Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion

ISBN-13: 9781442260863 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 206 str.

Christine Lee Gengaro

Opis

Frederic Chopin's career is intricately intertwined with the piano. Although he made forays into orchestral work and chamber work, Chopin did not write any major work that did not include the piano. While his education as a classical musician supported composing for other instruments, his natural inclination and personal passion drew him to piano, on which he excelled as a composer. His relatively brief life of barely forty years foreshortened his potential total contribution as a composer. But no one denies the originality, richness and quality of the work and its worth. His harmonies were often surprising, the rhythms flexible (and not uncommonly drawn from the world of folk and court dance), and riven with a kind of musical drama, even though Chopin adamantly refused to name his pieces. In Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion, Christine Lee Gengaro surveys Chopin's position as a composer of Romantic piano music at a time when the piano stood at the center of musical and social life. Throughout she sheds a spotlight on Chopin and his music that illuminates the Romantic period in which he lived, the social and artistic climate that surrounded him, and the importance of the individual artist at a time of political forment. Throughout, Gengaro considers a different genre among Chopin's works, linking to each the historical, social, and biographical issues that shaped them.