine. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.December 2004"—J. Behrens, The Glenn Gould School, The Royal Conservatory of Music

• PREFACEAcknowledgmentsINTRODUCTION: "Chopin Then and Now: A Fantasy" Daniel StonePART I. Memories, Images, and Dreams1. "Chopin at Home" Bozena Shallcross 2. "Delacroix's Portrait of Chopin as a Surrogate Self-Portrait" John Nici 3. "The Monument of Fryderyk Chopin: Concepts and Reality" Waldemar Okon4. "'Remembering that tale of grief': The Prophetic Voice in Chopin's Music" Halina Goldberg PART II. Analytical Perspectives5. "Idiosyncrasies of Phrase Rhythm in Chopin's Mazurkas" Carl Schachter 6. "Dance and the Music of Chopin: The Waltz" Eric McKee7. "Chopiniana and Music's Contextual Allusions" Marianne Kielian-GilbertPART III. Gender, Genre, Genius8. "'Nuit plus belle qu'un beau jour': Poetry, Song, and the Voice in the Piano Nocturne" James Parakilas9. "Gender and Genius in Post-revolutionary France: Chopin and Sand" Whitney WaltonPART IV. Chopin Appropriated10. "Chopin Reception as Reflected in Nineteenth-Century Polish Periodicals: General Remarks" Zofia Chechlinska11. "The Polish Reception of Chopin's Biography by Franz Liszt" Irena Poniatowska12. "Chopin and the 'Polish Race': On National Ideologies and Chopin Reception" Maja Trochimczyk13. "'A composer known here but to few': Reception and Performance Styles of Chopin's Music in America, 1839-1900" Sandra P. RosenblumContributorsIndex