Where Is Poland? | Frederic Chopin

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Where Is Poland? | Frederic Chopin

Intro
Chapter 1 Where Is Poland?
Chapter 2 A Nation Without a State
Chapter 3 Literature and Censorship
Chapter 4 Poland Outside of Poland
Chapter 5 The Ambassadors
Chapter 6 Women and Emancipation
Chapter 7 Who Is Polish?
Chapter 8 Poland Imagined
Chapter 9 The Road to Independence

Chapter 5

Frederic Chopin

Frederic Chopin was only 20 years old when he left Poland during the November Uprising. What initially seemed like a temporary stay abroad turned out to be life-long exile, for nearly the next thirty years. Read More

Composer
1810-1849

Fryderyk Chopin photographed by Louis-Auguste Bisson in 1849. Photo: Polona

Fryderyk Chopin

Fryderyk Chopin was born in 1810 in the Mazowsze region, the son of a French teacher based in Warsaw and a Polish mother. The boy composed his first pieces (polonaises) at the age of seven, a year later he made his official concert debut.

His successful career as a performing pianist and composer was interrupted in 1830 when, shortly after the November Uprising, he decided to leave the country. He arrived in Paris in September 1831 and eventually spent most of his life there.

The piano pieces he composed during this time, such as his mazurkas or his famous Polonaise in A-Flat Major, Op. 53 (1842), bear the mark of Polish folk music. Other pieces, like his Revolutionary Etude and the Funeral March from Sonata No. 2., were inspired by the current events of Polish history. The latter was allegedly composed on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the November Uprising in 1837 (in which Chopin didn't take part, a fact that remained an ongoing source of pangs of conscience).

Like no other artist, Chopin personified Poland and his works were often considered to be ‘quintessentially Polish’. Honoré Balzac even considered him ‘more Polish than Poland’. Because of this Chopin was often seen as a ‘political pianist’. This is plain enough in a famous quote by Robert Schumann:

If the autonomous, mighty monarch of the North knew what a dangerous foe was threatening him in these utterly simple mazurka melodies, he would doubtless ban this music. The works of Chopin are cannons concealed amongst flowers.

The ‘most Polish’ of Polish composers died in Paris in 1849. A year later his embalmed heart was brought back to Poland by his sister.

Read more on Culture.pl:

Fryderyk Chopin's Gravest Fear

About the project

Concept, scripting, textual & visual content

Mikołaj Gliński & Patryk Zakrzewski

Design & development

Translators

Daniel J. Sax, Marcin Gozdanek, Michał Wieczorek

English content editor

Daniel J. Sax

Research

Olga Tyszkiewicz

Additional research

Zofia Łękawska-Orzechowska, Przemysław Gliński

Sources

Digital Film Repository (CRF), CYRYL – Digital Repository of the City of Poznań, Danish Film Institute (DFI), Emigration Museum in Gdynia, European Institute of Jewish Music, FORUM Polish Photography Agency, Fototeka, Gallica (gallica.bn.fr), HBO, Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IS PAN), Library of Congress, Museum in Sosnowiec, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (MSL), National Museum in Kraków, National Museum in Wrocław, National Museum in Poznań, National Museum in Warsaw, National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute (FINA), National Digital Library Polona (polona.pl), Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków (PAU), Royal Danish Library (KB), Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Poster Museum at Wilanów, Tatra Museum in Zakopane, Zebra Film Studio.

Video materials

‘Poświęcenie Dworca Towarowego’, ‘Legiony wkraczają do Warszawy’, ‘Dla Ciebie, Polsko’ - courtesy of National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute (FINA). Excerpt from ‘Brandes giving lecture at the Copenhagen University’ - courtesy of Danish Film Institute.

With special thanks to

Alan Lockwood, Michalina Petelska, Włodzimierz Karol Pessel, Adam Zulawski

This project was organised in co-operation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of POLSKA 100, an international cultural programme celebrating the centenary of Poland’s regaining independence in 1918.

Financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, as part of the multi-annual programme NIEPODLEGŁA 2017–2022.

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