\u201cChopin encapsulates everything we were denied: colourful noblemen\u2019s robes, gilded sashes, sombre czamarka coats, four-cornered caps, the rattling of noble\u2019s sabres, the glint of peasant\u2019s scythes, the moaning coming from a wounded chest, the rebellion of a shackled spirit, cemetery crosses, roadside village churches, the prayers of worried hearts, the pain of enslavement, the cursing of tyrants and the happy song of victory,\u201d said Ignacy Jan Paderewski in 1910 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin\u2019s birth, giving a pithy description of the meaning Chopin\u2019s music had for the enslaved and partitioned Polish nation as well as its extraordinary immersion in Polish culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The strong national component in Chopin\u2019s works was obvious to his contemporaries from the very beginning. As early as 1837, as he was commenting on the rich gamut of European traditions from which Chopin\u2019s compositions stemmed (he recognised in them the elegance and charm of French culture as well as the \u201cromantic depth\u201d derived from German culture), Heinrich Heine underlined: \u201cPoland gave him a knight\u2019s temperament and the pain of history.\u201d \u201cChopin contains two figures,\u201d wrote the Paris reviewer Ernest Legouv\u00e9 after one of the composer\u2019s concerts, \u201ca patriot and an artist. The soul of the former enlivens the genius of the latter.\u201d Wilhelm von Lenz, who studied under Chopin for a time, said: \u201cHe gave Poland; in the music he wrote there was Poland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our attitude to Chopin\u2019s Polishness is often based on a stereotype: we have got used to associate it only with the traces of folk stylisations present in his music, citing the example of mazurkas. However, it was already the author of Chopin\u2019s first biography, the composer and virtuoso pianist Ferenc Liszt, who observed that Chopin had become the \u201cembodiment of the poetic spirit of the entire nation,\u201d not because \u201che set his pieces to the rhythm of polonaises, mazurkas and cracoviennes and named many of them after folk dances\u201d, far from it. \u201cHe used the [folk] form only to express a certain way of feeling that was more common in his country than elsewhere [\u2026]. His preludes, etudes, and especially nocturnes, his scherzos and concertos \u2013 the shortest compositions as well as the most prominent works \u2013 are imbued with the same, unchanging type of gentle sensitivity even if is expressed with varying levels of intensity and in a thousand varieties.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, the national qualities of Chopin\u2019s music run much deeper than folklore inspirations. \u201cWhy, being so very Polish and rooted in Polish culture,\u201d wondered the Polish music critic Bohdan Pociej, \u201cis Chopin\u2019s so universal and understandable in all the countries and continents of the modern world? What is the (substantial) essence of the music\u2019s Polishness?\u201d
Over the years, the impression of the essentially Polish nature of Chopin\u2019s music would only grow stronger. It was beautifully summed up in 1865 by Cyprian Kamil Norwid in his poem \u201cChopin\u2019s Grand Piano\u201d: \u201cAnd therein was Poland, captured\/ At history\u2019s all-perfect zenith\/ Like an arc of rapture.\u201d In the following century there was no shortage of voices recognising the national tones ringing in Chopin\u2019s works \u2013 one strong opinion on the subject was expressed by the German philosopher, sociologist, music theoretician and composer Theodor W. Adorno: \u201cYou have to stop your ears not to hear Chopin\u2019s Fantasy in F minor as a kind of tragically decorative song of triumph saying that Poland was not yet lost and that [\u2026] some day she would rise again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Polish yet European, homely yet universal, emotional yet artistically perfect \u2013 Chopin\u2019s music may be understood in many ways. Performed by the world\u2019s best pianists, it is now listened to by tens of millions of people from Japan to North Canada who are not necessarily music enthusiasts. Having lost noting of its relevance, Polishness and universality, it remains the best showcase of our Polish culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Text published in the monthly Wszystko Co Najwa\u017cniejsze (Poland) as part of a historical education project with the Institute of National Remembrance and Narodowy Bank Polski (Polish Central Bank).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cChopin encapsulates everything we were denied: colourful noblemen\u2019s robes, gilded sashes, sombre czamarka coats, four-cornered caps, the rattling of noble\u2019s sabres, the glint of peasant\u2019s scythes, the moaning coming from a wounded chest, the rebellion of a shackled spirit, cemetery crosses, roadside village churches, the prayers of worried hearts, the pain of enslavement, the cursing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":3137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-2","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n