Ars Longa, Vita Brevis Chorba, Terence
Emerging infectious diseases,
03/2023, Volume:
29, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
...the definitive cause of Chopin’s death has remained speculative. Given that the composer’s sister had died with a similar respiratory affliction, a genetic condition has been proposed as an ...alternative, the most popular being cystic fibrosis, with its autosomal recessive inheritance pattern. Not surprisingly, their assessment was that Chopin had “a serious fibrinoid epicarditis embodied by foci of epicardial hyalinization in the left ventricular front wall and with dilatation, mainly of the right ventricle and right atrium (cor pulmonale) with pronounced features of chronic heart failure, predominantly of the right ventricle,” consistent with end-stage constrictive pericarditis with fibrosis, and “several glossy, whitish-pearl nodules, slightly protruding from the surface of the myocardium,” consistent with myocardial tuberculomas. The bronzes made from the hand casts do not show clubbed fingers—thickening of the distal phalanges caused by hypoxia, characteristic of pulmonary cystic fibrosis.
Muzica lui Chopin, pe lângă virtuozitatea sa, poartă și un mesaj profund contrar altor compozitori care scriau doar pentru etalarea virtuozității instrumentale. Chiar dacă a optat pentru forma ...miniaturală, n-a folosit structura şablon, ci a modificat-o prin dinamizări şi concentrări, prin extensii sau interferări ale genurilor. Alături de Berlioz şi Liszt, Chopin formează trinitatea romantică. Stilul interpretativ introdus de compozitorul polonez a devenit determinant în cadrul artiștilor instrumentiști în următoarea jumătate de secol. Creaţia lui Chopin hărăzită pianului, este plină de patos subiectiv, nefiind propriu-zis un inventator în melodie, dar ştiind ca nimeni altul să cizeleze structuri melodico-armonice şi să îmbine mijloacele de expresie atât de măiestrit, încât muzica sa, adesea laconică, emană o expresivitate răscolitoare. Ritmica chopiniană este rezultatul fuziunii dintre cea ordonată a dansului şi cea sinuoasă a gândirii romantice.
The piano works of Frédéric Chopin - one of the greatest composers of the same period - tend more towards the uplifting. But events after his death have puzzled experts for more than a century and ...are worthy of any horror story. Scientists in Poland now claim to have solved the mystery.
Based on a macroscopic analysis of the heart of Frederic Chopin performed in 2014, it can be stated with high probability that the composer suffered from a long lasting tuberculosis as a primary ...disease, which was the cause of progressive deterioration of his physical condition and numerous symptoms mainly from the respiratory tract. Tuberculous pericarditis rapidly progressing within a rather short period of time, a relatively rare complication of diffuse tuberculosis, might have been an immediate cause of death. This would aptly coincide with a startling opinion that in an autopsy picture the composer’s heart had been more affected by the disease than the lungs.
Dziekan Wydziału Filologicznego UJ prof. Elżbieta Górska oraz prodziekan dr hab. Władysław Witalisz w październiku 2018 roku gościli w Szkocji podczas Festiwalu im. Jane Stirling Szkocja Chopina. Na ...festiwal, którego współorganizatorem był Wydział Filologiczny UJ, składały się koncerty i wydarzenia kulturoznawcze mające na celu złożenie hołdu Jane Stirling, uczennicy i przyjaciółce Fryderyka Chopina, która przed jego śmiercią niosła pomoc kompozytorowi, a po jego śmierci w 1849 roku przyczyniła się w znacznym stopniu do ocalenia dziedzictwa naszego Wielkiego Romantyka.
Cortot's Berceuse Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel
Music analysis,
October 2015, Volume:
34, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Alfred Cortot's 1920 recording of Chopin's Berceuse has some unusual properties — illustrated here in a discussion of the relationships among rubato, loudness, variation form and melody — which shed ...new light on the score and exemplify the pianist's ability to trigger embodied metaphor with unusual intensity. Comparisons with other recordings are made, and Jeffrey Kallberg's image of the Berceuse as a music box is considered in relation to the layout of the score and Cortot's performance. Drawing on the work of Antonio Cascelli, I compare Schenker's and Cortot's readings of melodic structure, which demonstrate the ecological validity of Cortot's construction. Some of the many respects in which analysis depends upon performance are discussed, as is the likelihood of very different performances in the future and the expectation that analysis will adapt itself to changing approaches to performance. The article is illustrated by Sonic Visualiser analyses presented as YouTube videos.
Chopin’s heart, generally enlarged, presented morphologic features pathognomonic for fibrinous pericarditis presumably of tubercular origin: multiple nodular hyalinization foci—tuberculomas and ...fibrillary coating covering the whole surface of pericardium (“frosted heart”). We show that these features differ significantly from post mortem-formed inorganic crystalline deposits, mold colonies, or fat deposits known from various preserved anatomical objects stored for a long period of time. In our opinion, these pathologies fully justify the claim that chronic cavernous pulmonary, laryngeal, and intestinal tuberculosis presents itself as the most plausible diagnosis of Frederic Chopin and that rapidly progressing tubercular pericarditis became the immediate cause of his death.
Chopin Fragments KLEIN, MICHAEL L.
19th century music,
07/2018, Volume:
42, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article considers the problem of narration in a collection of works gathered around Chopin's Ballade in G Minor, op. 23: Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, Poe's "The Raven," Mickiewicz's Konrad ...Wallenrod, Dickens's The Chimes, and Władysław Szpilman's The Pianist along with its cinematic adaptation by Roman Polanski. Chopin's Ballade is featured prominently in the two movies under consideration, while the remaining works are either influential for the composer (Konrad Wallenrod) or develop themes common to the Ballade. Study of narration in these works reveals that the narrator can be just as unstable in literary texts as in musical ones. The problems of narration that have been imputed to music are problems of narration itself. Regarding the era of Chopin's Ballade, these problems also point to unstable models of subjectivity, which the logic of narrative glosses over.
Chopin's Aliases MOSELEY, ROGER
19th century music,
07/2018, Volume:
42, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The ambiguity of Chopin's music and its amenability to reinvention help account for its enduring appeal to pianists, composers, and critics. This article examines the conditions under which such ...ambiguity has taken shape on the page and at the piano. Just as curves become jagged—or "aliased"—when represented by the grid of discrete pixels that form digital displays, so have the contours of Chopin's music been both veiled and disclosed by the straight lines that define the staff and the keyboard. Despite the term's contemporary ring, the issues raised and reflected by aliasing are rooted in a set of nineteenth-century dichotomies concerning the discrete and the continuous, artifice and nature, instruments and bodies, virtuosity and poetry, machines and voices, and constraints and liberties, all of which Chopin's music was heard both to invoke and to elude. By way of recordings and transcriptions by Leopold Godowsky, Marc-André Hamelin, Josef Lhévinne, Vladimir de Pachmann, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and Arthur Rubinstein, the article presents various instances of aliasing and attempts to mitigate it via a range of compositional, pianistic, and cultural techniques that reveal how aliases can produce ambiguity by calling the very distinction between identity and difference into question.
Frédéric Chopin is widely renowned for his standalone piano works, namely his nocturnes, mazurkas, and polonaises. Many contend Chopin was better suited for salon music and should not have attempted ...sonata-form pieces for piano or larger ensembles. For example, in a review of Chopin’s Piano Sonata in B-flat minor, opus 35, Schumann stated: “that Chopin should have called it a ‘sonata’ is to suggest a joke, if not sheer bravado.” Along with this, David Wright states that: “Chopin is certainly not a great composer since he is a very limited composer. All his works involve the piano, and he did not write anything for the stage, string quartets, or symphonies. In fact, his orchestral writing has been universally condemned as very poor, which it is.” These near-sighted critiques fail to examine how Chopin incorporates the style of his smaller forms (nocturnes, waltzes, etc.) into his larger sonata-form compositions. It is here that Chopin’s technique of style within a style emerges. Style within a style is where we find a small form piece such as a nocturne, waltz, etude, etc., embedded into a larger sonata form piece. An examination of Chopin’s pieces through the lens of William Caplin’s Formal-Function Theory, as well as Raymond Monelle’s Topic Theory and Hepokoski and Darcy’s Sonata Theory, will reveal that the smaller styles are integrated into the structure, context, tonal surroundings, and harmony of the larger form works. This demonstrates that Chopin’s unique formal approach was equally suited for large and small structures and not, as Schumann might argue, mere “comical” attempts at sonata form.
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