Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
James Huneker, the raconteur of the Musical Courier, discussing the compositions of Chopin, in his delightful and inspiring book, "Chopin, the Man and His Music," calls the studies Titanic experiments; the preludes, moods in miniature; the nocturnes, night and its melancholy mysteries; the ballades, faery dramas; the polonaises, heroic hymns of battle; the valses and mazurkas, dances of the soul; the scherzos, the work of Chopin the conqueror.
His letters reflect his mental agitation and terror over his parents' safety. A thousand times he thought of renouncing his artistic ambitions and rushing to Poland to fight for his country. He never did, and his indecision it was not cowardice is our gain. Chopin put his patriotism, his wrath and his heroism into his Polonaises.
Among the Polish composers of the second half of the last century and the beginning of the present whose polonaises enjoyed in their day, and partly enjoy still, a high reputation, are especially notable Kozlowski, Kamienski, Elsner, Deszczynski, Bracicki, Wanski, Prince Oginski, Kurpinski, and Dobrzynski.
Poles of high birth are called the Frenchmen of the north, and we saw fair men and women in sumptuous polonaises and long robes who appeared luxurious in their traveling carriages. But stillness and solitude brooded on the land. From Cracow to Warsaw wide reaches of forest darkened the level. Any open circle was belted around the horizon with woods, pines, firs, beech, birch, and small oaks.
His works, concertos, waltzes, sonatas, ballades, polonaises, mazurkas, nocturnes, scherzi, all reflect a similar enigma in a most poetical and romantic form."
The concertos and polonaises being put aside, no one lends himself worse to youthful instruction than Chopin. Because his delicate touches inevitably seem perverse to the youthful mind, he has gained the name of a morbid genius.
All the poetry contained in the Polonaises had, like a rich sap, been so fully expressed from them by the genius of Weber, they had been handled with a mastery so absolute, that it was, indeed, a dangerous and difficult thing to attempt them, with the slightest hope of producing the same effect.
Good, I'm so glad: Bernard can hardly ever stand it. See the first fruits of your bracing influence! Oh, the Polonaises . . ." And then he in his turn began to play, but not the melancholy fiery lyrics that had soothed Laura's unsatisfied heart. Val, a thorough musician, went for sympathy to the classics. Impulsive?
"It's a good thing you brought your daughter to a woman member to have her education finished. Goodness me!" "Dearest Papa," said Billie, kissing him, "don't you wear negligée shirts most all the time? It's the same thing." "I thought all ladies wore polonaises," insisted Mr. Campbell. "It certainly was the fashion in my youth, at any rate."
At the same time he made sarabandes, gavottes, minuets, chaconnes, passepieds, gigues, polonaises and rondos dance across the piano in quick succession; and his comments were as spirited as his playing. "Professor MacDowell's criticisms were clear and forceful, and filled with many surprising and humorous touches. Of Bach he said, 'Bach spoke in close, scientific, contrapuntal language.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking