Experiencing Chopin
Experiencing Chopin

Author: Christine Lee Gengaro

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-12-20

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1442260874

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Fryderyk Chopin’s career is intricately entwined with the piano. Although he made forays into orchestral and chamber work, the vast majority of Chopin’s pieces feature the piano. While his relatively brief life shortened his potential contribution as a composer, the originality, richness, and quality of his work is undeniable. His harmonies were often surprising, the rhythms flexible, and the music dramatic. In Experiencing Chopin: A Listener’s Companion,Christine Lee Gengaro surveys Chopin’s position as a composer at a time when the piano stood at the center of musical and social life. Throughout, she shines a spotlight on Chopin and his music, which illuminated the Romantic period in which he lived, the social and artistic climate that surrounded him, and the importance of the individual artist at a time of political foment. Gengaro considers the different genres among Chopin’s works, linking each to the historical, social, and biographical issues that shaped them.

Selected works for piano: Waltz in A minor, op. posthumous ; Waltz in B minor, op. 69 no. 2 ; Mazurka in F major, op. 68 no. 3 ; Mazurka in A minor, op. 67 no. 4 ; Mazurka in G# minor, op. 33 no. 1 ; Polonaise in G minor, op. posthumous ; Prelude in E minor, op. 28 no. 4 ; Prelude in B minor, op. 28 no. 6 ; Prelude in A major, op. 28 no. 7 ; Prelude in C minor, op. 28 no. 20 ; Nocturne in C minor, op. posthumous
Selected works for piano: Waltz in A minor, op. posthumous ; Waltz in B minor, op. 69 no. 2 ; Mazurka in F major, op. 68 no. 3 ; Mazurka in A minor, op. 67 no. 4 ; Mazurka in G# minor, op. 33 no. 1 ; Polonaise in G minor, op. posthumous ; Prelude in E minor, op. 28 no. 4 ; Prelude in B minor, op. 28 no. 6 ; Prelude in A major, op. 28 no. 7 ; Prelude in C minor, op. 28 no. 20 ; Nocturne in C minor, op. posthumous

Author: Frédéric Chopin

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 9780849761997

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Chopin and Beyond
Chopin and Beyond

Author: Byron Janis

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2010-09-23

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0470872330

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One of the world's greatest classical pianists reveals how the "other world" transformed his life and career By any measure, Byron Janis has had an extraordinary musical career. His discovery of two long-lost Chopin scores made headlines around the world, and he has been honored many times for his breathtaking performances of some of the most exciting and challenging works in the standard classical piano repertoire. As he retraces this remarkable journey in Chopin and Beyond, he shares something even more extraordinary: the other-worldly experiences that have shaped his life and music in surprising and profound ways. Shares milestones and memories from the life and musical career of one of the world's greatest pianists Includes lively anecdotes of famous classical musicians and other notable figures, including Vladimir Horowitz and Pablo Picasso Describes his long-secret but ultimately triumphant battle with arthritis Recounts the paranormal experiences that deepened his personal association with Chopin, effected near miraculous recoveries from serious accidents, and more Like the best music, Chopin and Beyond will open your mind to explore the wonder and possibility of a different world.

Fryderyk Chopin
Fryderyk Chopin

Author: Dr. Alan Walker

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2018-10-16

Total Pages: 534

ISBN-13: 0374714371

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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.

Music in Chopin's Warsaw
Music in Chopin's Warsaw

Author: Halina Goldberg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-03-04

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0190284897

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Music in Chopin's Warsaw examines the rich musical environment of Fryderyk Chopin's youth--largely unknown to the English-speaking world--and places Chopin's early works in the context of this milieu. Halina Goldberg provides a historiographic perspective that allows a new and better understanding of Poland's cultural and musical circumstances. Chopin's Warsaw emerges as a vibrant European city that was home to an opera house, various smaller theaters, one of the earliest modern conservatories in Europe, several societies which organized concerts, musically active churches, spirited salon life, music publishers and bookstores, instrument builders, and for a short time even a weekly paper devoted to music. Warsaw was aware of and in tune with the most recent European styles and fashions in music, but it was also the cradle of a vernacular musical language that was initiated by the generation of Polish composers before Chopin and which found its full realization in his work. Significantly, this period of cultural revival in the Polish capital coincided with the duration of Chopin's stay there--from his infancy in 1810 to his final departure from his homeland in 1830. An uncanny convergence of political, economic, social, and cultural circumstances generated the dynamic musical, artistic, and intellectual environment that nurtured the developing genius. Had Chopin been born a decade earlier or a decade later, Goldberg argues, the capital--devastated by warfare and stripped of all cultural institutions--could not have provided support for his talent. The young composer would have been compelled to seek musical education abroad and thus would have been deprived of the specifically Polish experience so central to his musical style. A rigorously-researched and fascinating look at the Warsaw in which Chopin grew up, this book will appeal to students and scholars of nineteenth century music, as well as music lovers and performers.

Chasing Chopin
Chasing Chopin

Author: Annik LaFarge

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1501188720

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"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"--

Kate Chopin and Catholicism
Kate Chopin and Catholicism

Author: Heather Ostman

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-05-13

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 3030440222

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This book explores the Catholic aesthetic and mystical dimensions in Kate Chopin’s fiction within the context of an evolving American Catholicism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a close reading of her novels and numerous short stories, Kate Chopin and Catholicism looks at the ways Chopin represented Catholicism in her work as a literary device that served on multiple levels: as an aesthetic within local color depictions of Louisiana, as a trope for illuminating the tensions surrounding nineteenth-century women’s struggles for autonomy, as a critique of the Catholic dogma that subordinated authenticity and physical and emotional pleasure, and as it pointed to the distinction between religious doctrine and mystical experience, and enabled the articulation of spirituality beyond the context of the Church. This book reveals Chopin to be not only a literary visionary but a writer who saw divinity in the natural world.

The Age of Chopin
The Age of Chopin

Author: Halina Goldberg

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2004-05-07

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780253216281

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This multidisciplinary collection addresses Chopin's life and oeuvre in various cultural contexts of his era. Fourteen original essays by internationally-known scholars suggest new connections between his compositions and the intellectual, literary, artistic, and musical environs of Warsaw and Paris. Individual essays consider representations of Chopin in the visual arts; reception in the United States and in Poland; analytical aspects of the mazurkas and waltzes; and political, literary, and gender aspects of Chopin's music and legacy. Several senior scholars represent the fields of American, Western European, and Polish history; Slavic literature; musicology; music theory; and art history.

The Ghost of Frederic Chopin
The Ghost of Frederic Chopin

Author: Eric Faye

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1782277234

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An intricately plotted mystery and an engrossing story imbued with the foggy atmosphere of post-Communist Prague, the third book in the Walter Presents Library is a bewitching mystery about a woman who claims to transcribe music from the ghost of Chopin. Prague, 1995: Vera Foltynova, a widow in her late 50s, claims to receive visits from the ghost of great composer Frederic Chopin. What's more, she declares that Chopin has dictated dozens of compositions to her, to allow the world to hear the sublime music he was unable to create in his own short life. Many dismiss her story as a ridiculous hoax, while others swear that the music has the same beauty and refinement as the work of the dead master. Ludvik Slany, a secret police agent-turned-television journalist, is assigned to make a documentary debunking Vera's claims. He arrives in Prague ready to uncover a scam, but the more he subtly tries to trick her into giving herself away, the more he begins to think he may be witnessing a genuine miracle... The Ghost of Frederic Chopin is an engrossing story of music, faith and the ghosts of the past.

Experiencing Chopin
Experiencing Chopin

Author: Christine Lee Gengaro

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9781442260863

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Gengaro surveys Chopin's position as a composer of Romantic piano music at a time when the piano stood at the center of musical and social life. It sheds a spotlight on Chopin and his music that illuminates the Romantic period in which he lived, the social and artistic climate, and the importance of this most individual artist.