Chopin's Prophet

Chopin's Prophet PDF Author: Edward Blickstein
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810884976
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Vladimir de Pachmann was perhaps history’s most notorious pianist. Widely regarded as the greatest player of Chopin’s works, Pachmann embedded comedic elements—be it fiddling with his piano bench or flirting with the audience—within his classic piano recitals to alleviate his own anxiety over performing. But this wunderkind, whose admirers included Franz Liszt and music critic James Gibbons Huneker (who cheekily nicknamed Pachmann the “Chopinzee”), would by the turn of the century find his antics on the concert stage scorned by critics and out of fashion with listeners, burying his pianistic legacy. In Chopin’s Prophet: The Life of Pianist Vladimir de Pachmann, the first biography ever of this remarkable figure, Edward Blickstein and Gregor Benko explore the private and public lives of this master pianist, surveying his achievements within the context of contemporary critical opinion and preserving his legacy as one of the last great Romantic pianists of his time. Chopin’s Prophet paints a colorful portrait of classical piano performance and celebrity at the turn of the 20th century while also documenting Pachmann’s attraction to men, which ultimately ended his marriage but was overlooked by his audiences. As the authors illustrate, Pachmann lived in a radically different world of music making, one in which eccentric personality and behavior fit into a much more flexible, and sometimes mysterious, musical community, one where standards were set not by certified experts with degrees but by the musicians themselves. Detailing the evolution of concert piano playing style from the era of Chopin until World War I, Chopin’s Prophet tells the fantastic and true story of an artist of and after his time.

Chopin's Prophet

Chopin's Prophet PDF Author: Edward Blickstein
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810884976
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Vladimir de Pachmann was perhaps history’s most notorious pianist. Widely regarded as the greatest player of Chopin’s works, Pachmann embedded comedic elements—be it fiddling with his piano bench or flirting with the audience—within his classic piano recitals to alleviate his own anxiety over performing. But this wunderkind, whose admirers included Franz Liszt and music critic James Gibbons Huneker (who cheekily nicknamed Pachmann the “Chopinzee”), would by the turn of the century find his antics on the concert stage scorned by critics and out of fashion with listeners, burying his pianistic legacy. In Chopin’s Prophet: The Life of Pianist Vladimir de Pachmann, the first biography ever of this remarkable figure, Edward Blickstein and Gregor Benko explore the private and public lives of this master pianist, surveying his achievements within the context of contemporary critical opinion and preserving his legacy as one of the last great Romantic pianists of his time. Chopin’s Prophet paints a colorful portrait of classical piano performance and celebrity at the turn of the 20th century while also documenting Pachmann’s attraction to men, which ultimately ended his marriage but was overlooked by his audiences. As the authors illustrate, Pachmann lived in a radically different world of music making, one in which eccentric personality and behavior fit into a much more flexible, and sometimes mysterious, musical community, one where standards were set not by certified experts with degrees but by the musicians themselves. Detailing the evolution of concert piano playing style from the era of Chopin until World War I, Chopin’s Prophet tells the fantastic and true story of an artist of and after his time.

Chopin's Piano: In Search of the Instrument that Transformed Music

Chopin's Piano: In Search of the Instrument that Transformed Music PDF Author: Paul Kildea
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393652238
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
“An exceptionally fine book: erudite, digressive, urbane and deeply moving.” —Wall Street Journal Chopin’s Piano traces the history of Frédéric Chopin’s twenty-four Preludes through the instruments on which they were played, the pianists who interpreted them, and the traditions they came to represent. Yet it begins and ends with Chopin’s Mallorquin pianino, which the great keyboard player Wanda Landowska rescued from an abandoned monastery at Valldemossa in 1913—and which assumed an astonishing cultural potency during the Second World War as it became, for the Nazis, a symbol of the man and music they were determined to appropriate as their own. In scintillating prose, and with an eye for exquisite detail, Paul Kildea beautifully interweaves these narratives, which comprise a journey through musical Romanticism—one that illuminates how art is transmitted, interpreted, and appropriated over the ages.

Chopin's Letters

Chopin's Letters PDF Author: Fr‚d‚ric Chopin
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486255646
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
"Nothing could be more spontaneous and ebullient than Chopin's letters." "Books" "Perhaps no composer's letters are so kindred to his music, and reminiscent of the impression produced by it, as Chopin's are." "The New York Times" This superbly edited selection of nearly 300 of Chopin's letters, the first to be published in English, vividly reveals the composer as man and artist, and evokes the remarkable age Europe of the 1830s and 1840s he shared with an equally remarkable cast of characters, from Jenny Lind to Isabella II of Spain, from Queen Victoria to George Sand, from Heinrich Heine to Victor Hugo. The tone of the letters is exuberantly engaging: "They abound in delightful gossip, they are merry rather than malicious, they are engagingly witty, and at times their humor becomes positively Rabelaisian" (Peter Bowdoin, "Books"). Their contents offer rare glimpses into Chopin's childhood environment, his mind and character, his tragic love for George Sand, the origins of many of his compositions, the various musical influences that shaped his creative ideas and habits, and the artistic circles in which he moved. Originally collected by the Polish musicologist Henryk Opienski, the letters have been translated and annotated by Chopin scholar E. L. Voynich. Students and admirers of Chopin will find in their pages vast resources to deepen their love and appreciation for and wonderment at the unique individuality and achievement of this great musical personality. "

After Chopin

After Chopin PDF Author: Maja Trochimczyk
Publisher: Pendragon Press
ISBN: 9780916545055
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description


Chopin and His World

Chopin and His World PDF Author: Jonathan D. Bellman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400889006
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A new look at the life, times, and music of Polish composer and piano virtuoso Fryderyk Chopin Fryderyk Chopin (1810–49), although the most beloved of piano composers, remains a contradictory figure, an artist of virtually universal appeal who preferred the company of only a few sympathetic friends and listeners. Chopin and His World reexamines Chopin and his music in light of the cultural narratives formed during his lifetime. These include the romanticism of the ailing spirit, tragically singing its death-song as life ebbs; the Polish expatriate, helpless witness to the martyrdom of his beloved homeland, exiled among friendly but uncomprehending strangers; the sorcerer-bard of dream, memory, and Gothic terror; and the pianist's pianist, shunning the appreciative crowds yet composing and improvising idealized operas, scenes, dances, and narratives in the shadow of virtuoso-idol Franz Liszt. The international Chopin scholars gathered here demonstrate the ways in which Chopin responded to and was understood to exemplify these narratives, as an artist of his own time and one who transcended it. This collection also offers recently rediscovered artistic representations of his hands (with analysis), and—for the first time in English—an extended tribute to Chopin published in Poland upon his death and contemporary Polish writings contextualizing Chopin's compositional strategies. The contributors are Jonathan D. Bellman, Leon Botstein, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Halina Goldberg, Jeffrey Kallberg, David Kasunic, Anatole Leikin, Eric McKee, James Parakilas, John Rink, and Sandra P. Rosenblum. Contemporary documents by Karol Kurpiński, Adam Mickiewicz, and Józef Sikorski are included.

The Reminiscences and Selected Criticism of Herbert Thompson

The Reminiscences and Selected Criticism of Herbert Thompson PDF Author: Michael Allis
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1835533442
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
This book is a critical edition of the autobiography and selected musical criticism of Herbert Thompson (1856–1945) who was chief music critic at The Yorkshire Post from 1886 until 1936, and Yorkshire correspondent for the Musical Times.

Fantasies of Improvisation

Fantasies of Improvisation PDF Author: Dana Andrew Gooley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190633581
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The first history of keyboard improvisation in European music from the time of Beethoven through the later nineteenth century, Dana Gooley's Free Play: Fantasies of Improvisation in Nineteenth-Century Music describes the motives, intentions, and musical styles of the nineteenth century's leading improvisers, and traces the evolution of the performance practice into a glorified ideal.

Music and the Queer Body in English Literature at the Fin de Siècle

Music and the Queer Body in English Literature at the Fin de Siècle PDF Author: Fraser Riddell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108839207
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The first comprehensive study of music and queer identities in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century English literature.

Life of Chopin

Life of Chopin PDF Author: Franz Liszt
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
This book written by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt illustrates what romanticism is all about, which is not so much a biography of Chopin as it is a way to better understand Liszt and the environment of his time. Although critics of Liszt's book criticized it for various literary violations, it is not without its merits. There are many things worth learning about these two great pianists of all the time, Chopin and Liszt within its pages.

Chopin's Funeral

Chopin's Funeral PDF Author: Benita Eisler
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307425258
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Frédéric Chopin’s reputation as one of the Great Romantics endures, but as Benita Eisler reveals in her elegant and elegiac biography, the man was more complicated than his iconic image. A classicist, conservative, and dandy who relished his conquest of Parisian society, the Polish émigré was for a while blessed with genius, acclaim, and the love of Europe’s most infamous woman writer, George Sand. But by the age of 39, the man whose brilliant compositions had thrilled audiences in the most fashionable salons lay dying of consumption, penniless and abandoned by his lover. In the fall of 1849, his lavish funeral was attended by thousands—but not by George Sand. In this intimate portrait of an embattled man, Eisler tells the story of a turbulent love affair, of pain and loss redeemed by art, and of worlds—both private and public—convulsed by momentous change.