Author: Tad Szulc
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684867389
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
Chopin in Paris introduces the most important musical and literary figures of Fryderyk Chopin's day in a glittering story of the Romantic era. During Chopin's eighteen years in Paris, lasting nearly half his short life, he shone at the center of the immensely talented artists who were defining their time -- Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Delacroix, Liszt, Berlioz, and, of course, George Sand, a rebel feminist writer who became Chopin's lover and protector. Tad Szulc, the author of Fidel and Pope John Paul II, approaches his subject with imagination and insight, drawing extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the composer's own journal, portions of which appear here for the first time in English. He uses contemporary sources to chronicle Chopin's meteoric rise in his native Poland, an ascent that had brought him to play before the reigning Russian grand duke at the age of eight. He left his homeland when he was eighteen, just before Warsaw's patriotic uprising was crushed by the tsar's armies. Carrying the memories of Poland and its folk music that would later surface in his polonaises and mazurkas, Chopin traveled to Vienna. There he established his reputation in the most demanding city of Europe. But Chopin soon left for Paris, where his extraordinary creative powers would come to fruition amid the revolutions roiling much of Europe. He quickly gained fame and a circle of powerful friends and acquaintances ranging from Rothschild, the banker, to Karl Marx. Distinguished by his fastidious dress and the wracking cough that would cut short his life, Chopin spent his days composing and giving piano lessons to a select group of students. His evenings were spent at the keyboard, playing for his friends. It was at one of these Chopin gatherings that he met George Sand, nine years his senior. Through their long and often stormy relationship, Chopin enjoyed his richest creative period. As she wrote dozens of novels, he composed furiously -- both were compulsive creators. After their affair unraveled, Chopin became the protégé of Jane Stirling, a wealthy Scotswoman, who paraded him in his final year across England and Scotland to play for the aristocracy and even Queen Victoria. In 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, Chopin succumbed to the tuberculosis that had plagued him from childhood. Chopin in Paris is an illuminating biography of a tragic figure who was one of the most important composers of all time. Szulc brings to life the complex, contradictory genius whose works will live forever. It is compelling reading about an exciting epoch of European history, culture, and music -- and about one of the great love dramas of the nineteenth century.
Author: William G. Atwood
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300077734
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
In 1831, Chopin stopped in Paris on his way to London, fleeing his native Warsaw after Russia's brutal repression of an insurrection there. Entranced by the lively social and artistic scene in the city, the musician remained there until his death in 1849. In this engaging book, William Atwood recreates the Paris that Chopin knew, providing vivid details about its places, people, and politics, and showing how these affected the sensitive musician during an enormously fruitful period in his career. Drawing on many contemporary sources, Atwood brings to life the musicians, writers, artists, courtesans, salon hostesses, politicians, doctors, businessmen, and messianic Polish emigres who lived in Paris. He describes the theaters, music halls, and salons of Paris as well as its less glamorous worlds filled with the political conflicts and economic fluctuations of the July Monarchy. He tells about the city's newly awakened social consciousness and the philosophers and writers (including George Sand) who fostered it. The book sheds brilliant new light on both Paris and Chopin and will be delightful reading for lovers of the city or the musician.
Author: Maja Trochimczyk
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0981969305
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
This anthology of contemporary poetry celebrates the 200th birth anniversary of Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849). The volume presents 123 poems by 92 poets, including: Sharon Chmielarz, T. S. Eliot, Charles Ades Fishman, Linda Nemec Foster, Emily Fragos, John Z. Guzlowski, Lola Haskins, Oriana Ivy, Lois P. Jones, Leonard Kress, Emma Lazarus, Marie Lecrivain, Jeffrey Levine, Amy Lowell, Rick Lupert, Mira N. Mataric, Elisabeth Murawski, Ruth Nolan, Cyprian Kamil Norwid, William Pillin, Russell Salamon, Katrin Talbot, Mark Tardi, Devi Walders, Kath Abela Wilson, and others. The book is illustrated with vintage Chopin postcards and includes one translation - of "Chopin's Piano" by Norwid. The editor, Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, is a Polish-American poet, music historian, photographer, and translator. She published four books on music, two books of poetry, and hundreds of articles and poems.
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.
Author: Franz Liszt
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3385561418
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.
Author: Jonathan D. Bellman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691177767
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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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.
Author: Annik LaFarge
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501188720
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
"The Frédéric Chopin Annik LaFarge presents here is not the melancholy, sickly, romantic figure so often portrayed. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language, an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher, a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution and exile. In Chasing Chopin she follows in his footsteps during the three years, 1837-1840, when he composed his iconic "Funeral March"-dum dum da dum-using its composition story to illuminate the key themes of his life: a deep attachment to his Polish homeland; his complex relationship with writer George Sand; their harrowing but consequential sojourn on Majorca; the rapidly developing technology of the piano, which enabled his unique tone and voice; social and political revolution in 1830s Paris; friendship with other artists, from the famous Eugène Delacroix to the lesser known, yet notorious in his time, Marquis de Custine. Each of these threads-musical, political, social, personal-is woven through the "Funeral March" in Chopin's Opus 35 sonata, a melody so famous it's known around the world even to people who know nothing about classical music. But it is not, as LaFarge discovered, the piece of music we think we know. As part of her research into Chopin's world, then and now, LaFarge visited piano makers, monuments, churches, and archives; she talked to scholars, jazz musicians, video game makers, software developers, music teachers, theater directors, and of course dozens of pianists. The result is extraordinary: an engrossing, page-turning work of musical discovery and an artful portrayal of a man whose work and life continue to inspire artists and cultural innovators in astonishing ways"--
Author: Dr. Alan Walker
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374714371
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 534
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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. The Sunday Times (U.K.) Classical Music Book of 2018 and one of The Economist's Best Books of 2018. "A magisterial portrait." --Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times Book Review A landmark biography of the Polish composer by a leading authority on Chopin and his time Based on ten years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker’s monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English in more than a century. Walker’s work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin. Fryderyk Chopin is an intimate look into a dramatic life; of particular focus are Chopin’s childhood and youth in Poland, which are brought into line with the latest scholarly findings, and Chopin’s romantic life with George Sand, with whom he lived for nine years. Comprehensive and engaging, and written in highly readable prose, the biography wears its scholarship lightly: this is a book suited as much for the professional pianist as it is for the casual music lover. Just as he did in his definitive biography of Liszt, Walker illuminates Chopin and his music with unprecedented clarity in this magisterial biography, bringing to life one of the nineteenth century’s most confounding, beloved, and legendary artists.
Author: James Huneker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 438
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Book Description
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.
