Every composer is very much a product of his or her time and place. Whether or not that background is very consciously expressed--for example, in the nationalistic operas of Verdi or for present-day composers for whom a laptop has become an essential instrument--or provides a more muted backdrop, we understand and appreciate musical artistry in its geographical and historical contexts, even when the work is so great that it transcends those cultural particulars.
However, few composers are so immediately identifiable with a particular location and era than composer Frederic Chopin, whose 200th birth anniversary falls in 2010. (Though Chopin gave his birth date was March 1, 1810, other sources list February 22 of the same year.) As iconic a figure as Chopin is for Poland--and who, as a revered symbol of Polish nationalism, has been featured on everything from currency to stamps--it is worth noting that the composer's father, Nicolas Chopin, actually hailed from Lorraine, France; he emigrated at age 16 to begin his career as a French teacher and private tutor to well-heeled youngsters).
Despite his family background, Chopin fully identified himself as Polish. In early November of 1830, at age 20, he went on tour to Austria with plans to continue onward through the continent; after the failed November Uprising at the end of that same month, he realized that as a committed and outspoken nationalist, he would not be able to make safe return to his native land--and, indeed, never returned to Poland in his lifetime.
During his 29 years of exile, Chopin achieved one of the great feats of artistic invention: unable to return to his beloved home, he instead re-created, re-envisioned, and perfected distressed and distant Poland through his scores. Native dances like the triple-metered mazurka (such as in his famous Op. 33 set) and the polonaise (the stately, slow dance which he utterly transformed in works like the incredibly popular Polonaise No. 6 "Heroique") were among the composer's greatest inspirations; despite living outside of his homeland for nearly three decades, and while of course during that time being closely associated with some of the most superb poets and writers of France and Germany (and perhaps most famously through his inamorata George Sand), his only songs, the 17 Songs posthumously published as Op. 74, were all set to Polish texts.
Of course, the love between Chopin and Poland is mutual; to mark his bicentennial birthday, a new, multimedia Chopin museum has opened in Warsaw, so that new generations of Polish citizens and other Chopin lovers can explore his life, his work, and his profound and multi-layered legacy.
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by Anastasia Tsioulcas
