Polish Music
With the rise of the Romantic movement Poland came into her own. There appeared the great figure of Chopin, who embodied in his work the whole national lore of song…
From: 1809 C.E. To: 1919 C.E.
Location: Poland
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Poland and the Poles by Alexander Bruce Boswell, 1919.
With the rise of the Romantic movement Poland came into her own. There appeared the great figure of Chopin, who embodied in his work the whole national lore of song and melody and the national dances of his country, and revealed the riches of Polish musical art to the whole world.
In Chopin's music all foreigners have direct contact with the spirit of Polish romanticism, and it is not within the province of this work to discuss the technical side of his musical compositions, which are accessible to all Europe. But the more national aspects of his life and work are less known.
Frederick Chopin was born near Warsaw in 1809. His father was a French teacher in Poland, but the family was originally of Polish origin, a certain Szop having emigrated to Lorraine with the exiled King Leszczyhski. His mother was Polish, and from her he inherited all the artistic gifts and imagination of the Polish race.
The young Chopin was educated at Warsaw, and as his musical genius began to develop, he entered the Warsaw musical Conservatoire, which was then under the directorship of the talented Eisner. He came into contact with the world of music during his visit to Vienna in 1829. He gave his first concert at Warsaw in the next year. He was abroad when the Polish revolution broke out—an event which was an epoch in the career of the young musician, as in the lives of the great poets.
With a heart choked with bitterness he migrated to France to spend his life in exile, and settled among the French artistic group that included Gautier, Dumas, de Musset and Delacroix; and among the brilliant circles of Polish exiles, including Julius Slowacki, the poet, so like to Chopin both in appearance and in character. Here he made the acquaintance of George Sand, whose friendship was so important an element in his life. He visited Germany, where he met Mendelssohn and the Schumanns, and spent some time in England and Scotland. He lived in considerable poverty, and the disease, that soon began to ravage an enfeebled constitution that had never been robust, resulted in his premature death in his fortieth year.
The music of Chopin is accessible to all, and any discussion of its technical merits would be out of place here. But something must be said of the position of Chopin in the development of the art of music, because his work has so often been misunderstood. The complete ignorance of Poland, so universal in Europe, has resulted in the prevalence of very erroneous opinions about the greatest Polish composer. Critics, in their attempts to classify his works, have placed him now in the German school, now among the French composers.
With the traditional German school Chopin had little in common. The limitations of the classical forms would have choked the free spontaneity and capricious irregularity of his methods. The conventional scenery, the banality of theme and pedantry of treatment that distinguished so many of the German composers, were utterly alien to the genius of the Polish pianist. The resemblance of his music to that of Schumann was due to the evolution of the Romantic movement in all countries at the time. Chopin never learned from the Germans. On the contrary, they copied many of his innovations.
A far more deeply founded idea is the heresy that Chopin was a product of French music. This is based partly on the fact that he lived so long in France, and partly on a mistaken view of his music. The portions of his work that became most popular were his Nocturnes and Waltzes, and in these there is an element of artificiality, of cloying sweetness, of languorous beauty, and a lack of virility and sanity that suggest the atmosphere of the Salon. These compositions are the weakest part of his work, and, had he composed nothing else, they would have been, in fact, the work of a denationalized exile. But apart from his skill as a virtuoso, and the tremendous advance he made in the art of piano-playing, by his bold and original use of rhythm, the charm of his melodies and the magnificent colour and richness of his harmonies, the greatness of Chopin lies in his intense romanticism, and in the inspiration which he draws from national feeling for his romantic masterpieces.
Chopin is the first composer to embody the spirit of a nation in music, and he is the precursor of all the national movements in Russia, Hungary, Scandinavia and Finland, that have so greatly enriched the music of the last century. He embodies in his compositions not only the distinctive feelings of Polish nationality, but also the actual folk-melodies, rhythms and dances of his native land. He has created in music what Mickiewicz created in poetry and Matejko in painting; he has expressed the whole spirit of a people. All the characteristics of the Pole that have been discussed in Chapter III. are expressed in the music of Chopin; and if his genius developed a wild fantastic imagination, a dark, almost morbid brooding, an intense spiritual exaltation, at the expense of form, sanity and logic, this is due to the tragic setting in which the sombre drama of the exiled Polish romantics was played.
The but it is not the artificial gloom of the city, but the monotony of the scenery of the great Polish plain and of the lives of its peasants. His greatest works are based on Polish folk-dances.
Each province of Poland has its own distinctive dance and its own special type of folk-song. The Duma or Dumka (reverie) is the special song of the Ukraine, and consists of a plaintive melody, accompanied on a stringed instrument called the bandura, and usually changing from the minor key to the major. The fresher Lithuanian song, the Dainos, is of ancient origin, and a specimen was composed by Chopin. But Poland proper has four great dances, one for each province. The Polonaise was the dance of Great Poland, but it became, at an early date, the dance of the Court of Poland. It is rather a procession than a dance, a solemn march of gallant men and fair women, with a wealth of gesture, gesticulation and graceful movement. It is stately, chivalrous, and of a distinct military character.
The Polonaise was developed artistically by Prince M. Oginski, whose dances became popular over all Eastern Europe. In the hands of Chopin it came to represent all the pageantry of Polish aristocratic life. Its themes are grave, stately and full of old-world ceremony and deliberation; at times full of fierce passion and reluctant surrender, at others of war and heroism. The description of a Polonaise by Mickiewicz describes rather the courteous, stately aspect of the dance. But in Chopin the Polonaise is full of virility and life. Its marked rhythm, in triple time, has been used to express the marching of armies, the shock of battle, even the sound of the guns at Warsaw in 1830.
Most popular in Poland is the famous "Royal" Polonaise (Op. 40, No. 1) in A major, symbolical of the pomp and glory of the former Polish monarchy. The Fantasie Polonaise in A flat major represents the tragic struggle of Poland against her enemies, and is full of sublime faith in ultimate victory.
The Krakowiak, or Cracovienne, is the dance of Lesser Poland, and in particular of the region of Cracow. It is, in contrast to the stately Polonaise, a fiery peasant dance in double time. There are often couplets, written in it, of a jovial nature, sung by the dancers, who are usually in peasant costume. It is distinguished by its noisy bustle, its gliding steps and the monotonous insistence of the accompaniment with its well-marked rhythm.
The national dance of Kujawia is the Kujawiak, a mournful dirge-like melody, entirely lacking the abandon of the former dance. The best known specimens of this dance in music are the compositions of the violinist Wieniawski. While the Polonaise is the dance of the Court, and the Krakowiak the dance of the peasants, the Mazur or Mazurka, as we call it, the national dance of Mazovia, though it emanated from the people, has become the dance of all classes in Poland, and in it Chopin found his greatest medium of expression. In triple time, but far more lively than the Polonaise, the Mazur can express all the emotions and feelings in turn.
The original folk-songs and dances expressed the simple joys of life, tales from history, love, song and dance. But the Mazur soon developed into a literary form, and the first national anthem of Poland, "Poland has not perished yet," was sung to a Mazur air composed by Ogihski. The genius of Chopin lies in the skill with which he has preserved the rustic character of the Mazur, and at the same time modified its form, enriched and ennobled its subject-matter, and made it express all the national spirit of Poland and cover the whole gamut of human emotion, from reckless good humour to tender pathos.
Out of these quaint, slender forms he has fashioned great masterpieces, and enriched romantic music with a whole wealth of harmony, melody and rhythm, that have influenced every later composer. Chopin revealed his genius also in his Ballades, partly suggested by some of the ballads of Mickiewicz, and in his Preludes and Etudes, which give him full scope for the development of his originality and charm. The Seventh Prelude, "a plaintive little mazurka of two lines," says Huneker, "is a mere silhouette of the national dance. Yet in its measure is compressed all Polish Mazovia." Contrast this with the impetuous “revolutionary" Étude No. 12 which, against a background of restless tumult and simmering excitement, portrays all the hopes of the insurrection of 1830. Its poignant notes of despair, triumph and power, end with two staccato chords of impressive weight, suggesting the sudden check of great forces that must inevitably burst forth again.
Chopin's work covers a vast range, from massive, magnificent, and epic grandeur, to dark, solitary questionings and sombre and sorrowful dreams. He has been accused of a lack of virility. But anyone who knows the Scherzos, the Polonaises and some of the Etudes will realize the absurdity of this charge. He is popularly supposed to express French ideas. No nation was more antipathetic to Chopin than the French. He never forgave them for their failure to help Poland in 1830, and if his fate led him to pass part of his life in France, his capricious genius was never affected by the hard rationality and clarity of French art, and French wit and gaiety made the atmosphere of the Salon far from congenial to him.
Neither are his works morbid. They are, it is true, infused with a gentle melancholy; but in Poland, melancholy does not imply despair. The religious and national beliefs of the Poles do not permit them to submit themselves permanently to despair. In another chapter it has been suggested that this atmosphere of gloom is somewhat of a literary pose. The fact is, the Poles, like all the Slavs, have a way of adapting themselves to the mood of the moment. The monotony of a snow scene, a dark, grey period of adversity, disillusionment and fear, lead to a sensuous feeling of plaintive tenderness that are very different from despair. The individual Pole is full of temperament, and his adaptability to varying moods has earned him an unmerited reputation for fickleness. It is in this spirit that Chopin's work should be heard, and with a full recognition of their Polish background. Only in this way can we come to a just appreciation of the true richness and variety of the masterpieces of the great Polish composer.
The second great Polish composer was Stanislaw Moniuszko (1819-72) who is quite unknown outside Poland on account of the purely national character of his compositions. He did not originate Opera in Poland, but he is the true creator of the national Polish Opera.
His first opera was produced at Vilna in 1858, and he composed five or six operas on national themes, which have kept the stage ever since. In "Halka," his masterpiece, there are technical imperfections and a lack of general interest, but with its simplicity, its tenderness and its appeal to national sentiment, it is the greatest opera of Poland.
The two great Polish composers have been followed by many others: Noskowski, Stojowski, Szymanowski and the brilliant Karlowicz, whose life was cut short by an accident in the Carpathians. His songs, which are often composed to the lyrical poems of Tetmajer, are full of beauty, and his Lithuanian Rhapsody is one of the finest orchestral works in all Polish music.
Poland however has produced fewer composers of the first rank than Russia. But from Poland and from the great Jewish community in Poland and Western Russia have come a great number of virtuosi. Besides Chopin, there have been Paderewski, Sliwiński, Moszkowski and Pachmann among piano players; and Kontski, Lipihski, Wieniawski and Barcewicz among violinists, besides a host of lesser players; Ignacy Paderewski is the first piano-player in the world, a brilliant critic and interpreter of Chopin, the composer of an opera and a symphony, and a great patriot who has to-day become Prime Minister of Poland.
Polish music is to-day rich in composers and executants, and when political questions are settled there is a possibility of a great advance in the future. There have long been signs of such an advance. The young school of composers have come under the influence of Wagner, Chaykovsky and Strauss, and in their works, especially those of Karlowicz and Szymanowski, they display striking originality. Music is strongly established in the musical societies of Warsaw, Cracow and Lemberg.
The Philharmonic in Warsaw has a series of fine concerts every year. Its orchestra formerly played under the conductorship of Emil Mlynarski who is now conducting in Glasgow, and then of Fitelberg, now conductor of the Vienna Opera House. There are also societies for singing known as the Lute (Lutnia), which have done a great deal for this lesser form of art. Opera flourishes in all the chief centres of Poland, and there has been a wealth of vocal talent in the brothers Reszke, Mdes Sembrich-Kochanska, Bolska, Korolewicz, and many others. Musical art stands high in Poland, but has not yet had the opportunity for a free development, though all the elements for a big advance are latent.
Boswell, Alexander Bruce. Poland and the Poles. Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1919.
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