Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 526 pages of information about Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Volume 2.

Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Volume 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 526 pages of information about Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Volume 2.
do we find there!  These simple melodies clothed in pure and truly holy harmonies, written, as Gomolka said himself, not for the Italians, but for the Poles, who are happy in their own country, are the best specimens of the national style.  “In speaking of the early Polish church music I must not forget to mention the famous College of the Roratists, [footnote:  The duties of these singers were to sing Rorate masses and Requiem masses for the royal family.  Their name was derived from the opening word of the Introit, “Rorate coeli.”] the Polish Sistine Chapel, attached to the Cracow Cathedral.  It was founded in 1543 and subsisted till 1760.  With the fifteenth of seventeen conductors of the college, Gregor Gorczycki, who died in 1734, passed away the last of the classical school of Polish church music.  Music was diligently cultivated in the seventeenth century, especially under the reigns of Sigismund III. (1587-1632), and Wladislaw iv. (1632- 1648); but no purpose would be served by crowding these pages with unknown names of musicians about whom only scanty information is available; I may, however, mention the familiar names of three of many Italian composers who, in the seventeenth century, like many more of their countrymen, passed a great part of their lives in Poland—­namely, Luca Marenzio, Asprilio Pacelii, and Marco Scacchi.

APPENDIX II.

Early performances of Chopin’s works in Germany.

(Vol.  I., p. 268.)

The first performance of a composition by Chopin at the Leipzig Gewandhaus took place on October 27, 1831.  It was his Op. 1, the variations on La ci darem la mano, which Julius Knorr played at a concert for the benefit of the Pension-fund of the orchestra, but not so as to give the audience pleasure—­at least, this was the opinion of Schumann, as may be seen from his letter to Frederick Wieck of January 4, 1832.  Chopin relates already on June 5, 1830, that Emilie Belleville knew his variations by heart and had played them in Vienna.  Clara Wieck was one of the first who performed Chopin’s compositions in public.  On September 29, 1833, she played at a Leipzig Gewandhaus concert the last movement of the E minor Concerto, and on May 5, 1834, in the same hall at an extra concert, the whole work and two Etudes.  Further information about the introduction and repetitions of Chopin’s compositions at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, is to be found in the statistical part (p. 13) of Alfred Dorffel’s Die Gewandhausconcerte.

APPENDIX III.

Madame Schumann on Chopin’s visit to Leipzig.

(Vol.  I., p. 290.)

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Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.