THE NATION’S SHADOW: THE POLITICIZATION OF FRYDERYK CHOPIN

A thesis submitted to the College of the Arts of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

by

Jonathan Amado Gonzalez

August 2020 Thesis written by

Jonathan Amado Gonzalez

B.A. Art History, Kent State University, August 2018

M. A. Art History, Kent State University, August 2020

Approved by

______John-Michael Warner, Ph.D., Advisor

______Marie Bukowski, M.F.A., Director, School of Art

______John R. Crawford-Spinelli, Ed.D., Dean, College of the Arts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………….….…...... v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………………………………vi

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………….1

II. FOREGROUNDING FOLKLORE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHOPIN’S POLAND……...... 8 Duchy of Warsaw………………………………………………………………………………….8 Congress Kingdom of Poland and Nicholas I……………………………………………………...8 November Uprising……………………………………………………………………...... 10 Great Emigration………………………………………………………………………...... 11

III. MOLDING A NATIONAL HERO: BIOGRAPHIES OF CHOPIN………………………………..13 Liszt……………………………………………………………………………………...... 13 Szulc……………………..……………………………….……………………………...... 16 Niecks. ……………………………….…………………………………………………………..16 Hoesick……………………………….……………………………….………………………….16 Tarnowski……………………………….……………………………….……………………….17 Noskowski……………………………….……………………………….……………...... 19 Kenig……………………………….……………………………….…………………...... 19 Zieliński……………………………….……………………………….………………...... 20 Chopin Monument……………………………….……………………………….……...... 21 Nazi Germany and Chopin……………………………………………………………………….22 Sikorski……………………………….……………………………….………………………….23 Returning to the Chopin Monument……………………………………………………………...27

IV. GENERIC PATRIOTISM: CHOPIN AND THE POLONAISE………………………….. ……….29 Chopin’s Polonaise—Ball at the Hôtel Lambert…………………………………………...... 29 History of the Polonaise……………………………………………………………………………..31 Adam Mickiewicz……………………………………………………………………………………33 Liszt on the Polonaise………………………………………………………………………………..35 Edward Baxter Perry………………………………………………………………………………...36 “Polonaise in A-Major, Op. 40 no. 1”……………………………………………………………….37 “Polonaise in C-Minor, Op. 40 no. 2”……………………………………………………………….40 The “Heroic” Polonaise…………….………………………………………………………………..41

iii

A Song to Remember…………………………………………...... 42 Musical Moments from Chopin……………………………………………………………………...43

V. THE COMMODIFIED COMPOSER: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY USES OF CHOPIN……………………………………………………………………………………………..46 Chopin Benches…………………………………………...... 46 The “Funeral March”………………………………………………………………………………...50 Chopin Airport……………………………………………………………………………...... 51 EURO2012…………………………………………...... 52 Chopin Vodka…………………………………………...... 53 Chopin Watches…………………………………………...... 55

VI. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………...62

FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………………...... 65

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………...78

iv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Chopin Monument…..…..………………………………...……………………………...... 65 2. Destruction of Szymanowski’s Chopin Monument by Nazi Forces……………………...... 66 3. Annual Chopin summer piano concerts at Royal Baths Park…………...………………………..67 4. Chopin’s Polonaise—Ball at the Hôtel Lambert……………………………………...………….68 5. Opening Ceremony of EURO2012 in Warsaw…………………………………………………...69 6. A Bottle of Chopin Vodka…………………………………………..…………………………….70 7. The Opus 10 No. 12: “The Revolutionary” Timepiece…………………………………………...71 8. The Opus 10 No. 12: “The Revolutionary” Timepiece Backplate………………………………..72 9. Chopin Bench…………………………………………..………………………………...... 73 10. The “Chopin Route” Map on a Chopin Bench…………………………………………………...74 11. Inscription on Chopin Bench Located at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw…………...... 75 12. Film Still from a Song to Remember……………………………………………………………...76 13. Still from Musical Moments from Chopin………………………………………………………...77

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. John-Michael Warner for being my thesis advisor and constantly challenging me to think, work through, and expand upon a host of thought-provoking content. You have been a role model for a young scholar looking to work his way into the field. I would also like to thank Dr. Gustav Medicus and Professor Albert Reischuck for also being dedicated members of my Thesis Committee. Your insight and feedback have proven to be invaluable in steering this thesis from its first draft to its current form. I should also congratulate everyone involved in this project on successfully training another M.A. student. Your wealth of knowledge, open attitude to sharing and discussing new ideas, and tremendous warmth of energy and spirits have enabled me to grow into the bright young mind I am today. Your generosity speaks volumes about the exciting Art History department that we are fortunate to have at Kent State University. I would like to thank my family. You have been with me since my initial leap into art history and have supported me throughout my personal and academic journey at Kent State University. Each of you showcase a dedication to being kind and giving humans as well as consistent sources of inspiration from your hard work and dedication to excellence. I love each of you and I am eternally grateful for having you by my side throughout this crazy life of ours.

vi 1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In this thesis, I will focus on the concept of “generic nationalism” through an examination of the Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) and the ways he has been exhibited in Polish commercial, popular, political, and material cultures. Generic nationalism is the extension of a subject (in this case Chopin) into various spaces of Polish-national discourse that could not have been anticipated or expected.1 I have coined the phrase generic nationalism in an effort to express a host of historical and philosophical sources rooted in the discourses of state production. Contemporary society has come to understand Chopin through a host of creative lenses, especially Chopin as a musician and as an important symbol of Polish national heritage.

Consider the range of visual images, commercial objects, and performative uses, such as Wacław

Szymanowski's monumental sculpture of Chopin in Royal Baths Park in Warsaw (Fig. 1-3) and the academically inspired watercolor and gouache by the painter Teofil Kwiatkowski from 1859.

(Fig. 4) Chopin took center stage at the 2012 opening ceremony of the Union of European

Football Associations-sponsored (UEFA) event, popularly known as EURO2012 in Warsaw.

(Fig. 5) Chopin’s image has even been extended into international luxury commodity markets.

(Fig. 6-8) This accumulation of Chopinic gestures aids in understanding generic articulations of nationalism that are not reserved to geography alone but infiltrate a host of cultural guises that attempt to proliferate the idea of a shared national-collective. While I wish to explain how these various forms have institutionalized a mythological image of Chopin, I also hope to reveal that

1 Questions to consider in regard to the thematic strain of generic nationalism: How has Chopin become the desired object of Polish national discourse; What are the forms that Chopin is represented through; How is Chopin placed into a new context of state production; and how does this shape Polish national identity?

2 these very generalities have also been a means to connect people together. In other words, the malleability of Chopin as a symbol of Polish national identity has been extended into such a wide variety of different fields that in the twenty-first century taking a selfie can be an opportunity to interact with Chopin.2 Although my analysis focuses around detailing the unexpected ways in which Chopin has been decontextualized into the fabric of Polish national culture, my project is in no way a definitive statement on the composer.3 Rather, it is a guided analysis stemming from the ideas of a host of historians, philosophers, and musicologists dealing with discourses of state production and national identity.

The conceptual basis of my project has been informed by varying articulations of the spaces of nationalist discourse. Included among them is Benedict Anderson’s (1983) formulation of “imagined communities,” or the pervasive trend in modern political discourse to cite a shared collective for which to advance the nation-state.4 Filmmaker, writer, and artist, Trinh Minh-ha’s

(2010) eye-opening dive into the fluidity and liminal nature of identity construction proves instrumental as well.5 Through Trinh’s philosophy of the “elsewhere within here” Chopin exists in a liminal space, a generic nationalist space that is constantly evolving and destabilizing fixed definitions of national identity.6 Thereby Chopin as a trope can easily be inserted into spaces of

2 “Warsaw City Hall Brings Chopin to Life with Dedicated Tour and Navigated Interactive Apps in Poland,” MultiVu, accessed July 3, 2020, https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8172551-warsaw-city-hall-chopin-tour-apps- poland/. 3 My project has been informed solely by the English language. As a result, I have not been able to engage with the compendium of literature written about Chopin in different languages. Although I maintain the success of the project is not hindered by a restrictive reading of Chopin studies, there leaves much more room to visit the subjects detailed in this thesis. 4 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2016). 5 Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism, and the Boundary Event (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010). 6 Although she is not directly referenced in this project, Miwon Kwon’s theoretical critique of (un)citing community can be a useful resource in engaging with public perceptions of the variety of Chopinic monuments and memorials situated throughout Poland. See, Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Location Identity (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004).

3 state-production representing new ways interacting with the phenomenon of state-constituted subjectivity. The flexibility of the essence carried by the name Chopin has provided new ways of interpreting definitions of culture.

Raymond Williams (1958) upsets the very constitution of community by defining culture beyond the homogenous body of shared values and ideas proliferated by the dominant class into the realm of everyday life.7 This can be understood as Chopin becoming such a naturalized entity that represents Polish national identity that one could casually walk by a larger than life-size bust of Chopin or be led on a guided walking tour of Warsaw mediated by the presence of Chopin

Benches (Fig. 9-11) without oversight or preparation and not consider how and why Chopin’s name is being used in the first place. In many ways my argument for generic nationalism depends on Homi Bhaba’s (1994) representation of the nation as an ongoing temporal process that constitutes a host of ambiguous zones of cultural production.8 Anderson, Trinh, Williams, and Bhaba have laid a rhetorical framework that one can use to examine the relationship between the Polish nation and their uses of Chopin. This raises the question: In what ways are seemingly unrelated entities used to bolster specific viewpoints and ideologies so that we begin to question and arrive at our own decontextualized understanding of Chopin? How is Chopin inserted into spaces of generic nationalism in an effort to bolster contemporary manifestations of Poland’s national identity? What is the arresting allure of Chopin that has seen him naturalized as a potent icon of Polish national identity My chapters will, in some way, shape or form, reveal some of the mediums that have been utilized to craft the mythic narrative of Chopin as an indissoluble Polish

7 Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary,” in Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism (London: Verso, 1989), 3-14. 8 Homi Bhaba, The Location of Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 1994).

4 nationalist. In doing so, it is my hope that my analyses will reveal the nationalist-performative uses of Chopin over the last 200 years.

“Chapter 2: Foregrounding Folklore: A Brief History of Chopin’s Poland” focuses on providing a brief account of Poland that Chopin was born into in 1810. I wish to extract what I believe are the most pertinent aspects of the complicated timeline of nineteenth century Poland to aid the reader in understanding how Chopin has come to be mythologized as a devout Polish nationalist. This chapter helps make Chopin legible in Poland’s sociopolitical and sociohistorical past. I highlight Chopin’s birth into the Napoleonic-instituted Duchy of Warsaw (1807-1815).

This briefly instituted state, which was Poland’s first glimpse of national independence since it was partitioned in 1795, was promised to be the rebirth of a once-proud nation. Following the failure of Napoleon to conquer Russia, however, Poland was divided once more and this time it was revised into a constitutional monarchy—the Congress Kingdom of Poland (1815-1831)— ruled by the Russian Tsar, Nicholas I. The Tsar’s increasingly unfavorable treatment of Polish citizens under his rule would lead to a futile rebellion known as the November Uprising. The results of this would lead to the Great Emigration in which thousands of displaced Poles, mostly comprised of intelligentsia, would be spread across Europe, with most settling in Paris. It is in the capital of France that Chopin would find himself surrounded by his fellow countrymen, many of whom were inflamed with patriotic fervor that would eventually find their way into the life of

Chopin. These carefully detailed episodes of Poland’s storied historical narrative were the building blocks for the promulgation of a mythic national identity of Chopin. By being extracted into a coherent framework these histories lay the theoretical foundation for this thesis to progress.

5

The third chapter reveals how a throng of biographical sketches of Chopin constructed after his death in 1849 proliferated the narrative strands that would naturalize his perceived essence as the “soul” of the Polish nation. In “Molding a National Hero: Biographies of Chopin,”

I turn to canonical writers such as nineteenth and early-twentieth century figures Franz Liszt,

Stanisław Tarnowski, Moritz Karasowski, Josef Zygmunt Szulc, Karol Szymanowski, and others. In particular, I highlight how these state-producing narratives rely on superficial and unsupported analyses to arrive at a nationalist summation of Chopin’s life, one in which Poland and Chopin are forged into an inseparable union of shared symbolic importance. In other words, the biographies allowed, as I have come to surmise, for the nationalist framework of Chopin to extend through the latter-half of the nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century. The problematic, and more-often politically motivated ascension of Chopin as a Polish patriot, has crafted a narrative that as I understand it, has only begun to be challenged in the last three decades or so. Crucially I argue that the first biographical essay written posthumously by the

Polish music critic Józef Sikorski was not an attempt to codify Chopin as a nationalist trope for

Poland’s benefits, but rather, as a symbol of a musician whose compositions could elicit a universal appeal.

In Chapter 4, “Generic Patriotism: Chopin and the Polonaise,” I examine the historically associated genre of Polish dance called the polonaise. The native dance has a storied history that, at one period of time, was the preferred expression of the Polish aristocracy, and came to symbolize Poland as distinct from the rest of Europe. Upon the failures of Poland to revive its once-proud political state, it was appropriated as a symbol of nationalist nostalgia. When managed by the generation of Poles who never experienced an independent state, namely the writer and poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), it became a symbolic marker for communicating

6

Polishness. In this third chapter I demonstrate that when taken up musically by Chopin, the polonaise was afforded an aura of profound reverie, which because of posthumous manipulations by a number of Polish intellectuals, as I understand it, allowed for it to be duly utilized in the realm of popular culture.

The fifth chapter, “The Commodified Composer: Twenty-First Century Uses of Chopin,” confronts the dynamics that encourage the branding of Chopin in a now-independent Poland.

From the nineteenth century the image of Chopin as a generic medium for communicating a new formulation of Polish national identity was carried and has now been elevated to encompass a variety of different forms. My analyses focus on portions of material culture, ranging from the decision of the Polish government to rename its busiest airport in the name of the composer to

Chopin’s appropriation as the centerpiece of the opening ceremony of EURO2012 and the commodification of his namesake through the luxury goods companies of Chopin Watches and

Chopin Vodka.

It is my hope that through this project the reader will better comprehend the performative aspects of nationalism. Stated differently, this refers to how nationalism is represented in a complex body of indiscriminate forms. Although I believe these nationalisms to be superficial appropriations that fail to address a host of critical elements necessary to compile a more- informed (if such a word can be used) understanding of Chopin—the man—they also provide fertile grounds for which to explore Chopin further. In other words, Chopin’s malleability as a repeated symbol of Polishness, although steeped in myth and fantasy, establishes the groundwork for a series of manifestations that could be the unifying force between otherwise disparate entities. I do not want to stabilize and fix the image and persona of Chopin, nor do I wish to generalize or undermine the complexities of human relationships, especially community, whether

7 nationalist or otherwise. Although Chopin has been vastly decontextualized from his persona as a musician and composer, the nearly universal appeal of his musical compositions requires generic nationalisms that transcend the restrictive frameworks of nationalist constructions. With this in mind, it becomes necessary to elucidate a history of Poland that allowed Chopin to become an icon of Poland’s generic nationalism.

8

CHAPTER 2

FOREGROUNDING FOLKLORE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF POLAND

As musical historian Jolanta T. Pekacz has been keen to point out, “Chopin’s

Polishness…became a focus for many authors from the earliest biographies onward. Their purpose was to emphasize that although Chopin left Poland at the age of twenty…he was nonetheless a truly patriotic composer who never renounced his Polishness.”9 The surviving accounts of Chopin’s correspondences and documents informing his personal endeavors reveal,

Chopin was never noted as making boisterous attempts to appeal to the patriotic circles of Polish exiles.10 Rather, he remained in an undefined state of political affiliation that verged on being defined as apolitical. In other words, it would appear that Chopin avoided the confrontational realm of political representation as a means to do what was best suited to advance his career as a professional musician. With this in mind, the brief history of Poland detailed above is crucial in providing the narrative backdrop into which Chopin was later immersed.

Chopin was born into the Duchy of Warsaw, the short-lived political offspring of the

French dictator Napoleon’s victory over Prussia (one of the three partitioning powers that erased

Poland as an independently-recognized state of Europe) in 1806.11 He established a Polish state and crafted a legislative model that closely modeled the French Constitution after the Revolution of 1792, which is notable because peasants were considered free persons (although they could not own land).12 In doing so, he gave the brief illusion that he would be the one to bring Poland

9 Jolanta T. Pekacz, “Deconstructing a ‘National Composer’: Chopin and Polish Exiles in Paris, 1831-49,” 19th- Century Music, Vol. 24, No. 2, Special issue: Nineteenth-Century Pianism (Autumn 2000), 162. 10 Ibid, 163. 11 Napoleon’s interest in the Poles is made evident in his creation of a Polish legion in Italy in 1797. 12 In a way, Napoleon rejuvenates the “Golden Freedom,” that is the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic characterized by gentry democracy and the freedom of the peasant class. For more information on the “Golden

9

back to its independent state before the partitions of the late-eighteenth century.13 Poland’s newly-found independence was fractured after Napoleon’s crushing defeat in Moscow in 1812.

The Holy Alliance (a political partnership involving Russia, Prussia, and Austria), intervening during the Congress of Vienna, decided the future of the Polish question. They disbanded the

Duchy, redevised the territorial lines of the European map (Poland is technically abolished once more), and created the Congress Kingdom of Poland, which would be ruled as a constitutional monarchy by the Russian Tsar, who was crowned as the king of Poland. The newly established

Congress Kingdom, under the rule of Alexander I, marked a period of relative restraint of political control from Russia, but would alter dramatically come the reign of Nicholas I in 1825.

Nicholas I was, by all accounts, ardently anti-Pole. From his ascension to Tsar in 1825, he made immediate attempts to fracture any semblances of anti-Russian sentiment among the

Poles. He fashionably persecuted members of the December Revolt14 and instituted his Third

Department and enlisted the assistance of the Novosiltsov, both governmental police bodies, to act in the Commission of Inquiry.15 In other words, Nicholas I took extensive measures to ensure he maintained complete control over his territories. He would continue to plague the Polish subjects living in the Kingdom until they devised a plan to restore control of their partitioned lands. This is important to note because the events of Chopin’s life would be heavily affected by the measures enacted by Nicholas I.

Freedom” in Polish history, see Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland in Two Volumes, Volume I: Origins to 1795,” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 13 This period, although brief in its existence, would be vastly influential in the Romantic poetry of the 1830s. For example, in his epic poem Pan Tadeusz, Adam Mickiewicz places the “Concert of Concerts” and “Polonaise” in the Duchy of 1811-1812. In doing so, he harkens back to a period in revitalized Poland, rejuvenated from the years of political obscurity by Napoleon. In other words, he uses the idea of the Duchy as a nationalist trope which evokes a nostalgic longing for a period superficially characterized by Polish military victories, and the brief existence of a Polish state. 14 Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland in Two Volumes, Volume II: 1795-Present,” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 314-315. 15 Ibid.

10

The November Uprising, as it has come to be called, was a failed military revolt in

Russian-occupied Warsaw that would vitally impact the future course of Poland’s political history, and by extension, the life of Fryderyk Chopin.16 Angered by rumors that the Tsar was considering using Polish soldiers to assist the suppression of revolutions in France and Belgium,

Polish conspirators organized a small-batch of rebels who were preparing to engage in a surprise attack that they hoped would ultimately end in the death or capture of the Grand Duke

Constantine (1779-1831).17 On the night of November 29, 1830, the rebels attempted to see their plan to fruition. Due to an overwhelming failure of procedures, lack of strong leadership, and overall confusion over why the rebellion was actually taking place, the Uprising was doomed for failure. The Polish rebels not only failed to kill the Grand Duke, but succeeded in killing many of those who were supposed to lead them in the first place.18 They were able, however, to take control of Warsaw and establish a provisional government, in which the Sejm voted to dethrone the Tsar as king of Poland.19 The Tsar now had the ability to go to war with the Poles. The war lasted well into 1831, with the final military resistance (although Warsaw had capitulated on

September 8) taking place on October 21. The end result of the short-lived rebellion is adequately stated by Norman Davies, “In practice, the Kingdom was ruled by military decree.

All civil rights were suspended, except by grace of the Tsar. The army, the Sejm, the

Universities, all the higher institutes of learning were abolished.”20 The inflammatory atmosphere in Poland spelled the beginning of the Great Emigration.

16 Chopin’s response to learning about the outcome of the November Uprising will be the impetus of the Chopin Watches Brand discussed in Chapter 5 of this project. 17 Constantine was the heir-presumptive to Alexander I and de facto viceroy of the Congress Kingdom of Poland. 18 They were killed as a result of their unwillingness to captain the guerilla forces that were attempting to take Warsaw. 19 The Sejm was the constitutionally appointed body of lawmakers in Poland. 20 Davies, 1:332.

11

The Great Emigration refers to the period following the failed November Uprising in which thousands of Polish citizens, namely soldiers and intellectuals, escaped Poland and settled abroad in places such as Germany and France. Many of the Polish émigrés would make Paris the center of their cultural and political life. For in Paris, still feeling the cultural effects of their own national uprising—the July Revolution of 1830— the Poles could find a national voice of sympathetic reprieve.21 Not to mention, in reviewing Napoleon’s favoring of the Poles, evidenced by the founding of his Polish legion and establishment of the Duchy of Warsaw,

Poland and France had already established friendly relations. With this in mind, it is also necessary to consider how France was rapidly growing into the epicenter of the modern world, its cities acting as the visual novelty of an increasingly industrial landscape, as well an increasing hotbed for artists and intellectuals alike. In regard to analyzing the strands of Chopin’s nationalism, it is important to detail the political circles of the Polish émigrés settling in France in the early 1830s.22

The exiled Polish nationalists were divided into two political factions: the conservative

“Monarchists,” or “Hôtel Lambert,” were led by Prince Adam Czartoryski23; and the

“Republicans,” or democratic party, were led by Joachim Lelewel and the Polish Democratic

Party.24 The Monarchists’ political agenda was concerned with a non-violent approach to reintroducing the constitutional monarchy and reinstitution of the republican values of the gentry

21 It is important to remember that following the Revolution, belief in the practical applications of social utopianism was at a high. In other words, the Poles could identify with the ideas spurned by the Revolution, mainly that the suffering and bloodshed would lead to a higher social order and better life for the average citizen. 22 As Andrew Walicki notes in Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism, pp. 64-85, in Chopin's time the term “nationalist” was used in a pejorative sense to connote an egoistic claim to the nation. The more favorable term was “patriot.” For the contexts of this study, I will use “nationalist” and “patriot” as interchangeable terms that speak to the love for one’s nation. 23 The sobriquet is derived from the hotel purchased by the Czartoryski family, which would ultimately become the main meeting place of Monarchist political activities. Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was a former Russian statesman and friend of Alexander I. In 1831, he was appointed head of the insurrectionary government in Poland. 24 Lelewel was a great historian who taught at the University of Wilno.

12 democracy of Old Poland. The Republicans, on the other hand, decried what they believed to be a diplomatic conservatism of the largely aristocratic circle of the Monarchists, and argued that an armed insurrection would be the only guaranteed measure to bring about political independence for the Poles. They felt that the Republicans were advocating for a return to the governmental policies that ultimately led to the disintegration of the Commonwealth. Although the historical situation is not as simple as creating a black-and-white divide of two clearly demarcated political ideologies, it is highly important to understand that both parties were fighting for the liberation of Poland, they just had conflicting ideas of how to get there.25 For the intents and purposes of this report, however, Chopin’s predilection for the Monarchists, as will be discussed, dispels many of the superficial declarations of Chopin’s steadfast Polish patriotism that have accumulated since the time of his death in 1849.26

As biographies, studies of his polonaises, visual, and popular culture reveal, Chopin has been decontextualized as a representation of the Polish nation used to bolster a collective sense of a shared national identity as well as promoting his universal appeal in the name of promoting

Poland’s cultural heritage. What the detailed analysis of these examples reveal is that this image of Chopin was and has been crafted almost entirely outside of the boundaries of what Chopin himself could have perceived.

25 Walicki, 31-41. 26 Pekacz, 163.

13

CHAPTER 3

MOLDING A NATIONAL HERO: BIOGRAPHIES OF CHOPIN

Beyond the framework of Polish history discussed in the second chapter, the importance of understanding the process of how Chopin was genericized as the symbolic “soul” of the Polish nation can be evidenced by examining a sampling of the biographical literature written during his life and following the composer’s death in 1849. In this chapter, I offer a glimpse into how authors were positioning Chopin within a series of spaces of generic nationalism, or mediated biographical frameworks which were aimed at coalescing Chopin into a fixed identity as invariant Polish nationalist, that severely undermined the influences of his experiences in

Vienna, Stuttgart, Paris, and London, while simultaneously harping that every act of his personal life was carefully scrutinized as an act of homage to his Polish homeland. By extension, his musical creations were always constructed with Poland at the forefront of his mind. The authors’ unchecked and purportedly “objective” analyses enabled a mythos of narratives surrounding

Chopin to proliferate to such an extent that he exists more as folklore than as an actual person.27

Although the strands of cultural ownership of the composer began before he left his native

Poland in 1830, it was the posthumous biographical sketches that elevated him to being unconsciously implicated with the ‘soul’ of the Polish nation.

One of the earliest, and perhaps most influential accounts of Chopin’s life was the monograph F. Chopin, written by friend and fellow composer, Franz Liszt, released in 1852.28 At

27 Relax News, “In Poland, Chopin’s music defines a nation,” The Independent, accessed December 3, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/in-poland-chopins-music-defines-a-nation-5526656.html . AND Geoffrey Norris, “Chopin belongs to us, says Poland,” The Telegraph UK, first accessed December 3, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/7244031/Chopin-belongs-to-us-says-Poland.html 28 Edward N. Waters, “Chopin by Liszt,” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 2 (April, 1961): 179. The biography was more than likely dominated by the writing of Liszt’s lover, Princess Caroline Sayn-Wittgenstein. This is an

14 the time of the initial publication of the biography, Liszt was already hailed throughout Europe as one of the most gifted and virtuosic pianists living at the time.29 Coupled with his favorable acquaintance with Chopin, the biography was already branded with an aura of authoritarian prestige; who could dispute the efficacy of Liszt when he was so intimately tied to Chopin, let alone a famed pianist himself?30 Textual analysis of the monograph will reveal how future authors borrowed aspects of Liszt’s narrative and thus paved the way for the decontextualization of Chopin into various spaces of Polish nationalist discourse that followed.

From the opening pages of F. Chopin, Liszt makes an inseparable union between artist and country, “They are characteristic of the composer while being sympathetic not only to that country to which he brings honour but also to all those who are touched by the misfortune of exile and the tenderness of love.”31 While the compositions are the artistic offspring of Chopin’s creative output, they are heightened to a level that, at once, transcends the corporeal and reaches the metaphysical realm of the imagined community32 that is the nation; Chopin created solely in the name of conjuring images and sounds that appealed to a specifically Polish lens. In the same vein, Liszt concocts the narrative of Chopin as having the singular voice that bespeaks the shared tumult of Poland. In other words, Chopin’s ability to articulate the feelings of the entire Polish nation can be delimited to the individual, namely the exiled Pole, who like Chopin, no longer lives within the confines of their homeland.33 This is especially true in Liszt’s articulation of

interesting point to consider, as she, in her expanded edition of the essay (appearing in 1879) increased the amount of philo-nationalistic associations of Chopin with Poland. 29 Ibid, 178. 30 Ibid, 194. This notion is uncritically accepted by Edward Waters in his analysis of Liszt’s memoir on Chopin. p 31 Franz Liszt, Liszt’s Chopin: A New Edition, ed. and trans. by Meirion Hughes (New York: Manchester University Press, 2010), 62. 32 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2016), 6. 33 If we take into consideration that this memoir was written largely after the French Revolution of 1848, there can be a case made that Liszt (or the Princess), aware of the results of the Revolution, could have been making

15

Chopin’s “Piano Sonata No.2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35, popularly referred to as the “Funeral

March.” Not only does it have the distinguished acclaim of being played at the composer’s funeral, it has an innate ability to articulate the collective feelings of the downtrodden Polish nation. As Liszt articulates, “Indeed, the funeral march of an entire nation solemn and grief- stricken, weeping at its own demise, is to be found in this lament…We feel it is not the death of a single warrior that is mourned, but rather the death of an entire generation.”34 The collective identity of Poland is subsumed under an enveloping umbrella of mourning; each and every Pole feels the loss of their national independence, and Chopin adds the authoritative voice to this suffering. Through Liszt’s strategic word choice of “warrior,” Chopin becomes inextricably linked to Polish nationalism: he, like so many other unfortunate Poles, has been crushed under external rule and they were all seeking any way they could illuminate their suffering to the rest of the world.

Liszt was also influential in codifying Chopin’s mazurkas, an acknowledged Polish genre, as extensions of an “authentic” folk-music tradition that was imagined through romanticized tales of Polish nobility elegantly dancing to their native songs.35 The act of conjuring such a fanciful description was not intended to recall a specific episode or trace an actual cultural practice, but rather to normalize the mythical relationship between the folk- inspired mazurka and Polish nationalism. By doing so, Liszt effectively locates the supposed origins of Polish culture, and Chopin—because of his perceived ties to the spirit of the Polish nation—becomes the inheritor of the tradition. These facets, when combined with his technical

accessions to the case of Polish patriotism through the image of Chopin. In other words, sociopolitical aftermath of the Revolution could have been one of the main strands affecting how the authors foregrounded Chopin within the narrative of the Polish nation during the nineteenth century. For more information on the displacement of Poles, see Chapter 2 of this report. 34 Liszt, 64. 35 Ibid, 76-77.

16 brilliance as a composer and musician, makes him the most ably suited to express the symbolic imagery of such a crucial aspect of being Polish.36 This sentiment is furthered in the first Polish monograph of Chopin titled Fryderyk Chopin and His Musical Works written by the Polish author and music critic Marceli Antoni Szulc in 1873.

In contrast to Liszt’s lofty descriptions of the Polish nobility, Szulc “ruralizes” the narrative to a lively scene of a village of peasants happily masquerading to the beat of the mazurka.37 He imparts the narrative that the ethnic soul of the nation is actually to be found amongst the Polish peasantry, removed from the urban cosmopolitanism of the upper strata of

Polish society. By doing so, Szulc takes Chopin from the realm of being identified with a limited elite and extends him into a fabled grouping of simple persons. Szulc reveals Chopin’s dissolvability into a genericized space that breaks down class-based distinctions and appeals to the whole of the Polish nation.

The German author Frederick Niecks wrote an expansive two-volume biography of

Chopin that was translated into English in 1888. Published as Frederick Chopin as a Man and

Musician, it was the most comprehensive analysis of the composer undertaken at that point in time. Though it was critically acclaimed, the fact that it was written by a German author as opposed to a Polish one, was grounds for the Polish writer and historian Ferdynand Hoesick to remark on its shortcomings. Hoesick was flagrantly straightforward in his condemnation of the non-Polish author, remarking that, “For there can be no doubt that Niecks, as a foreigner, ...can not be the best the best judge of questions concerning Chopin’s music -- which a foreigner will

36 Barbara Milewski, “Chopin’s Mazurkas and the Myth of the Folk,” 19th-Century Music, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Autumn, 1999): 114, 37 Ibid. The original can be found in Marceli Antoni Szulc, Fryderyk Chopin i utwory jego muzyczne (Kraków: Polish Musical Publishing House, 1986), 188.

17

never be able to properly understand and feel -- and of questions concerning [Chopin’s] life…”38

For Hoesick, a Polish ethnographic trait was a prerequisite for being able to fully comprehend

Chopin. It is as if both Chopin and Hoesick shared a genetically inherited trait of pure

Polishness, one that acted as the signifying chain in a biological linkage of Polish national identity and his views on Chopin’s biography. This hostile analysis is further compounded by the fact that Niecks had the audacity to question the link between Chopin and nationalism, instead choosing to remark on the need to study the individual.39 In this particular instance, the German

Niecks views Chopin through an expanded space beyond Polish national identification, while the

Pole Hoesick is insulted that he could be perceived otherwise. The striking differences between

Niecks and Hoesick further remark on the broad horizons that encompass interpretations of

Chopin.

In Chopin: As Revealed by Extracts from his Diary, a biographical sketch accumulated through public lectures for the University of Cracow first published in 1871, count Stanislas

Tarnowski, professor of literature at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, envisaged Chopin into many of the nationalistic templates that would be reverberated by later authors. Near the onset of the text he positions Chopin alongside the poetic realm of great Polish nationalist writers—Mickiewicz, Krasinski, and Słowacki.40 By placing Chopin within the pantheon of these great Poles, he is establishing an unmistakable link between Chopin and the great epoch of

Polish poetry. Along the same lines, the practical application of Chopin’s craft is inherently

38 Jolanta T. Pekacz, “The Nation’s Property: Chopin’s Biography as Cultural Discourse,” in Musical Biography: Towards New Paradigms, ed. by Jolanta T. Pekacz (New York: Routledge, 2006), 53. See footnote 30 for the original translation. 39 Frederick Niecks, Frederick Chopin: As a Man and Musician (London: Novello, Ewer & Co., 1888), I: 1-2. 40 Stanislas Tarnowski, Chopin: As Revealed by Extracts from His Diary, ed. by J.T. Tanqueray, trans. by Natalie Janotha (London: William Reeves, 1905), 6. These three authors are considered to be the great poets of the Polish language. More importantly, they championed the Polish cause during the tumultuous decades following the failure of the November Uprising.

18 ephemeral, it has a natural ability to transcend the limitations of the expression of the written word and infiltrate the very psyche of the listener, thus his poetic exercise becomes the ascendant declaration of Polish national sentiment. Tarnowski supports this claim when he states the importance of Chopin’s music: “It represents to the outside world the leading spirit of our natures...it has acquired glory for itself and for us, and a citizenship in the realm of music, which we did not possess before; it contains in itself the essence and expression of the spirit which created our poetry.”41 Tarnowski immediately establishes a narrative brimming with national overtones by linking Chopin to his audience through the shared pronouns “we” and “ours.” This is a clear rhetorical device that not only attempts to appeal to a Polish national readership, but also distances the non-Polish audience— “the outside world,”—from identifying with Chopin because they could not fully comprehend a matter of such national importance. Beyond this,

Tarnowski equates Chopin’s compositions alongside an imagined citizenship. In other words, because of Chopin’s deft ability to transcribe the entire essence of the Polish nation into an easily digestible medium such as music, listening to Chopin is the symbolic link that connects the whole of the nation together. For Tarnowski, Chopin acts as the founding father of Polish music, thus completely ignoring to the previous composers who were in search of national forms of

Polish music.42 He finishes off his charged declarations by likening Chopin to the “essence” and

“expression of the spirit” of the nation. By establishing an essentializing narrative that imbues

Chopin as the icon of Polish music, he pinpoints Chopin as the sole author of the Polish nation through musical compositions; before him there was nothing, and after him will just be hopeful

41 Ibid, 7. 42 Figures such as Prince Michał Kleofas Ogiński, the composer Karol Kurpiński, and Chopin’s composition teacher Józef Elsner were producing works with an overt national character to them. When Chopin was asked by Elsner to write a national opera, he refused. For more information on Chopin’s views towards embedding nationalist elements in his music, see Pekacz, “Deconstructing a National Composer,” 170-172.

19 attempts to penetrate the spiritual veneer and come closer to reproducing Poland through their artistic creations. The patterns of nationalizing Chopin established in the second half of the nineteenth century were continued into the twentieth century.

Writing on the fiftieth anniversary of the composer’s death, the Polish composer

Zygmunt Noskowski basked in Chopin’s musical compositions describing the Polish countryside, “Chopin’s melodies are poetic transformations of the sights that the master absorbed in his youth…From many a mazurka one can guess the color and light filling a landscape that the master saw with the eyes of his soul.”43 A specific example is found in “Impromptu No. 2 in F-

Sharp Major, Op. 36” described by Noskowski as “voices of church bells calling to the service” over the fresh fields “covered with newly ripened wheat, gently swaying under a light breeze.”44

Noskowski has craftily genericized Chopin’s composition into the scenic beauty of an idealized pastoral landscape that recalls a harmonious Poland, unencumbered by the interventions of foreign political powers. Poland’s longing for territorial sovereignty was further equated with the sounds produced by Chopin. An array of quotes from the Polish journalist and literary critic

Józef Kenig translated into English by Zofia Chechlińska reverberate with nationalistic nostalgia:

“The sad tone of Chopin’s music, its spirit of longing and sorrow makes him so intelligible for us…since he expresses the longing, sadness and sorrow of our spirit”; and, “Chopin’s music is a harp on which the nation plays all its pain.”45 For Kenig, Chopin becomes the irresolute representative of a national collective of sadly displaced Poles.

43 Zygmunt Noskowski, “The Essence of Chopin’s Works,” in After Chopin: Essays in Polish Music, ed. by Maja Trochimczyk, trans. Maja Trochimczyk and Anne Desler (Los Angeles: Polish Music Center, 2000), 34. 44 Ibid, 39. 45 Zofia Chechlińska, “Chopin’s Reception as Reflected in Nineteenth-Century Polish Periodicals: General Remarks,” in The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, ed. by Halina Goldberg (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), 250. The original remarks are found in Józef Kenig’s “Z powodu wydania pośmiertnych dziel Chopina'' from 1856.

20

As if identifying sound as a source of unmistakable Polish identity was not enough,

Chopin’s ancestral lineage was altered to fit the narrative of complete Polish heritage. The Polish musician Jarosław Zieliński wrote “The Poles in Music'' in 1902. Its main task was to prove the unquestionable validity of Chopin’s Polish heritage by crafting a fraudulent genealogy that dismissed the French heritage of Chopin’s forefathers. While the rest of the entries of the article focused on the musical contributions of other Polish composers, Zieliński highlights Chopin’s section by recalling Oskar Kolberg’s fictitious history of Chopin’s namesake first articulated in

1873.46 In Kolberg’s account, the Polish King Stanislaw Leszczyński (1677-1766) left Warsaw for the duchy of Deux-Ponts in France. He was followed by native courtiers from Kalisz named

Jean Kowalski and Nicholas Szop. In order to increase business in their newly settled region,

Kowalski and Szop changed their names to Ferrand and Chopin respectively. A descendent of the newly formed “Chopin,” Jean Jacques became a teacher and married a widow, Desmarets, and became a teacher. They had four children, the youngest of which was Fryderyk’s father,

Nicholas.47 In short, Kolberg attributed Chopin’s Polishness as the result of a displaced Polish king and his courtiers as well as a name change to increase economic viability. Maja

Trochimczyk adequately summarizes the situation, “The patriarchal framework of this story is fascinating…the Frenchness of Nicholas Chopin’s mother did not matter at all in the patrilineal genealogy proving the composer’s indisputable Polishness.”48 The article and analysis from

Trochimimcyzk reveal that even Chopin’s genealogy could be mobilized to adhere to the aims of

46 The special treatment afforded to Chopin further supports how his persona was being used as a symbolic guide for other Poles to follow. 47 Jarosław Zieliński, “Poles in Music,” Polish Music Center, USC, accessed December 1, 2019, https://polishmusic.usc.edu/research/publications/polish-music-journal/vol5no2/poles-in-music/#[53 . 48 Maja Trochimczyk, “Chopin and the ‘Polish Race’: On National Ideologies and the Chopin Reception,” in The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, ed. by Halina Goldberg (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), 293.

21 the dominating party—a political tool utilized to promote their ideology. The self-serving rhetoric of manipulated biographical knowledge was implemented by Hitler and the Nazis after their defeat of Poland in late-1939.

After invading and conquering Poland in little over a month, Hitler aimed to

“Germanize” Poland in an act of national bloodlust. One of his first measures enacted was the complete destruction of the Chopin Monument by the Polish sculptor Wacław Szymanowski from 1926 (the original design was conceived in 1905) and located in the Royal Baths Park in

Warsaw.49 (Fig. 1) The monumental bronze sculpture is composed of the single figure of Chopin, misleadingly rendered physically as heroic and robust50 sitting upon a constructed stool under the shade of a prominent willow tree.51 One hand rests upon his lap and the other appears to be wriggling his fingers over the keys of an imaginary keyboard. Chopin’s face gazes out to the surrounding scenery, an aesthetic tool utilized to mark the association of Chopin with the Polish landscape. As he seeks inspiration from the surrounding winds, the branches of the willow and

Chopin’s garments become one. The willow-and-Chopin combination produces a symbolic harp emanating with sounds of joy, gratitude, and adoration for Poland. The willow’s leaves are among the first to replenish in the spring and thus can suggest renewed life. In regard to Chopin this refers to his immigration from Poland to France and Vienna after the failed November

Uprising from 1830-1831.52 As for Poland, it refers to the sense of national pride engendered by

49 Waldemar Okoń “The Monument of Fryderyk Chopin by Wacław Szymanowski,” in The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, ed. by Halina Goldberg (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), 40-53. 50 Chopin was regarded as a short and scrawny character, much at odds with his physical likeness in Szymanowski’s sculpture. The aesthetic deviancy attends to generic nationalism in that Chopin has been presented as a hyper- masculine specimen to bolster the vitality of not only Chopin as a person, but also as the symbol of Polish national heritage. 51 The original was conceived in 1905, first cast in 1926, destroyed in 1940, rebuilt in 1946, and recast in 1958. 52 For more information on the November Uprising, see Chapter 2 of this report.

22 the musical compositions of Chopin. Imbued with symbolic resonance, it was an easy target for the Nazis.

The photograph of the fallen statue (Fig. 2) manifests Hitler’s murderous proclamation to

“kill without pity or mercy of all men, women, and children of Polish race or language.”53 The

German’s rampant seizure of power recalls the failed November Uprising a hundred years earlier, in which the Poles failed to regain territorial sovereignty from their Russian adversaries.

And like the displacement of Chopin from his native Poland, the emblem of Polish nationalism—the Chopin Monument—was removed from its original environment by exterior forces. The physical destruction of the vital manifestation of Polish national identity engendered by the monument served as a symbolic dismemberment of Poland. The restriction of Polish culture was a concerted attempt to de-Polonize Europe. The attempted genocide of the Polish nation was further promulgated through the Nazis’ attempts to Germanize Chopin himself.

Reported in the New York Times in May of 1944, the author Reuter revealed that previously the German occupants of Poland strictly prohibited playing any of Chopin’s music because of its patriotic appeal. This may have been the accepted policy from late-1939 until May of 1944, but as the article states, “The Germans secretly organize[d] a special exhibition in memory of Chopin in Cracow…The Poles were somewhat mystified, but everything was explained when at the opening ceremony Dr. Abb…declared that Chopin was ‘of course

German,’ having descended from an old Alsatian family named Schopping.”54 Like Zieliński in the early twentieth century, the Nazis’ seized the icon of Polish nationalism and altered his history to fit their own needs. In this case, rather than eliminating his French heritage by name

53 Ibid, 283. 54 Reuter, “Chopin Was a German, Nazis in Poland Decide,” New York Times, May 5, 1944, 5.

23 change from “Szop” to “Chopin,” the Nazis instituted his German ancestry from the Alsatian

“Schopping.” Before the biographical details of Chopin’s life were vehemently exploited to the point of altering his citizenship, he was lauded for his ability to strike a tone of universal rapport.

Nineteenth century music critic Józef Sikorski, known for his contributions to professional musical criticism in Poland, wrote the first biographical sketch of Chopin only weeks after the composer’s death.55 It was released as “Recollection of Chopin” in the December

1849 issue of Biblioteka Warszawska (The Warsaw Library).56 Among the opening pages of the work, Sikorski begins with what initially appears to be the same politically self-serving rhetoric of Chopin’s pro-Polish sympathizers, “He is our pride and a cause for tears all the more abundant in that he took from the heart of our nation all that dazzled with; in that he spent half his lifetime among us, the half which grows everything that bears fruit in the future; and that in that fruit we recognize the harvest of our own land.” In continuing the passage, however, Sikorski shifts focus, “Yet he is not ours alone, for a genius is the property of the whole world, and whatever nationality he is, people of all nations can see themselves in him as in a mirror; that is why all hearts today are mourning Chopin.”57 While Sikorski recognizes how invaluable Poland’s national and physical landscape were to the formative years of Chopin’s upbringing, as well as assisting in establishing a link between Chopin’s Polishness and his intended audience by uses of

“we” and “ours,” the author stops short of bridging his narrative with the politicized messianism of other authors writing about Chopin posthumously. He acknowledges that Chopin should be

55 Although this biography was the first written following the death of Chopin, it has proven to be exceptional among the biographies I have discussed. Sikorski, an ardent Polish nationalist, is able to see Chopin outside of a strictly nationalist lens and makes appeals for tending to Chopin’s legacy from a universal perspective. In other words, he does not fall prey to a hastily constructed argument that is only concerned with using Chopin to promote Polish nationalism. 56 Józef Sikorski, “Recollection of Chopin,” in Chopin and His World, ed. by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 45-46. 57 Ibid, 50.

24 cherished by all; the tantamount importance of Chopin’s national identity is subsumed under calls for a universal approach to appreciating the greatness of his musical creations. Thus,

Chopin’s genericism is not the political currency of Poland alone, but becomes a symbolic nectar for all to cherish.

Sikorski’s sentiments on the difficulties of assessing the legacy of Chopin are quite telling, “Chopin, as a great example for current and future music...is all the more difficult to assess to during a period that itself does not yet belong to history...Historical greatness can only be accurately represented when seen within the broad framework of history.”58 The author is quick to dispel hasty approximations of the legacy of Chopin in such a short period after his death. In contrast to the frank inaccuracies and national jingoisms that would accumulate in the successive biographies written on Chopin in the latter-half of the nineteenth century and throughout the majority of the twentieth, Sikorski—himself an ardent Pole—maintains a remarkably broad viewpoint concerning the universal appeal of Chopin. This is not to say that

Sikorski’s essay is not charged with verbose passages of romanticized rhetoric, but rather he can comprehend Chopin as more than a generic tool to be appropriated in the creation of Polish national identity, and by extension, the progress of the revival of the Polish state.59

Sikorski further distances Chopin from the nationalistic impulses that would plague future authors, “The human spirit succumbs to the influences of a dual world: the outside world that consists of memories, souvenirs...friendships, family, and...the people; and the other, inner,

58 Ibid, 51 59 On page 52, Sikorski created a seemingly circuitous link between Chopin’s upbringing in Poland and his choice of social relationships in Paris. He implies that because of prominent standing in Polish society, in tandem with Chopin’s childish impressionability, that they became the obvious choice for a social alliance upon his arrival in Paris. The author severely undermines the inaccessible accounts of Chopin’s actual lived experiences during the 1820s and settles for a simplified resolution of familiarity.

25 world which, peopled by the faculties of the mind and the heart, arrays the former in reflection.

A person’s individuality...is forged by that influence”60 The dual influences of both the inner and the outer world belies the strict attention given to the singular inner world (that of his memories and longing for Poland) that authors like Liszt, Tarnowski, Szulc, and Hoesick, duly perpetuated, and which ultimately has been ossified into cultural truth. He continues, “It is interesting to see how his spirit gradually wriggled free from under the sway of the schools on which he was raised as a composer. Not subjected to the exclusive guidance of any of [them], he voluntarily took advantage of them to develop models for himself.”61 Again, Sikorski is severing the notion that Chopin’s artistic identity was solely predicated on producing compositions for which Poland was at the forefront of every mark and note of his music. For Sikorski, Chopin went beyond the nation and extended to the universal.

Even in instances when Sikorski does make allusions to the national character implicit in

Chopin’s music, he does not succumb to an arbitrarily-realized conclusion that nationality was the sole inspiration, “Yet the generally predominant, albeit not exclusive, coloring of this melody is its nationality, although anyone assuming that Chopin’s melody—let us speak more generally, that his music—is always Polish would be mistaken.” He continues his remarks stating, “Chopin was too frequently cosmopolitan in his outlook not to free himself from exclusive influences, at least in his views, if not his spirit; we would be inclined to agree…that deeds based on partial spirit of some people is already national.”62 He extends Chopin’s character to the broader influences of cosmopolitanism, while in the very same regard, acknowledging that Chopin had the ability to absorb those various influences into his constantly-circulating definitions of Polish

60 Ibid, 62-63. 61 Ibid, 63. 62 Ibid, 73.

26 identity. Perhaps the early date combined with the lack of insistence on the national character of

Chopin’s compositions may have been a large reason why this publication is not cited as one of the more influential studies of Chopin. Judging by the seemingly objective, and not to mention verbose, rhetoric of proceeding authors’ evaluations, it would not be surprising. This is not to say that the demand for a Chopin biography, with its focus on his patriotic tendencies, inherently devalues Sikorski’s scholarship, but rather, that it would not help to bolster the political ideology of Chopin as the soul of the nation had this essay been as popular as the ones by Liszt or

Tarnowski.

Contained in the closing paragraph of Sikorski’s essay is this statement, “Chopin...spoke a language which the whole of humanity understands; yet of all peoples we Poles understand him best.”63 Sikorski, although falling prey to the Romantic ideal of the “spirit” as being an essence that could be held and best understood in the collective identity of a nation, still situated Chopin within the whole of humanity. Again, considering Sikorski’s history of ties to the cause for

Polish nationalism, this is a surprisingly open-minded statement. Chopin’s importance lies, not only in its benefits for the Polish nation, but for the whole of humanity.

As these examples have made evident, Chopin was decontextualized into a host of nationally guided narratives that dispelled his ability for personal agency and rendered him as a genericized icon that has come to represent the beauty and suffering of the Polish nation. This theme was continued by the Nazis, who in their murderous procession towards an idealized future of complete German domination of the world—envisaged by the sick and twisted forces of

Hitler and his brainwashed henchman—were readily willing and able to steer the biography of

Chopin to fit their narrative. Only in the last three decades in which serious attempts have been

63 Ibid, 80.

27 made to dispel these highly romanticized and self-serving stories that have abounded since the time of Chopin. Through the continuous examination of Chopin—his life and music—it is hoped that the currents of his insertion into spaces of generic nationalism will become clearer. The intention of this is not to claim ownership through the naturalization of an “official” biography of

Chopin, but to reveal how he has been continuously molded as an icon that has come to represent

Polish national identity. With this in mind, it is useful to return to the Chopin Monument to expand upon Chopin’s insertion into another space of generic nationalism.

Following the end of the War, Poland was reimagined as satellite state of the Soviet

Union. Unlike Zieliński and the Nazis’ before them, there was no attempt to “Russianize”

Chopin’s genealogy, but rather the Soviets’ aim was to place Chopin within the context of

Communist ideology. This was achieved after the statue was rebuilt in 1946, in which they inscribed the following quote on the base of the monument, “Statue of Fryderyk Chopin, destroyed and plundered by the Germans on 31 May 1940, rebuilt by the Nation. 17 October

1946.”64 The sculpture of Chopin was re-appropriated as an icon that represents the resilience of the entire Polish Nation against Nazi captivity; he is a symbolic manifestation of the cause for the collective brotherhood of Polish comrades, equally united against the tyranny of fascism and dedicated to the exploration of a new and better Poland. This message was further promulgated in 1958 by another inscription, this time by the most recognizable poet in the Polish literary tradition—Adam Mickiewicz. The inscription is borrowed from his narrative poem “Konrad

Wallenrod” and reads, “Flames will consume our painted history, Sword-wielding thieves will plunder our treasures, The song will be saved…”65 Mickiewicz’s imaginative word choice

64 Marita Albán Juárez and Ewa Stawińska-Dahling, Chopin’s Poland: A Guidebook to Places Associated with the Composer (Warsaw: Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, 2008), 51. 65 Ibid.

28 conjures the successive instances of Poland’s national sufferings, but ends on a seemingly prophetic note: Although Poland has endured a compendium of national tragedies, the immutable perseverance of its citizens will always endure over the temporary misdeeds of foreign powers.

That these inscriptions adorn the base of a monumental depiction of Chopin, further underscores

Chopin’s elasticity as a tool for Polish national identity. And now that the Royal Baths Park, and by extension the Chopin Monument, are the centerpiece of summer concerts (at which Chopin’s compositions are frequently featured) another layer of generic nationalism can be expounded upon.

Since 1959, concerts have been played in the Royal Baths Park from May through the end of September.66 Each Sunday, Chopin’s compositions are the featured delicacy for the public of Warsaw to engage with. (Fig. 3) Citizens, tourists, and unassuming passersby are allowed to sit, stand, lay, walk, or simply gaze and listen to the musical renderings of Chopin. All of this takes place against the backdrop of Szymanowski’s sculpture. Stated differently, the symbolic and musical Chopin are fused into a spectacle that, in one regard, represents the new and democratic Poland of the twenty-first century; Chopin’s decontextualization into a monumental sculpture combined with its tempestuous history echoes Poland’s national history: they may bend, but they never break, and they are metaphorically revived in the name of one another.

Chopin’s ability to be aesthetically transposed into a thematic strain of national survival was visualized earlier by another Polish artist in the second half of the nineteenth century.

66 Ibid.

29

CHAPTER 4

GENERIC PATRIOTISM: CHOPIN AND THE POLONAISE

The genericization of Fryderyk Chopin as an emblem that represents his status as a role model for the survival of the Polish nation is visualized by the Polish artist Teofil Kwiatkowski.

In his watercolor and gouache of 1859, Chopin’s Polonaise—Ball at the Hôtel Lambert (Fig. 4) located in the National Museum in Poznan, Kwiatkowski focuses on combining the symbolic importance of the Polish national dance—the polonaise—with the icon of Fryderyk Chopin—a

Polish national hero—in a mythologized gathering of Poland’s rich history. Chopin acts as an exemplum virtutis67 in a moralizing narrative that represents Kwiatkowski’s vision of capturing the most salient aspects of Polish national history in order to spur passion for keeping Poland alive during a period of intense political uncertainty.68

The painting is composed in a broad horizontal sweep of bodies and architecture. A host of the figures are engaging with one another and others appear as place holders to drive the viewer’s eyes throughout the composition. Chopin is seated in the right foreground of the work engaging the keys of his piano in an organized succession of notes that comprises the rhythmic and harmonious structure of the polonaise. He is surrounded by the unmistakable entourage of personal and national intimations: the prominent poet Adam Mickiewicz, whose epic the Pan

Tadeusz provided a brilliantly romanticized description of the polonaise, appears to be engaging with the rest of the group; beyond him a figure of France is emblemized as Guerrier gaulois69, a reference to France as the safe haven for Chopin and many other Polish émigrés is situated

67 An exemplum virtutis can be thought of a subject exhibiting virtuous behavior that is worthy of reproducing. 68 As has been noted, Poland of 1859 did not exist as a recognized state on the map of Europe. It was still divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. 69 Halina Goldberg, “Chopin’s Oneiric Soundscapes and the Role of Dreams in Romantic Culture,” in Chopin and His World, ed. by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 16-20.

30 diagonally; Chopin’s student, the princess Marcelina Czartoryska, is seated directly behind the composer, while the prominent French author and one-time lover of Chopin, George Sand, stands behind the princess. Immediately to the left of the piano, with her back turned to the viewer, is a female personification of the Polish folk. Kwiatkowski’s inclusion of such a storied audience of Polish national symbols and icons in such close proximity to Chopin indicate the composer’s deft ability at harnessing the symbolic harmonies of the polonaise that stir the patriotic emotions of his storied audience. In other words, Chopin’s seemingly natural ability to capture the essence of Poland displayed in such a nationally important guise as the polonaise provides the visual narrative-strain of Chopin as the generic icon of Polish national survival.

When engaging with other areas of the work, Kwiatkowski provided additional references to the historical and personal figures associated with Chopin and Poland that further imbues the painting with national reverie. The far left of the image portrays the Czartoryski family, whose Parisian residence—the Hôtel Lambert—served as the headquarters of the

Monarchists, the political group that Chopin is cited as belonging to (as opposed to the

Republicans).70 Beyond this, the viewer is keen to notice the figures with prominent wings on their backs scattered throughout the work; they are the Winged Hussars, celebrated members of the Polish cavalry who fought during the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—another symbolic recollection of the golden era of the Polish state. Another reference to the

Commonwealth is the figure of a Polish bard, located behind George Sand. He is dressed in the kontusz and zupan, the traditional attire of the Polish nobility of the eighteenth century, and prime exponents of popularizing the polonaise.71

70 For more information on the Czartoryski family, see Chapter 2 of this report. 71 See footnote 5 on page two of this chapter.

31

The inclusion of these historical and allegorical personages is Kwiatkowski’s attempt to conjure an anachronistic celebration of Poland’s history as made possible by the musical stylings of Chopin. The narrative is thus repeated again: Chopin’s seemingly transcendental ability to capture and expand the essence of the polonaise from the foundational myths of Poland’s creation to the second half of the nineteenth century makes him the most ably suited candidate to accurately assess and transcribe the general emotions of an entire nation, that of national survival. Kwiatkowski was an ardent patriot who participated in the failed November Uprising and sought to spur appeals to the Polish national psyche through a grandiose painting with

Chopin as the driving force behind this mythological congregation of Polish history. Chopin’s purported love for everything Poland—as perpetuated by the doughty rhetoric of his biographers’—enables him to become the genericized icon of Kwiatkowski’s visual appropriation of Polish national survival. The history of the polonaise, as made apparent through its utilization in the aforementioned work by Kwiatkowski, is one of the crucial spaces of

Chopin’s absorption into the generic nationalism of Poland.

The polonaise, one of the five national dances of Poland72, has a long and storied history, which, much like the history of the country itself, has revealed a remarkable amount of change and cultural appropriation.73 It was originally associated with the glorious epoch of the Polish nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but following the final partition of Poland in

1795, it was re-appropriated to a doleful expression of national nostalgia. In tracing the noble origins and practice of the dance, its melancholic mutation following the loss of Poland’s

72 The list is as follows: the polonaise, mazurka, krakowiak, kujawiak, and the oberek. 73 For an extended analysis of the polonaise (form, tempo, melody, etc.), see Eric Mckee, “Dance and the Music of Chopin: The Polonaise,” in Chopin and His World, ed. by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 187-230.

32 political sovereignty, and its literary appropriations in the 1830s and beyond, it can be disclosed that the polonaise, like the mazurka, became an indispensable articulation of Polish national consciousness. It could be used to stir memories of the mythic glory days of Poland’s not-too- distant past, as well as a symbolic expression of Poland’s increasingly grim outlook on regaining national independence. Chopin, whose every action was purportedly informed by his love for

Poland, could not bypass the flood of nationalist rhetoric surrounding the polonaise. As a result, the connection between Chopin’s polonaises and his longing for his homeland has acquired a mythic status, which because of the fabricated biographies written on him, normalized the instances in which his patriotism was unmistakably present in his polonaises. This notion has been compounded by Chopin’s polonaises surfacing in pop culture formulations. In order to better comprehend the formation of Chopin’s nationalist polonaises, it is necessary to briefly elucidate on the history of the polonaise’s existence within Poland.

The cultural roots of the polonaise trace to the customs and traditions of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Polish gentry. Wishing to distance themselves from their Western

European counterparts, the gentry fashioned the myth that they were descendants of the

Sarmatians, an ancient race of equestrian warriors that originated from Asia. As a result, they absorbed a vast amount of their core values prevalent in the equestrian lifestlye, which according to music theorist Eric Mckee were, “military prowess, liberty, piety, respect for antiquity, gallantry and chivalry…”74 In effect, the Poles could now cite a locatable genealogy to base their traditions of republican values (gentry democracy of the Commonwealth) and emergence of their folk traditions (enabled by their preference for an agrarian society).75 In the same regard, they

74 Mckee, 190. 75 Halina Goldberg, “Descriptive Instrumental Music in Nineteenth-Century Poland,” Journal of Musicological Research 34/3 (Summer, 2015): 243. Keeping in mind their political ideology, they also reputed the Enlightenment emphasis on locating and defining objective facts of nature (science) and would often find themselves ridiculed by

33 adopted the Eastern-based kontusz and zupan, which would become the customary costume for dancing the polonaises.76 When discussed by the romantically verbose writing styles of the likes of Adam Mickiewicz and Franz Liszt, the polonaise could be fashioned to legendary proportions.

Two of Mickiewicz’s most important poems, “The Concert of Concerts” and “The

Polonaise,” are contained in his twelve-volume epic poem, Pan Tadeusz. It was written during his Parisian exile of the 1830s, but is situated in the Poland of 1811-1812.77 The reverence afforded to the poems is promulgated by Liszt, “We should certainly have hesitated to speak of the polonaise, after the beautiful verses consecrated to it by Mickiewicz and the admirable description he inserted in the last canto of Pan Tadeusz…”78 In the “Concert of Concerts”

Jankiel, a Jewish musician and Polish patriot, is requested to perform at Zosia’s wedding.79

Although he is initially reluctant to perform, he eventually plays for the wedding party. In the midst of his performance, Jankiel appears to strike a sour note, which leaves the audience hovering in a state of anxious excitement. After a few moments, he revives the audience with the

Polonaise of May the Third.80 The summoning of the highly patriotic composition provokes an adulatory celebration from the energized audience. Jankiel, aware of this, continues to reference the great military battles of Poland’s idyllic past, “A poor old song, to Polish troops so dear! The

other European countries for choosing what they perceived to be an archaic lifestyle instead of adhering to the unstoppable march of progress. In keeping with this theme, the Romantics, by the very nature of their classifying identity, disdained the Enlightenment (which would also be useful to explain their hatred for the partitioners, who were all open practitioners of Enlightenment values). 76 Mckee, 188. 77 The date of the poem takes place in the Duchy of Warsaw, a constitutionally based Polish state sanctioned by Napoleon. This is important because it was the last time that Poland was not under foreign rule until 1918. Thus, for Mickiewicz, the date could be summoned to appeal to a return to a free Polish state. 78 Franz Liszt, Liszt’s Chopin: A New Edition, ed. and trans. by Meirion Hughes (New York: Manchester University Press, 2010), 72. 79 Zosia is the protagonist of the poem. 80 Halina Goldberg and Jonathan D. Bellman “Introduction” in Chopin and His World, ed. by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 1-14. The translation of Adam Mickiewicz’s “Concert of Concerts” and “The Polonaise” was done by Kenneth R. Mackenzie, published in 1992. Additionally, the Constitution of May 3, 1791 saw Poland produce a coup d’état against the partitioning powers with the hopes of reestablishing a sovereign state to make sweeping political reforms.

34 soldiers recognized it, crowding near. Around the master; listening, they recall That dreadful hour when o’er their country’s fall...And to their minds came memories of those times...This

Polish song had cheered and comforted.81 He continues, referencing the march of Dąbrowski.82

At this point, Jankiel is now consumed with the patriotic fervor of his surrounding comrades, “He sobbed, the honest Jew, He loved our country like a patriot true. Dąbrowski gave the Jew his hand to kiss. And thanked him kindly for his courtesies.”83 What started off as a tentative agreement to perform in front of the wedding party evolved into a frenzied collective of galvanized Poles basking in the nostalgic atmosphere of their nation’s past. Through the poetic

“flashback” of Jankiel’s improvisations inspired by the solicitations of Poland’s patriotic past of the Constitution of May 3, 1791 and the national military hero of Dąbrowski, Mickiewicz is deliberately fashioning an overwhelmingly patriotic narrative. Furthermore, the popularity of the poem coupled with the political events surrounding its creation, imbue these particular pieces with a symbolic veneer of the beginnings of Polish national consciousness. In other words, the highly positive and interactive response from the party situates those events as being of prime importance in establishing a sense of Polish national identity. The continuation of Jankiel’s performance is the subject of the following poem, “The Polonaise.”

The polonaise, as mentioned earlier, is one of the five national dances of Poland, and the only one to be widely associated with the nobility. Mickiewicz spares no expense in his expressive imagining of the dance. He offers several passages that visualize the grand affair,

The pairs proceed in turn with merry noise, [t]he ring contracts and then again deploys, [a]s when the folds of a huge serpent curl, the Varied colors of their dresses whirl[.] Of ladies,

81 Ibid, pg. 10. 82 Jan Henryk Dąbrowski was a highly distinguished general and statesman. His exploits fighting for the Polish army during the Kościuszko Uprising and for the Polish Legions in Italy (under Napoleon) earned him an exalted place in the history of Poland. To provide a specific example, the Polish national anthem, “Poland is Not Yet Lost,” is also known as “Dąbrowski’s Mazurka.” 83 Goldberg and Bellman, 11.

35 soldiers, gentleman, and gleam [l]ike golden scales lit by the sunset’s beam, [a]gainst the quilted darkness of the ground. On goes the dance and shouts and toasts resound!84

The reader can imagine the physical exertion of the dancers moving about in graceful bouts of patriotic choreography, as well as the vibrant and varying saturations of the competing colors.

Similar to Jankiel’s intensely animated performance, the grand spectacle of performing the polonaise is imbued with a nostalgic and imaginatively situated retelling of Poland’s golden age.85 Again, the reader would have been able to understand the pellucid references to the historic events of Poland’s previous generation. When taken in the context of the exiled community of Poles residing in Paris during the 1830s, it is quite certain that Mickiewicz was attempting to create a sense of Polish national solidarity amidst a dire present and uncertain future. The popularity and success of Chopin, whose compositions were already being marked with nationalistic overtones, in tandem with the prophetic exaltations made in Mickiewicz’s poems, made his polonaises and mazurkas inextricably situated within the contexts of the Polish nation.

Liszt’s biography on Chopin acts as a codifying device that naturalizes the influence of

Mickiewicz’s poems on Chopin’s creative output, “This beautiful epic romance, set at the beginning of this century when there were still many alive who retained the feelings and the manners of ancient Poland, unquestionably inspired Chopin many times, its scenes nourishing the emotions he loved to enshrine in his music.”86 While there is little doubt that Chopin would have read and have been, at the very least, mildly influenced by the poems, Liszt is in effect establishing a causal link that proclaims that Chopin’s polonaises were overwhelmingly

84 Ibid, pg. 12. 85 The lively description of their outfits, although situated in the early nineteenth-century, is the implied continuation of a tradition that harkens back to the golden age of the Polish nobility. 86 Liszt, 72.

36 informed by Mickiewicz’s poems; Chopin could not have completed his polonaises if it had not been for the flood of patriotic emotions spurned by Mickiewicz’s innate ability to understand

Polish national consciousness. Thus, as a result, the genericization of Chopin as composer of patriotic polonaises is granted another layer of symbolic veneer through Mickiewicz iconic poetry.

If the roots of the Polish nobility were to be found in the mythic constructions of heroic tales of Sarmatian conquests or in the profoundly nostalgic poetry of Mickiewicz, then the origin story of the first polonaise in Poland can be found in the fictional tale of the coronation of Henry of Anjou.87 As the tale goes, the last ruler of the Jagiellons88 died without an offspring to inherit the throne. The end of the dynastic succession of hereditary rulers, coupled with the sweeping power of the Polish nobility, meant that the Poles were to elect the young prince of France.89 The election of a foreign king meant that the coronation ceremony was an opportunity for the Polish nobility to showcase their wealth, splendor, and by extension, their control. This anecdote is brazenly described by the famed American piano teacher Edward Baxter Perry, “The coronation ceremony...was one of the most magnificent affairs ever witnessed, for Poland was then at the height of her power, wealth, and splendor, and barbarically oriental in her love of lavish display an extravagant personal adornment.”90 The story narrates that, as the nobility marched their way

87 Edward Baxter Perry, “The Story of the Polonaise (1909),” Polish Music Center, USC, accessed on May 14, 2020, https://polishmusic.usc.edu/research/publications/polish-music-journal/vol5no2/polonaise-story/. The origin story fleshed out by Perry was previously supported, albeit in less detail, by Karasowski (397), Niecks (239), and Huneker (323). 88 The name is derived from the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Jogalia, who was the first Lithuanian to be named King of Poland. The Jagiellonian dynasty lasted from his coronation in the late fourteenth century to the death of Sigismund II Augustus in 1573. For more information on the Jagiellonian dynasty, see Norman Davies’s chapter “Jogalia” in the first volume of God’s Playground: A History of Poland, pp. 115-158. 89 Henry was elected by the nobility of Poland as the first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. His reign lasted for all of two years and he fled Poland back to France, where he would rule as Henry III from 1574 to his death in 1589. 90 Perry, Ibid. It is important to notice how Baxter emphasizes how the nobility were “barbarically oriental” in their attire and manners. In doing so, the author further naturalized the Sarmatian lineage of the Polish nobility.

37 to be presented before the king, they were accompanied by “suitable music written for the occasion by a local composer...to add the pomp and beauty of the occasion, and to embody the peculiar racial characteristics and national traits of the Poles...It was a musical presentation of the

Polish people to their new monarch.”91 Perry is codifying the genealogy of the dance with the golden age of the Polish nobility as well as literally “grounding” the dance form in Polish national history because it was composed by a local, and thus “authentic” Pole. Additionally,

Perry attempts to appeal to his audience by conflating the historical moment of the first polonaise with a racial component; The Poles, so conscious of their national identity, could not help but

“show-off” their Polish pride to a French king. In situating the origin of the polonaise in a noble myth, one that is strategically visualized with material pomp and elegant dancing, along with the romanticized narratives espoused by Mickiewicz and Liszt, the polonaise attained the prescripts necessary to establish itself as an indispensable piece of Polish national identity. Taking that into account, combined with the unremitting blows to the Polish nation (both real and internalized), the polonaise could now be emblemized as a heroic ode to the glory days of Poland’s once-proud democracy, or manifestations of copious grief over the loss of their political sovereignty. In reviewing the strands of both types of the polonaise—martial/celebratory and forlorn/nostalgic— as exemplified by Chopin, the essence of his nationalist polonaises is readily discernible.92

Chopin’s “Polonaise in A-Major, Op. 40 no. 1,” written in 1838 and published in 1840, is exemplary of the heroic polonaises.93 The work is popularly referred to as the “Military”

91 Ibid. 92 This is not to limit the polonaise to these two types of expression. Rather, in this examination of specific polonaises by Chopin, deduced from literary analyses, these two classifications allow for the clearest expression of my intended research questions. Other types of the polonaise include ballroom, keyboard, and brilliant. 93 Fryderyk Chopin, Polonaise No. 3 in A Major, Op. 40 No. 1, “Military,” Performed by Idil Biret, Hong Kong: Naxos, 2009, Compact Disc.

38

polonaise,94 and is noted by its rapidity and powerful directness. It has been characterized as representative of marching soldiers, clattering hooves, and the explosion of shells on a battlefield, while simultaneously representing noble dignity and chivalric pride. Frederick

Niecks’ response is a case-in-point, “...the mind of the composer is fixed on one elating thought—he sees the gallantly-advancing chivalry of Poland, determination in every look and gesture; he hears rising above the noise of stampering horses and the clash of arms their bold challenge scornfully hurled at the enemy.”95 Niecks evokes the image of Chopin sitting at his piano, who, so embedded in his craft, attains the ability to conjure these heroic images and transcribe them to paper. Niecks would have you believe Chopin was in the midst of the fighting and that his composition is a sonic testament to the brave Poles who fought alongside him. James

Huneker refers to the work as “Le Militaire,” and focuses on its masculine traits, “It is the best known and, though the most muscular of his compositions, it is the most played.”96 It goes without saying that the Polonaise, because of its heroic and manly nature, would be the most popular of works; the emphasis on establishing a visual counterpart to the music—the triumphant scenes of the Polish military celebrating the victory of an arduous battle—would be paramount to spurring revolutionary fervor for the Polish cause. It allows for the promotion of Chopin as the intrepid patriot, still composing works for his homeland even though he had been away from it for almost a decade. The composition, beyond the heroic prescriptions evinced by Chopin’s biographers, was fashioned into a ghost story. The ghastly hallucinations suffered by Chopin were the grounds necessary to weave an exaggerated fable that further equated the piece with nationalistic overtones.

94 Judging by the date of the piece, I do not believe that the martial association is based on a specific historical episode, but rather comes from the implied visualizations conjured by the music itself. 95 Frederick Niecks, Frederick Chopin: As a Man and Musician (London: Novello, Ewer & Co., 1888), II:246. 96 James Huneker, Chopin: The Man and His Music (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 329-330.

39

According to legend, Chopin had just completed the final touches of the Polonaise in A-

Major and wanted to replay it to ensure that his compositional notation was rid of errors.97 Upon beginning the piece the door to his abode flew ajar and was followed by a procession of ghosts of

Polish nobility, replete with their dazzling costumes, resplendent jewels, and glittering weaponry. The triumphant essence of the piece envisaged by their favorite musical son elicited the imaginary entourage to gracefully partake in their national dance.98 Because Chopin could only produce his works by pulling from his memories of Poland, the ghosts of Poland’s past could never be far behind. Additionally, the story appears to appropriate the notion that Chopin’s polonaises, being the sonic manifestation of such a vital symbolic component of Poland’s noble history, literally have the ability to transcend time, space, and the corporeal body. The legend of this spectral episode became part of the repertoire of the myth of Chopin, serving for example as the inspiration for Kwiatkowski’s composition mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

Additionally, the heroic undertones of the composition were carried into the twentieth century as the opening phrase of the piece was used to signify the beginning of the radio broadcast for the

Polish Radio Warsaw during World War II.99

97 Margaret Anderton, “The Spirit of the Polonaise (1917),” Polish Music Center, USC, accessed on May 14, 2020, https://polishmusic.usc.edu/research/publications/polish-music-journal/vol5no2/polonaise-spirit/#[10]. This story is repeated in Tarnowski (38), Karasowski (399-400; he mistakenly attributes the story to the Polonaise in A-Flat, Op. 53), Niecks (247), and Huneker (329). 98 I have not yet found the original source of the story, but in keeping with the timeline of the Polonaise, it would have occurred during their stay in Majorca from November 1838 until February 1839. Sand’s autobiography, My Life, makes a fleeting reference to some of the ghostly apparitions that were haunting Chopin, but does not make any explicit reference to the “Polonaise Op. 40, No. 1.” In Chopin’s correspondences (Hedley, 162-169) to Julian Fontana (he is the dedicatee of Op. 40), written during his time in Majorca, he alludes to the business aspects of publishing the Polonaise, but does not mention any hallucinations. Instead, he focuses on his increasing struggle to stem his recurring sickness. From the evidence gathered, I do not see the story as true so much as I understand it to be an attempt to proliferate the essence of Chopin as being tinged with sickness, melancholy, dreams, and nationalism. 99 “Sygnal Polskeigo Radia 1939,” TWGrzegorz, last modified May 17, 2009, accessed May 14, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWc1arLpqiU.

40

When analyzing the second piece of the opus, the “Polonaise in C-Minor, Op. 40 no. 2,” it becomes evident that the severe contrasts between the two compositions, most notably in the emotive responses elicited from the keys of the piano, allows for the simplified binary of

Chopin’s polonaises as heroic/melancholy to proliferate.100 In other words, by classifying these particular polonaises into an easily formed narrative of black/white, Chopin’s generic nationalism can be further likened to either celebrating her magnanimous past or mourning her bastardized present.

German musical author Frederick Niecks bolsters this claim in his description of the second Polonaise, “In the second...the mind of the composer turns from one depressing or exasperating thought to another—he seems to review the different aspects of his country’s unhappy state, its sullen discontent, fretful agitation, and uncertain hopes.”101 The music critic

James Huneker, although not as descriptive as Niecks, makes a similar claim, “The C minor

Polonaise of the same set is a noble, troubled composition, large in accents and deeply felt...It is indeed Poland’s downfall.”102 If, for these authors, the first Polonaise (no. 1) is able to be likened to “guns buried in flowers,”103 then the second Polonaise (No. 2) can be thought of as the complete opposite: the guns have been unwillingly exchanged for tears and the flowers inherit a desolate landscape of barren hopes and windswept dreams. The nostalgic evocations of Poland’s gallant, but ultimately futile efforts to stem the tide of foreign excursions on to their beloved homeland becomes the poetic grandiloquence for Edward Baxter Perry,

The theme, in octaves, voices the stern, well nigh despairing indignation of a strong, dauntless race crushed to earth by the overwhelming weight of numbers,

100 Fryderyk Chopin, Polonaise No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 40 No. 2, Performed by Idil Biret, Hong Kong: Naxos, 2009, Compact Disc. 101 Niecks, 246. 102 Huneker, 330. 103 Robert Schumann, On Music and Musicians, ed. by Konrad Wolff, trans. by Paul Rosenfeld (New York: Pantheon Books Inc., 1946), 132. Although Schumann made this claim in discussion of Chopin’s Polish nationalism, it is readily applicable to the narrative-theme of the “Military” Polonaise.

41

but sullenly biding its time, and gathering the remnant of its strength for one last desperate struggle, heroic, though hopeless, to avenge its many bitter wrongs; with pride and courage still unbroken, but with a full realization of its impotence. It is the same spirit that led the Polish students in the streets of Warsaw to throw themselves unarmed upon the Russian bayonets by the hundreds, preferring a futile death to a life of shame among a vanquished people.104

Perry paints a romanticized scenario of Polish rebels, who overwhelmingly outnumbered, and aware of their vain efforts to salvage a victory, continue to fight with the ceaseless pride and unbreakable determination that made them proud to be Poles. What could be interpreted as a mindless race to an unnecessary death is formulated, instead, as the penultimate expression of national courage. It is that same air of patriotic duty, according to Perry, that drove unarmed students (understood here as the future of the nation) to willingly perish under the treacherous barbarity of the Russian soldiers. Perry’s assessment suggests that Chopin, had he been engaged in warfare, would have eliminated the Tsarist forces with the snap of a finger (or, more appropriately, the pressing of a key).

A similar tone is struck in the mystical ascension of another one of Chopin’s polonaises.

Chopin’s “Polonaise in A-Flat Major, Op. 53,” or “Heroic” Polonaise, is regarded as one of the most celebrated and performed pieces of his entire repertoire.105 And much like his “Military” Polonaise it has been conceptualized as a symbolic allusion to the charging Polish cavalry entrenched in another battle staged on the mythic landscape of

Poland’s legendary past. In other words, the commentary on Op. 53 has endorsed it as a celebratory composition in which Chopin “is a great Polish patriot narrating in music the great historic past of the Polish people…”106 This is evident in the semi-quavering

104 Perry, ibid. 105 Fryderyk Chopin, Polonaises: No. 6, Op. 53 in A-flat (“Heroic”), Performed by Arthur Rubinstein, New York: Sony Classical Music, 2001, Compact Disc. 106 James Bakst, “Polish National Influences in Chopin’s Music,” The Polish Review 7, no. 4 (1962): 65.

42

octaves of the third movement of the piece107, which Margaret Anderton could not help but visualize as “thunderous hoof beats of the cavalry charge expressed in the music by a great octave climax.”108 It is interesting to note that so much emphasis is placed on the third movement, as much of the popular culture appropriations of the piece tend to focus on the main phrase of the composition.109 As the following examples will prove, the

“heroic” nature of the piece was largely appropriated to, once again, entangles Chopin into another space of Polish generic nationalism.

The 1945 Columbia Pictures film, A Song to Remember, is a wartime biopic focused on distilling the narrative of Fryderyk Chopin as a devout Polish patriot. The film exploits the

“Heroic” Polonaise as the signifying (and recurring) space of Chopin’s genericized nationalism.

Upon arriving in Paris with his composition teacher Józef Elsner, and after unsuccessfully requesting the services of Louise Pleyel to publish Fryderyk’s pieces,110 the notes of the opening phrases of the Polonaise creeps into the scene. Both parties are bewildered: Chopin because he cannot believe his composition is being played, and the curmudgeon Pleyel because he is actually enjoying what he hears. They rush out to the main lobby where the Hungarian maestro,

Franz Liszt, is playing the tune.111 Liszt is enamored by the piece, so much so that when he learns that the genre is a polonaise he can’t help but remark, “Polonaise, the spirit of Poland, magnificent...and you play it with spirit too, the voice of a patriot!”112 Liszt is then joined on a separate piano by Chopin where they shake hands in an offering of friendship and symbolic unity of their shared musical genius. (Fig. 12) Having no intimate frame of reference with which to

107 Rubinstein, especially from 3’02” to 4’18”. 108 Anderton, ibid. 109 Rubinstein, 0’15” to 1’46”. The opening phrase has been featured in the Addams Family (1964) Batman (1966), Monty Python (1980), and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). 110 Apparently, Pleyel had shown interest in the child Chopin, but that was 11 years prior. 111 This is the film’s way of introducing the friendship of the two composers to the audience. 112 A Song to Remember, DVD, directed by Charles Vidor (Minneapolis, MA: Mill Creek Entertainment, 2015).

43 comprehend the works of Chopin, let alone the significance of the history of the polonaise to the

Polish nation, Liszt somehow understands the patriotic appeal of the dance; he can feel the

“spirit” of the nation being summoned with each successive note. In other words, patriotism is something that is inherently understood by every person. From this scene onwards, the piece is strategically sprinkled throughout the film to remind Chopin of his indebtedness to fight for the

Polish cause. Taking into account the date of the film, released in the waning months of World

War II, it is a purposeful endeavor that the English-speaking film would choose to focus on a heroic narrative. For American audiences, Chopin was symbolic of the brave and courageous young men fighting for American democracy in the European and Pacific theaters.113 The choice to emphasize Chopin’s hatred of the Russians could additionally be seen as an allusion to the anti-Communist rhetoric proliferating at the time. The film reveals that Chopin has been decontextualized as an emblem that celebrates American military service as well as their distrust of the Soviet Union.

In contrast to accelerating the national fervor of America’s military vis-a-vis Chopin’s

Polonaise, Walter Lantz opts for a light-hearted and comedic interpretation of the piece. Musical

Moments from Chopin, an animated miniature released in 1946, focuses on Andy Panda performing the piece with a little help from Woody the Woodpecker.114 The scene takes place in a modestly-sized barn that has been altered to appear as a music hall, where a small cohort of farm animals watch Andy excitedly execute the opening movement of the work. (Fig. 13)

Woody Woodpecker, seemingly oblivious at first, walks in and begins to polish the piano. As he

113 The main phrase of the work also served as the guiding harmony of Buddy Kay and Bud Mossman’s patriotic tune “Till the End of Time.” Released in 1945, the song served as a celebratory ode to everlasting love, an obvious device aimed at returning G.I. 's to settle into a family life and proliferate the “American Dream” of having a steady job, affordable house, and established family. 114 “Musical Minatures - Musical Moments from Chopin (1946),” Justin Smith, dailymotion, last modified 12 years ago, accessed May 14, 2020, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ou9l.

44 makes his way to the keyboard (where Andy Panda is playing) he makes contact with the pianist, who attempts to concentrate on the piece, is noticeably surprised but continues to play. Woody, now aware and intrigued, gazes down at the keys and joins Andy. They combine to play the final phrase of the work (skipping over the symbolic octaves of the third movement). The cartoon elects to abandon any telltale signs of patriotism, instead focusing on the comedic tendencies of the characters through the utilization of the imaginative possibilities of the animated medium.

Thus, the malleability of Chopin is extended from patriotic polonaise, to propagandistic tool of democratic interests, and whimsical backbone for a light-hearted cartoon.

The differences observed in the varying uses of the polonaise have revealed the malleability of Chopin to be inserted into various areas of differing generic national interpretations. For Poland, the polonaise was a highly charged emblem that carried the weight of a nation’s history. As a result, Chopin—carrying the title of the poetic symbol of the Polish nation—was an easy target for authors to attach the patriotic undertones that have come to belie the very image of Chopin as a musician and composer. What these American uses of the Heroic

Polonaise have shown, however, is that the patriotic fervor so heavily articulated and naturalized by Polish discourse on Chopin is only dealt with superficially. Chopin was not elevated to speak for the identity of an entire nation, as seen by examples utilized by native-Polish authors and artists. Rather, his patriotism was utilized to speak to the duty of the American public to remain dedicated to the war still waging in Europe and the Pacific. Yes, the film attempts to appeal to the psyche of an audience that was embrittled in a war that consumed nearly half of the decade, but it is largely adapted to an English-speaking audience who, in reality, was more focused on the fortunes of the United States, rather than the suffering of Poland. In the other popular uses of the piece, the same impulses are not readily apparent. In other words, as the contrasting mediums

45 of the pieces, exemplified by Poland and the United States have shown, Chopin can be decontextualized in a variety of guises that perpetuate a different form of generic nationalism. In one sense, Chopin is a Polish sage knowingly utilizing the historic importance of the polonaise for the needs of Polish national survival, while in other instances, his polonaises are utilized in light-hearted and comedic ways that dispel the attention given to nationalist interpretations of them. Although the aforementioned analyses provided by Niecks, Sikorski, and film adaptations reveal that Chopin is not under sole ownership of the Polish nation, this has not stopped Poland from revitalizing the aura of Chopin as a preeminent product of national currency in the twenty- first century.

46

CHAPTER 5

THE COMMODIFIED COMPOSER: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY USES OF CHOPIN

The uses of monuments, markers, and other celebratory sites identified with Chopin, especially those which have flourished in the twenty-first century, reveal that Poland has made a deliberate attempt to inculcate the composer into the historical timeline of the nation’s past, present, and future. In other words, Poland has made a concerted effort to visibly mark the places associated with Chopin as invaluable cultural artifacts of their history, one which would be vitally diminished if the monuments were to disappear or not be celebrated all together.115 The following examples demonstrate Chopin as a cultural icon of Warsaw not only alluded to by a direct confrontation with the subject demarcated by physical markers, but also through the process of movement. In this instance, the term becomes a metaphor for the notational movement of his scores as well as his physical movement across the keyboard. This creates another implied relationship, or space for generic nationalism to abound.

Take for example, the Chopin Benches spread throughout Warsaw. (Fig. 8) The set consists of fifteen simply constructed benches comprised of dazzling black granite, polished metal, and a speaker system concealed within the bench. Each bench is placed in a strategic location associated with Chopin’s time in Warsaw.116 Although marked by the seemingly uncomplicated admixture of three pieces of stone, the benches are a surprisingly effective combination of technology and nationalistic nostalgia. The glimmering sheen of the black granite

115 Marita Albán Juárez and Ewa Stawińska-Dahling, Chopin’s Poland: A Guidebook to Places Associated with the Composer (Warsaw: Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, 2008). The guide is an excellent source for more information on the monuments in Poland that have been inspired and/or constructed in the name of commemorating Chopin. 116 Chopin lived in Warsaw for the first 20 years of his life. He lived abroad for the remaining 19 years. This is important to note because the benches and Chopin route act as a pilgrimage route that would have you believe that the history of Warsaw would be seriously impaired had it not been for Chopin’s presence within its city limits.

47 coupled with the modest size of the bench effectively models itself after the polished finish of one of Chopin’s pianos. Additionally, the benches contrast with their architectural surroundings, making them an unmistakable emblem within Warsaw’s cityscape. If this invites the viewer to approach the benches, the additional components of the bench make them interact with the history of the relationship between Chopin and Warsaw itself.

Each bench has a small map of the city that has been altered to easily circumscribe the other fourteen locations of the benches. (Fig. 9) The physical demarcation of mapping out the route of the visitor from bench to bench not only constructs a path that enables the viewer to interact with the other physical markers that represent the history of the city, it also unconsciously alludes to the movements of Chopin’s compositions. Like the carefully selected and struck keys that Chopin utilized to attain his fame as a musician, the carefully selected areas of Warsaw become the spaces that map the nation with the legend of Chopin within and across the boundaries of Warsaw’s history. In combining the legendary persona of Chopin with the surrounding environment, the traveler embeds Chopin into the recreation of life in nineteenth century Warsaw. As the tourist travels from one place to another they are thus invited to create a metaphysical connection between their present standing and that of the city two-hundred years ago; they are asked to anachronistically fill the shoes of Chopin, thus symbolically linking the past with the present mediated by physical objects placed on the city’s landscape only ten years ago.117 Not to mention, the very act of sitting on the bench acts as solace from the surrounding cityscape. Again, a symbolic link is created, one in which you can enjoy the leisure of a public bench, while also learning and discovering the history of Warsaw through the mediated lens of

117 In this sense, the benches are reminiscent of the Passion route in Jerusalem, in which tourists are invited to walk the same steps as Jesus on his way to being crucified. The fetishization of Chopin by Warsaw insinuates Chopin as the messianic hero of the Polish nation, who like Jesus, lived and breathed in the name of a higher calling.

48 its favorite musical son. Chopin has been decontextualized into a series of place markers on a map, which although may be limited in its ability to recall his actual lived experience, it nonetheless affords the tourist the ability to research Chopin’s life in Warsaw.

In addition to the small map, each bench contains a short textual explanation, inscribed in

English and Polish, that details the relationship of Chopin to the physical landmark nearby. The inclusion of the English language posits that the audience for the benches is bound to be someone that is non-Polish; the details of Chopin’s life have been re-appropriated for the service of Warsaw’s cultural-tourist industry.118 The aesthetic makeup of the text is affected by the materiality of the bench itself. The polished surface acts as a makeshift mirror, in which a distorted reflection of the viewer contrasts with the carefully chiseled and compartmentalized texts. These contrasting states of appearance force the viewer to closely scrutinize the surface of the bench to accurately study the text, and thus mediates their experience with the bench and surrounding city. Like the map, the bench’s inscription insinuates a knowledge to be received by the viewer; the text they are provided acts as the authoritative word on the relationship between

Chopin and place, thus severing the viewer’s ability to think about the relationship themselves.119

The metaphoric associations of movement created through the signifying elements of the bench (the bench acts as a reprieve from the physical exertion of walking throughout the city’s landscape), map (coordinating movement from one place to the next), text (the passerby’s eyes scan the text), and in some instances the lips reverberate the text aloud is further accentuated by the inclusion of a short audio passage of one of Chopin’s compositions. Each of the strategically

118 I find this to be a fascinating detail. Where Chopin’s music is the tool that supersedes the limitations of language barriers, it is language that becomes the crucial element of digesting Chopin. In a sense, language becomes the space of generic nationalism in this particular usage of Chopin. 119 James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (West Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). Young’s invaluable commentary on how monuments are not simply markers of past events but are active participants in framing how communities understand the history(ies) of specific events is remarkably relevant to monuments and memorials constructed in the memory of Chopin.

49 situated benches, in continuity with their textual accompaniment, includes a relevant piece for the viewer to listen to as they spend some leisure time on/near the bench.

The textual description and corresponding composition of the bench in front of the Holy

Cross Church is marked by the propagandistic language and sounds of nationalism. As the text reads, “An urn holding Chopin’s heart lies buried in this church. He died in Paris and since the

Tsarist authorities refused permission for his burial in Poland, he asked for at least his heart to be sent home...It lies in a pillar...inscribed with a quotation from the Gospel according to Saint

Matthew, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’”120 (Fig. 10) The text almost immediately conjures up the Tsarist oppression of Poles during the latter half of the nineteenth century, especially after the failure of the January Uprising of 1863, in which almost all instances of Polish rights were taken away by their external captors.121 The text, furthermore, identifies the common enemy of the Poles seeking national independence, while implying that Chopin, the uncompromising patriot, wanted nothing more than for his body to be physically located on the sacred terrain of his native Poland.122 By including the quote from Saint Matthew who was viciously martyred for his religious beliefs, Chopin is cultivated as a martyr of the Polish nation.

As has been noted earlier, however, Chopin was not the straightforward patriot that he has been made out to be.123 The very fact that the Church encased Chopin’s heart in such an opulently- designed shrine is reminiscent of relics of Christian saints that were often the sites of hordes of

120 This particular example marks the intervention of sacred devotional practices with Chopin’s secular mythology. His heart is treated as a relic of the Polish nation and is placed in an elaborate reliquary within the Church. I want to thank Dr. Gustav Medicus for bringing this point to my attention. 121 Halina Goldberg, “Nationalizing the Kujawiak and Constructions of Nostalgia in Chopin’s Mazurkas,” 19th- Century Music, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Spring, 2016): 233. 122 Alex Ross, “Chopin’s Heart,” Culture Desk, The New Yorker, February 5, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/chopins-heart. 123 See Chapters 2 and 3 of this report.

50

pilgrims predominant throughout the 10th through 13th centuries in Europe.124 This fetishizing of his physical remains, especially heightened by the symbolic weight of the heart as an emblem of life-giving power, as well as the English-language metaphor—home is where the heart it is— further naturalizes the narrative of Chopin as the consummate example of a Polish nationalist. In connecting the ritualistic function of the Church with the aforementioned attention to movement, the selection of Chopin’s “Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35,” otherwise known as the

“Funeral March,” becomes considerably significant.125

The composition is marked by slowly calculated notes of expressive melancholy. The listener can feel a sense of a slow, meticulous, and brooding hint of defeat and unnerving despair. With this in mind, the notational progression of the piece acts as a metaphoric procession of the nation—emblemized as Chopin’s heart—as once being denied its ordained right to settle and cultivate its historic terrain. Through the indissoluble will power, ceaseless resourcefulness, and luck of the Polish people, his heart, like the state of Poland, has been returned to its rightful place and can now live its true creed and destiny unencumbered by the aggressions of external forces. This sense of symbolic return is further equated by the story of how the heart reached its final resting place.

As the story goes, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, Chopin’s eldest sister, was in attendance at the time of his death and heard his request that his heart be returned to Poland.126 One can imagine the symbolic force of such a declaration: upon the grave realization that death was imminent, the

124 As they have come to be known, the Romanesque and Gothic periods witnessed the erection of monumental Christian structures to stand the influx of pilgrims traveling to holy places such as Santiago de Compostela in Spain, to venerate saints relics, with the hope being that their supposedly miracle-providing powers would aid the pilgrims in their journey of life. 125 Fryderyk Chopin, Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35, “Funeral March”: III. Performed by Leif Ove Andsnes (Paris: Erato Records, 2000). 126 Ross, ibid.

51 composer could only be spiritually solaced if his wish to be “back” on Polish soil was answered;

Poland and Chopin become inseparable in life and in death.

The inextricable connection of Chopin and Polish soil has been normalized further by the name change in the Warsaw-Okęcie Airport in 2001. The airport was established in 1934 and named after the neighborhood in Warsaw. After being used as a battleground between German and Polish military forces during World War II, it was rebuilt in 1945. The successive adjustments to the airport’s infrastructure and operational systems did not halt the continuity of the namesake of the airport. This changed, however, in 2001. As the airport’s website claims,

“The airport was known as Warsaw-Okęcie until it was renamed in 2001 as a tribute for Polish composer Frédéric Chopin.”127 The seemingly arbitrary name-change begs the question, why was it done in the first place? Perhaps, the increasing prominence of the airport and its ability to cater to a variety of international destinations was seen as reminiscent of Chopin’s migration from Poland to Vienna, Paris, and London. Thus, the idea of bodily movement, whether by natural or mechanical means, was something that could be used as justification for the name change. In another vein, the near continuous schedule of travel requires a consistent cycle of carefully protracted movement.

Again, the movements of Chopin’s compositions become a symbolic tool that can be insinuated into the successful functioning of the various mechanisms of the airport. The prominence of the airport serving as the point of arrival and departure for millions of people makes an association with the image of Chopin a strategic decision. In other words, by

127 “History,” Warsaw Chopin Airport, accessed on December 3, 2019, https://www.warsaw-airport.com/.

52 establishing the name of the airport with the famous composer, Chopin and Poland become indistinguishable partners in articulating a visitor’s arrival and departure in Poland.

The seemingly unrelated link of Chopin and aviation would be transported to the pageantry of world football in 2012. EURO2012, a UEFA-sponsored football tournament featuring the top national teams of Europe, was held in Poland and Ukraine in 2012. It was a groundbreaking tournament for being the first to be staged in Central and Eastern Europe.128

Designed by the Italian Marco Balich, the opening ceremony held in Warsaw (Fig. 5) was a grand spectacle of epic proportions in that it featured no less than 800 volunteer performers from as many as 63 countries worldwide.129 The staggering amount of participants from a diverse array of national-associations reveals that the all-encompassing statutes that defined Chopin’s nationalism in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Europe was cast aside for a much more liberal definition of national-inclusiveness. At the opening the ceremony two young adolescent boys, each clad in the colors of the Ukrainian and Polish flags, shake hands in an offering of peaceful alliance.130 Banners and dancers stream into the picture in a choreographed whirlwind of color, movement, and sound. As they strategically move from side to side, a gigantic makeshift soccer ball located in the center of the stage opens up to reveal a grand piano. The

Hungarian classical pianist Adam Gyorgy promptly situates himself at the piano and begins to play Chopin’s Etude in A-minor, Op. 25 No. 11. Although Chopin’s inclusion in the ceremony is still an unmistakable marker of Polish heritage, that the pianist performing the piece (as well as the performers) are not of Polish origins speaks to Chopin’s ability to be utilized as national and

128 “UEFA EURO 2012 opening ceremony details unveiled,” UEFA, last modified February 13, 2017, https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/news/newsid=1803114.html . 129 Dominic Niziol, “Opening Ceremony Of The EURO 2012 [1080] [Full HD],” filmed June 8, 2012, YouTube video, uploaded June 9, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2UEOzfMW4c . 130 This act of sportsmanship, represented by the youth of a given nation, is a prevalent piece of European football matches.

53 international currency. In other words, Poland is decontextualizing Chopin on a genericized stage that represents Poland’s global appeal in Europe of the twenty-first century. As he plays the famous composition, the pageant continues to revel in its display of carefully articulated spectacle. The camera pans over the crowd, who have devised themselves to appear as the national flags of various European countries, with the culminating shot revealing the word

“RESPECT” in bold-white letters.131 Thus, the music of Chopin is placed at the center stage of this display of international unity; in this moment he becomes the universalizing component that symbolically connects the nations together. Chopin is of prominence not only in the world of sports, but in the world of spirits as well.132

Centered in Krzesk, a village located in eastern Poland, is Chopin Vodka. (Fig. 6) The family-owned company operates a distillery that concocts the most awarded Potato vodka in the world, in addition to options of Rye and Wheat.133 The business prides itself in its ability to create a unique set of vodkas through its partnership with local sources, by the minimal use of ingredients, and being marketed as the first luxury vodka in 1992. In the “Meet the Makers” section on their website, the company chose to showcase their longstanding relationship with the landscape of Krzesk. For example, they highlight Marek Wierzejski, a potato farmer, whose crops they have been reliant on for over 30 years. Additionally, they market Janusz Lugowski, a rye farmer, who has been cultivating the soil for generations. And lastly, they spotlight Henryk

Grochowski, a wheat farmer, whose family has lived in Krzesk for the vast majority of the last century.134 The inclusion of these evidently indispensable local sources is an attempt by Chopin

131 Similar to the show of sportsmanship, UEFA has focused on an anti-racism campaign aimed at curtailing instances of racially inspired violence and heckling during matches. 132 Chopin’s universality further validates the themes discussed earlier by Sikorski. 133 “Home Page,” Chopin Vodka, accessed May 1, 2020, https://chopinvodka.com/. 134 “Meet the Makers,” Chopin Vodka, accessed May 1, 2020, https://chopinvodka.com/meet-the-makers/.

54

Vodka to market the importance of the Polish landscape as an inherently vital aspect of their vodka making. In other words, to make the vodka anywhere else but in Krzesk, would destroy the very essence of their vodka. This is not to say that they should abandon a family-owned and operated company for a corporate model, but rather, that the aura surrounding the company is largely drawn from the localizing narrative they bolster throughout their ads; it as if they are beckoning the consumer with the idea of an “authentic local,” one whose intimate ties (and history) with their surroundings places them on an imagined pedestal which produces a sort of

“trust” necessary for the customer to purchase the vodka.135 With this in mind, soliciting the symbolic associations of Chopin vis-a-vis Poland makes sense.

Their product description remarks about the namesake of their brand, “Chopin Vodka has mastered the art of vodka. Just as its namesake captured the soul of Poland in music that resonates across oceans and generations Chopin Vodka has composed a singular Polish spirit that has changed the way the world thinks about, and drinks, vodka.”136 Chopin is, in concurrence with the majority of posthumous adulations, likened to the spirit of Poland. Chopin’s legendary persona as an intimate Polish nationalist is the space of genericization for Chopin Vodka; his sanctified position as an icon of Polish national heritage becomes the symbolic marketing tool that enables them to sell more product. Additionally, like the vast displacement of Poles since the nineteenth century, the vodka has been exported abroad and come into contact with thousands of persons; Chopin becomes an icon the that represents the Polish diaspora.

135 This phenomenon is not restricted to Chopin Vodka alone. However, for the intents and purposes of this project utilizing Chopin’s associations with the Polish folk, as his biographies have alluded to, is an important piece of the mythos of Chopin’s nationalist impulses. 136 “Chopin Vodka,” Slocum & Sons, accessed May 1, 2020, https://slocumandsons.com/spirits/item/22/chopin- vodka.

55

It is also worthy to discuss the carefully selected vocabulary that Chopin Vodka use around their product and its namesake. The company keys in on how Chopin, informed by his

Polishness, was able to spread his craft across space and time. Again, Chopin is referred to as the symbolic continuity for Poland to show itself to the rest of the world. They use this Chopinic trope as the thematic basis for their vodka. In other words, the profound importance that

Chopin’s musical universality has afforded to the visibility of the Polish nation is the means by which the company hopes to sell their product. His namesake once re-appropriated in a Polish brand of vodka is thus telling for it indicates the company (perhaps unknowingly) is buying into the mythos of the essentialized identity of Chopin as the soul of the nation. Chopin has been exalted to the “life of the party,” he becomes that seemingly otherworldly individual who raves with an unabashed sense of confident individuality that everyone wishes to have, and through the intoxicating effects of the alcohol, is the sole remembrance of a night well-enjoyed. It is telling that the company chose the namesake of Chopin, when he himself, as far as we know, did not particularly partake in the consumption of alcohol. Thus, the name seems to be an arbitrary selection based on successive instances of half-truths about the composer that have been handed down and become naturalized elements of representing Chopin within the lens of the Polish nation. The uses of Chopin are not relegated to the political world but extend into the world of material consumerism as well.

The Chopin Watches brand was established in 2019. The brand’s CEO Michal Dunin has had previous experiences with watches-as-commodity, resuscitating the historic Polish Blonie watch company in 2012. His partner Maciej Maslask was also involved in the Blonie deal.137

Arguably, their aim was to fuse the timelessness of Chopin’s music with the grace and elegance

137 “About Us”, Blonie Watches, accessed May 2, 2020, https://zegarkiblonie.com/en/o-nas/.

56 of a luxury watch. The ambitiousness of attempting to produce a physical conceptualization of the inherently fleeting character of performed music (although Chopin’s compositions can be physically recorded, once played, each successive note becomes an instance of the past and is thus unable to actually be reproduced), not to mention which piece(s) they would use to embody the legacy of Chopin, resulted in the partners requesting to form a partnership with the Fryderyk

Chopin Institute (NIFC) in Warsaw.138 The NIFC was approved by an act of the Polish

Parliament in 2001 and is the only state-sanctioned institution whose aim is ensuring that the image and namesake of Chopin are not misappropriated into realms that they deem inimical to his legacy.139 Through the official auspices of the NIFC, Chopin is decontextualized into a state- sanctioned body that acts as the symbolic seal of approval for the production of the watch. This is important, not due to the fact that the NIFC has such an authority as to claim to own the public image of Chopin, nor to the fact that Chopin preferred to be dressed in the elegant fashions of his day, but rather in their selection of the theme of their first watch: the “Opus 10 No. 12,” or “The

Revolutionary.” The decision to place such a politically charged musical piece as the main impetus for the watch means that Chopin becomes an emblem that communicates a sort of Polish pride.

The score of the “Revolutionary” was inspired by the personal and political atmosphere

Chopin found himself in late 1831. In Stuttgart at the time, Chopin learned about the failure of the November Uprising. In a letter written after September 8, 1831, he revealed his disdain for the futile rebellion, “The suburbs are stormed—burnt down. Hast [God] not seen enough of these

138 NIFC stands for Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina in Polish. 139 “About Us,” The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, accessed May 2, 2020, https://en.chopin.nifc.pl/institute/organization/about. AND Rebecca Doulton, “Introducing Chopin Op. 10 No. 12 Timepiece and the Launch of a New Polish Brand (Live Pics),” Monochrome, April 26, 2019, https://monochrome- watches.com/chopin-op-10-no-12-timepiece-and-the-launch-of-a-new-polish-brand-live-pics/.

57

Muscovite crimes—or—or [is God Himself] a Muscovite? They have burnt down the town! Oh, why could I not slay even a single Muscovite!”140 Chopin was in a delirious state of unnerving distress, for at the young age of 21, and having only recently departed the place he called home for the first twenty years of his life, he had to envisage the possibility that he may never return home. Only a couple of months later, while in Paris, he wrote a letter on December 12 that reveals he was still reeling over the failed Uprising, “What changes, what miseries—who could have ever foreseen them!”141 The letters, when taken together and placed alongside the date of his Op. 10, have provided the fabled backdrop for the sobriquet of “Revolutionary Étude” to accumulate.142 Thus, the symbolic importance of creating such a politically-charged composition, one directly inspired by the chain of emotions manifested by the Russian takeover of Warsaw, imbues the watch with that much more importance.

In an article for Monochrome, senior-writer Rebecca Doulton makes the claim,

“Speaking to Michal Dunin [CEO of Chopin Watches] just ahead of the launch, he explained that the Institute helped them select the most fitting work for their project suggesting the watch be developed around the Étude in C Minor Opus 10, No.12, also known as the Revolutionary

Étude.”143 The website’s description of the Étude does not hesitate to repeat the patriotic narrative surrounding the inspiration for the composition,

He symbolizes patriotism, a theme greatly captured by his music. Chopin’s love for his homeland is most perceptible in one of his greatest works – Étude in C minor Op. 10 No. 12, otherwise known as the "Revolutionary Étude". Chopin composed the work in 1831 after learning of the capture of Warsaw and the demise of the November Uprising in

140 Fryderyk Chopin, “Stuttgart. After 8 September 1831,” in Selected Correspondences of Fryderyk Chopin, ed. and trans. by Arthur Hedley (London: Heinemann, 1962), 90. 141 Ibid, 97. 142 G.C. Ashton Jonson, A Handbook to Chopin’s Works: Giving a Detailed Account of All the Compositions of Chopin, Short Analyses for the Piano Student, and Critical Quotations from the Writings of Well-Known Musical Authors, 2nd ed. (London: William Reeves, 1908), 93. This sentiment is also shared by Karasowski (223), Niecks (citing Karasowski, 252), and Huneker (139-140). 143 Doulton.

58

Poland. Young Frederic hoped to join his friends and take part in the Uprising, but his family and poor health prevented him from doing so.144

The decision of the Institute to select a piece with such strong ties to nationalism indicates that the watch is not intended to communicate the message of Chopin as a globalizing superstar that unites cultures together by the poetic revelations of his piano playing, but rather, harkens back to the pre-independence narrative of Chopin as the prophetic soul of the exiled Polish nation reeling to find an image of national solidarity under the insidious barbarity of the Holy Alliance.145 This becomes more apparent when taking a closer look at the specially-featured aspects of the watch itself.

The watch makes no mistake in identifying whom this timepiece is associated with as

Chopin’s signature is emblazoned on a plaque just underneath the 12-hour mark. (Fig. 7) In addition to 12, the 10-hour mark is the only other numeral represented—a direct reference to the composition for which this watch was named. The power reserve supply indicator is appropriately crafted in the shape of a keyboard. The indicator acts as a measure of the 96-hour power reserve, apparently a subtle reference to the 96th anniversary of Chopin’s death when his heart was buried in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw. His heart is referenced once more with the inclusion of a red carnelian stone that appears to extend out of the circular wheel just above the 6-hour mark. The seemingly insignificant stone beautifies the watch while making a subtle reference to the importance of placing his heart within his homeland as he was denied burial by the Tsarist authorities controlling Poland at the time.146 As mentioned earlier, the clasp of their control was further tightened after the failure of the November Uprising in 1830. Thus,

144 “About Chopin,” Chopin Watches, accessed May 2, 2020, https://chopinwatches.com/about-chopin/. 145 In this instance, pre-independent refers to the treatment of Chopin’s patriotism from the failed November Uprising (1830-1831) all the way up to the reestablishment of the Polish state (1918). 146 See pages 4 and 5 of this chapter for additional information regarding Chopin’s heart.

59 the small-hands counter, not only reiterates the name of the watch, but also makes reference to the year in which Chopin was anxiously inspired to write the piece, 1831. The caseback is also filled with references to the composer.

The watchmakers spared no expense adding another symbolic element related to the failed Uprising as they took the liberty to engrave excerpts from Chopin’s diary from around the time of the event interspersed between various elements of the caseback. (Fig. 8) The cursive script is impeded by the mechanical fittings designed to make the watch function, and thus cannot be read coherently; Chopin has been reduced to an illegible inscription that communicates more about precision craftsmanship than serving as a symbol of Chopin’s dismay at the events that transpired. They make a brief excursion from the overarchingly patriotic tone of the watch by engraving another quote from Chopin on one of the barrels. In English it reads, “Time is the best censor, and patience the most perfect teachers.”147 This can be read as a metaphor of the benefits of taking one’s time to perfect a specific craft; Chopin’s profound ability to trust in the results of his creative process are a testament to why his music remains so popular even over 200 years after his death. This is also understood as the watchmaker’s attempt to construct a creative link between themselves and Chopin; by finding a quote from the watch’s namesake that was relevant to their product, they could justify the usage of his image and the sale of the watches as a symbolic continuity of individuals expressing themselves through their creative endeavors. The quote is echoed in a spiral, another symbolic reference that Chopin’s legacy (and this watch) will stand the test of time. It is also worthy of consideration that the quote is in the English language.

Some may argue that this was a deliberate attempt made by the company to disclose their intended consumer—a devout Chopin fan that recognizes the importance of Chopin’s Polishness

147 Hedley, 270. This quote is taken from Chopin’s letter to his family in Warsaw dated October 11. 1846.

60 but can comprehend his universal appeal. The inclusion of these small details blurs the boundaries between Chopin the Polish nationalist and Chopin the universalizing pianist, and thus allows the watch’s appeal to expand. They also make reference to Chopin’s physical life. They include seven dates on the caseback of the watch—1810, 1816, 1818, 1831, 1838, 1848, and

1849—during his life.148 These aspects all help contribute to the watch’s retail price of over 12,

500 Euros (about $13,700 United States dollars).

Generic nationalism is represented by the creation of the figure—the “Watches

Chopin”—which has reduced Chopin to a “Swiss Made” luxury object that is priced at over

$10,000, and yet actively associates itself with the spirit of Poland. This is further bolstered by the usage of superficial symbols associated with Chopin communicated through meticulously crafted mechanisms (the keyboard power reserve, the illegible inscription, etc.). Quality, communicated through carefully selected symbolism, becomes the conduit for the consumer to interact with Chopin. His image has become so saturated with patriotic value that he can be inserted as a recognizable image to be utilized for whatever purpose necessary. I can understand how they could envisage this as being an intelligent decision: what better way to celebrate our national legacy than to create an exclusively designed, richly hand-crafted, and unique object; after all, aren’t those some of the most salient ways to describe Chopin’s individuality? For me, it really states that the company was aiming for a prominent face to bolster the sale of their product and were professionally successful. That the Institute sanctioned this opportunity says less about them actually subscribing to their mission statement, and more about how the

148 While attempting to unearth the importance of these dates in regards to Chopin, I made the following conclusions: 1810 references Chopin’s birth; 1816 signals his first piano lessons; by 1818 he was being touted as a genius of the pianoforte, as well as being noted for his compositions; in 1831 Chopin arrives in Paris; 1838 alluded to the establishment of his relationship with the author George Sand and their trip to Majorca; 1848 signals Chopin’s final concerts in Paris, Manchester, and Glasgow; 1849 signals Chopin’s death. Other than 1831, I do not understand exactly why they chose to highlight these years, especially if this watch is supposed to be an homage to Chopin’s patriotism.

61 company was required to consult them for access to the name and image of Chopin. This is not to say, however, that the watch taints the legacy of Chopin. In fact, that the watch is most likely designed cater to a very particular niche market indicates something different. In other words, that an owner of the watch may strike up a conversation about Chopin because of the appeal of their product, enables Chopin to be filtered through another context. Again, this reflects the malleability of the image of Chopin. His persona contains the ability to be broadened to the marketing tool of an entire company of luxury watches while simultaneously becoming the filter that mediates a conversation between two Chopin enthusiasts. Through the combined pursuits of both parties, Chopin has been posthumously absorbed into the spirit of late-market capitalism of the twenty-first century.

62

CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

In an effort to provide insight into the varying uses of Fryderyk Chopin through the concept of generic nationalism. I have revealed his malleability and dissolvability in a variety of forms, mediums, and manifestations. In nearly all of my examples, Chopin has been utilized to fit within the context of nationalist projects instigated by Polish sources. He has been persistently utilized as the national currency of the Polish nation in ways that he could not have imagined in his lifetime.

Chapter 2 provided the historical backdrop that made visible how Poland’s complex political and social history served as fertile grounds for Chopin to be absorbed into a mythologized space of the soul of the Polish nation. From the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw into the Russian-controlled Congress Kingdom, Poland’s national independence was in a precarious state that verged on being absolved all together. Following the failure of the November Uprising, national survival became of paramount importance to the Polish intelligentsia working in Paris.

That Chopin found himself among them has proved to be an invaluable context that was utilized to further bolster his devout Polishness. In the same vein, the lack of definitive statements given by the composer that have survived since Chopin’s lifetime was the narrative basis for the successive chapter of this project.

Chapter 3 dealt with the loaded biographies of figures such as Liszt, Tarnowski,

Karasowski, Szulc, and Huneker that were uncritically accepted and assisted in the process of the proliferation of the narrative of Chopin as a devout Polish nationalist always producing in the name of his love for Poland. Attempts to appeal to the universality of Chopin made by Sikorski and Niecks were of secondary importance when reviewing how the symbolic importance of

63

Chopin’s biography was the impetus for the manipulation of a forged genealogy taken up by

Zieliński and the Nazis’. And as the creation, destruction, and revival of Szymanowski’s Chopin

Monument has revealed, the persona of Chopin is still situated within a largely Polish national context.

Chapter 4 was concerned with providing an examination of a distinctly Polish form of expression—the polonaise—to highlight the varying ways in which Chopin’s forays into the genre could be re-appropriated to fit within a specifically Polish nationalist lens. Kwiatkowski’s painting visualized Chopin’s polonaise as a representation of national survival, while

Mickiewicz’s poetry established the source work for which the polonaise became inseparable from articulating Polish national identity. Efforts made by the musical analyses of Niecks,

Huneker, Anderton, Perry, and Bakst introduced additional legends that further strengthened the narrative strains of the omnipresence of Poland vis-à-vis Chopin’s musical productions. In the case of American cinema, Chopin’s polonaise are not restricted to a Polish context alone, but can be redistributed to bolster the patriotic fervor of a nation embroiled in war, as well as being the inspiration for an animated short.

Chapter 5 maintains that Chopin has been vastly decontextualized into a host of new and entertaining guises in a twenty-first century context. The Chopin Benches have aided in the expanded role of technology in the twenty-first century to sprinkle a piece of Chopin throughout the city of Warsaw that acts as a symbolic pilgrimage of the composer in his beloved homeland.

Chopin’s name has even been affixed to the busiest airport in all of Poland. The circuitous traffic of millions of persons entering-and-departing Poland seems to indicate that Chopin and Poland have become inseparable from one another. Chopin was further appropriated for an international audience by his central role in the opening ceremony of the EURO2012 football tournament in

64

Warsaw that saw Poland communicating their cultural heritage to a globally telecast audience of millions of people. His insertion into Polish commercial culture by way of Chopin Watches and

Chopin Vodka have revealed that the contemporary Chopin is still a sanctified emblem of Polish national identity.

Although my project has been concerned with detailing how Chopin has been largely genericized within the contexts of Polish nationalist discourse, I hope to have revealed that there is no definitive Chopin. He is not a product to be flagrantly disposed of in the hopes of profiteering politically, materially, nor financially. Chopin is whatever you wish to make of him.

He is a musician, patriot, recital, airport, vodka, watch, Pole, and so forth. In my opinion, the essence of Chopin lies in his very ability to be exercised into an amalgam of different forms. He encompasses the ability to be shared as the iconic essence of a public concert; he can be the material remnants of alcoholic consumption; he can be the talking point for your new luxury watch—the situations become an imaginative exercise that allows you to become the creator of the newest articulation of Chopin. Thus, I hope that the exploration into Chopin has served as an instrument through which to engage with other entities that have been treated in a similar way.

Evidenced by Chopin, it is necessary to explore the complex and interweaving constructions of nationalist discourse and how they interact within and around the spaces of our everyday lives.

65

Figures

FIGURE 1. Wacław Szymanowski, Chopin Monument, original design in 1905, first cast in 1926, destroyed in 1940, rebuilt in 1946, recast in 1958, Bronze, Royal Baths Park, Warsaw, Poland. By Cezary Piwowarski - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10074320.

66

FIGURE 2. Unknown Photographer, “Destruction of Szymanowski’s Chopin Monument by Nazi Forces, 1940, Public Domain.

67

FIGURE 3. Adrian Grycuk, “Annual Chopin summer piano concerts at Royal Baths Park, 2014, photograph. By Adrian Grycuk / CC BY-SA 3.0 PL (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/pl/deed.en).

68

FIGURE 4. Teofil Kwiatkowski, Chopin’s Polonaise—Ball at the Hôtel Lambert, 1859, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 61.5cm x 125.7cm, National Museum in Poznan. Public Domain.

69

FIGURE 5. Unknown Artist. “Opening Ceremony of EURO2012 in Warsaw,” 2012, photograph.

70

FIGURE 6. Unknown Artist, “A Bottle of Chopin Vodka” Date unknown, glass, Image used with permission from Liquor.com

71

FIGURE 7. Chopin Watches Brand, “The Opus 10 No. 12: “The Revolutionary” Timepiece,” 2019, Stainless steel, Warsaw, Poland. Image used with permission from Monochrome.com

72

FIGURE 8. Chopin Watches Brand, “The Opus 10 No. 12: “The Revolutionary” Timepiece” Backplate, 2019, Stainless steel, Warsaw, Poland. Image used with permission from Monochrome.com

73

FIGURE 9. Designed by Professor Jerzy Porębski, Chopin Bench, 2010, Black granite, Located throughout Warsaw, Poland. Public Domain.

74

FIGURE 10. Jonathan Gonzalez, “The “Chopin Route” Map on a Chopin Bench”, 2019, Photograph taken with iPhone. Warsaw, Poland.

75

FIGURE 11. Jonathan Gonzalez, “Inscription on Chopin Bench Located at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw,” 2019, Photograph taken with iPhone. Warsaw, Poland.

76

FIGURE 12. “Film Still from A Song to Remember,” 2020 (original 1945), Screenshot taken by the author.

77

FIGURE 13. “Still from Musical Moments from Chopin,” 2020 (original 1946), Screenshot taken by the author.

78

Bibliography

Albán Juárez, Marita and Ewa Stawińska-Dahling. Chopin’s Poland: A Guidebook to Places

Associated with the Composer. Warsaw: Narodowy Instytyt Fryderyka Chopina, 2008.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Anderton, Margaret. “The Spirit of the Polonaise (1917).” Polish Music Center. Accessed May

14, 2020. https://polishmusic.usc.edu/research/publications/polish-music-

journal/vol5no2/polonaise-spirit/#%5B10.

A Song to Remember. DVD. 1945. Directed by Charles Vidor. Minneapolis, MN: Mill Creek

Entertainment, 2015.

Atwood, William G. The Parisian Worlds of Frédéric Chopin. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1999.

Azoury, Pierre. Chopin Through His Contemporaries: Friends, Lovers, and Rivals. Westport:

Greenwood University Press, 1999.

Bakst, James. “Polish National Influences in Chopin’s Music.” The Polish Review, Vol. 7, No. 4

(Autumn, 1962), 55-68.

Bhaba, Homi. The Location of Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 1994.

Blonie Watches. “About Us.” Accessed May 2, 2020. https://zegarkiblonie.com/en/o-nas/.

Chechlińska, Zofia. “Chopin’s Reception as Reflected in Nineteenth-Century Polish Periodicals:

General Remarks.” In The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries. Edited by Halina

Goldberg, 237-248. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004.

79

Chopin, Fryderyk. Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35, “Funeral March”: III.

Performed by Leif Ove Andsnes. Paris: Erato Records, 2000.

———, Polonaise No. 3 in A Major, Op. 40 No, 1, “Military”. Performed by Idil Biret. Honk

Kong: Naxos, 2009. Compact Disc.

———, Polonaise No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 40 No. 2. Performed by Idil Biret. Hong Kong: Naxos,

2009. Compact Disc.

———, Polonaise No. 6, Op. 53 in A-flat (“Heroic”). Performed by Arthur Rubinstein. New

York: Sony Classical Musical Music, 2001. Compact Disc.

———. Selected Correspondences of Fryderyk Chopin. Edited by Arthur Hedley. Translated by

Arthur Hedley. London: Heinemann, 1962.

Chopin Vodka. “Home Page.” Accessed May 1, 2020. https://chopinvodka.com/.

———. “Meet the Makers.” Accessed May 1, 2020. https://chopinvodka.com/meet-the-makers/

Chopin Watches. “About Chopin.” Accessed May 2, 2020. https://chopinwatches.com/about-

chopin/.

Davies, Norman. God’s Playground: A History of Poland in Two Volumes. 2 vols. New York:

Columbia University Press, 1982.

Doulton, Rebecca. “Introducing Chopin Op. 10 No. 12 Timepiece and the Launch of a New

Polish Brand (Live Pics).” Monochrome, April 26, 2019. https://monochrome-

watches.com/chopin-op-10-no-12-timepiece-and-the-launch-of-a-new-polish-brand-live-

pics/.

Eley, Geoff and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds. Becoming National: A Reader. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1996.

80

Goldberg, Halina. “Chopin’s Oneiric Soundscapes and the Role of Dreams in Romantic

Culture.” In Chopin and His World. Edited by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina

Goldberg, 15-44. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

———, “Descriptive Instrumental Music in Nineteenth-Century Poland: Context, Genre, and

Performance.” Journal of Musicological Research, 34:3 (Summer, 2015), 224-248.

———. “Nationalizing the Kujawiak and Constructions of Nostalgia in Chopin’s Mazurkas.”

19th-Century Music, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Spring, 2016): 223-247.

Goldberg, Halina and Bellman, Jonathan D. “Introduction.” In Chopin and His World. Edited by

Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg, 1-14. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

2017.

Huneker, James. Chopin: The Man and His Music. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908.

Jonson, Ashton G.C. A Handbook to Chopin’s Works: Giving a Detailed Account of All the

Compositions of Chopin, Short Analyses for the Piano Student, and Critical Quotations

from the Writings of Well-Known Musical Authors. 2nd Edition. London: William Reeves,

1908.

Kallberg, Jeffrey. Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1996.

———. “Hearing Poland: Chopin and Nationalism.” In Nineteenth-Century Piano Music. 2nd

ed. Edited by R. Larry Todd. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Kenig, Józef . “Z powodu wydania pośmiertnych dziel Chopina.” Translated by Zofia

Chechlińska. Gazeta warzawska, no. 121 (1856).

Kramer, Lloyd S. Threshold of a New World: Intellectuals and the Exile Experience in Paris,

1830-1848. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

81

Kwon, Miwon. One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Location Identity. Cambridge:

MIT Press, 2004.

Liszt, Franz. Liszt’s Chopin: A New Edition. Edited by Meiron Hughes. Translated by Meiron

Hughes. New York: Manchester University Press, 2010.

Mach, Zdzislaw. “National Anthems: The Case of Chopin as a National Composer.” In Ethnicity,

Identity, and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. Edited by Martin Stokes.

Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994.

Mckee, Eric. “Dance and the Music of Chopin: The Polonaise.” In Chopin and His World.

Edited by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg, 187-230. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2017.

Milewski, Barbara. “Chopin’s Mazurkas and the Myth of the Folk.” 19th-Century Music, Vol.

23, No. 2 (Autumn, 1999): 113-135.

Minh-Ha, Trinh T. Elsewhere Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism, and the Boundary Event.

Abingdon: 2010.

MultiVu. “Warsaw City Hall Brings Chopin to Life with Dedicated Tour and Navigated

Interactive Apps in Poland.” Accessed July 3, 2020.

https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8172551-warsaw-city-hall-chopin-tour-apps-

poland/.

Niecks, Frederick. Frederick Chopin: As a Man and Musician. Two vols. London: Novellow,

Ewer&Co., 1888.

Niewiadomski, Stanislaw. “Spelling Identity: Ch or Sz?” In After Chopin: Essays in Polish

Music. Edited by Maja Trochimczyk. Translated by Maja Trochimczyk and Anne Desler,

71-76. Los Angeles: Polish Music Center, 2000.

82

Niziol, Dominic. “Opening Ceremony Of The EURO 2012 [1080] [Full HD].” Filmed June 8,

2012. YouTube video, uploaded June 9, 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2UEOzfMW4c.

Norris, Geoffrey. “Chopin belongs to us, says Poland.” The Telegraph UK, Accessed December

3, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/7244031/Chopin-

belongs-to-us-says-Poland.html.

Noskowski, Zygmunt. “The Essence of Chopin’s Works.” In After Chopin: Essays in Polish

Music. Edited by Maja Trochimczyk. Translated by Maja Trochimczyk and Anne Desler,

23-46. Los Angeles: Polish Music Center, 2000.

Okón, Waldemar. “The Monument of Fryderyk Chopin by Wacław Szymanowski.” In The Age

of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, Edited by Halina Goldberg, 40-53. Indianapolis:

Indiana University Press, 2004.

Perry, Edward Baxter. “The Story of the Polonaise (1909) Polish Music Center. Accessed on

May 14, 2020. https://polishmusic.usc.edu/research/publications/polish-music-

journal/vol5no2/polonaise-story/.

Pekacz, Jolanta T. “Deconstructing a ‘National Composer’: Chopin and Polish Exiles in Paris,

1831-49.” 19th-Century Music, Vol. 24, No. 2, Special issue: Nineteenth-Century

Pianism (Autumn 2000): 161-172.

———. “The Nation’s Property: Chopin’s Biography as Cultural Discourse.” In Musical

Biography: Towards New Paradigms. Edited by Jolanta T. Pekacz, 43-68. New York:

Routledge, 2006.

83

Relax News. “In Poland, Chopin’s music defines a nation.” The Independent, accessed

December 3, 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/in-poland-chopins-music-

defines-a-nation-5526656.html.

Reuter. “Chopin Was a German, Nazis in Poland Decide.” New York Times, May 5, 1944.

Ross, Alex. “Chopin’s Heart.” Culture Desk. The New Yorker. February 5, 2014.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/chopins-heart.

Rossino, Alexander B. “The Ideological Dimensions of War with Poland.” In Hitler Strikes

Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity, 1-28. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,

2003.

Samson, Jim, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Chopin. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1992.

Schumann, Robert. On Music and Musicians. Edited by Konrad Wolff. Translated by Paul

Rosenfeld. New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1946.

Sikorski, Józef. “Recollection of Chopin.” In Chopin and His World. Edited by Jonathan D.

Bellman and Halina Goldberg, 45-84. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Slocum & Sons. “Chopin Vodka.” Accessed May 1, 2020.

https://slocumandsons.com/spirits/item/22/chopin-vodka.

Smialek, William and Maja Trochimczyk, eds. Frédéric Chopin: A Research and Information

Guide. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. New York: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1986.

Smith, Justin. “Musical Minatures – Musical Moments from Chopin (1946).” dailymotion. Last

modified 12 years ago. Accessed May 14, 2020.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ou9l.

84

Swartz, Anne. “Elsner, Chopin, and Musical Narrative as Symbols of a Nation.” The Polish

Review,Vol. 39, No. 4 (1994), 445-456.

Szulc, Marceli Antoni. Fryderyk Chopin Chopin i utwory jego muzyczne. Translated by Maja

Trochimczyk. Kraków: Polish Musical Publishing House, 1986.

Tarnowski, Stanislas. Chopin: As Revealed by Extracts from His Diary. Edited by J.T.

Tanqueray. Translated by Natalie Janotha. London: William Reeves, 1905.

The Fryderyk Chopin Institute. “About Us.” Accessed May 2, 2020.

https://en.chopin.nifc.pl/institute/organization/about.

Trochimczyk, Maja. “Chopin and the ‘Polish Race’: On National Ideologies and the Chopin

Reception.” In The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, Edited by Halina

Goldberg, 278-313. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004.

TWGrzegorz. “Sygnal Polskiego Radia 1939.” YouTube video, uploaded May 17, 2009.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWc1arLpqiU.

UEFA. “UEFA EURO 2012 opening ceremony details unveiled.” Last modified February 13,

2017. https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/news/newsid=1803114.html.

Walicki, Andrzej. Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1982.

Waters, Edward N. “Chopin by Liszt.” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 2 (April, 1961):

170-194.

Warsaw Chopin Airport. “History.” Accessed on December 3, 2019. https://www.warsaw-

airport.com/.

85

White, Harry and Michael Murphy, eds. Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the

History and Ideology of European Musical Culture 1800-1945. Cork: Cork University

Press, 2001.

Williams, Raymond. “Culture is Ordinary.” In Resources of Hope: Culture Democracy,

Socialism, 3-14. London: Verso, 1989.

Young, James E. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. West Haven:

Yale University Press, 1994.

Zieliński, Jaroslaw. “Poles in Music.” Polish Music Center. Accessed on June 1, 2020.

https://polishmusic.usc.edu/research/publications/polish-music-journal/vol5no2/poles-in-

music/#[53.