Maria Szymanowska
Maria Szymanowska, (born Marianna Agata Wołowska) (December 14, 1789-July 25, 1831), was a Polish composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century, touring extensively throughout Europe in the 1820s especially, before settling permanently in St. Petersburg, where she composed for the court, gave concerts, taught music, and ran an influential salon. Her compositions—largely piano pieces, songs, and other small chamber works, as well as the first piano concert etudes and nocturnes in Poland—typify the stile brillant of the era preceding Chopin.
Early Life and Studies
Marianna Agata Wołowska was born in Warsaw, Poland on December 14, 1789. The history of her early years and especially her musical studies is uncertain, but it appears that she studied piano with Antoni Lisowski and Tomasz Gremm, and composition with Franciszek Lessel, Jozef Elsner and Karol Kurpinski. She gave her first public recitals in Warsaw and Paris in 1810. That same year, she married Jozef Szymanowski, with whom she had three children while living in Poland. Those children would remain with her after their separation in 1820.
Piano Performance
Her professional piano career began in 1815, with performances in England in 1818, a tour of Western Europe 1823-1826, including both public and private performances in Germany, France, England (on multiple occasions), Italy, Belgium and Holland. A number of these performances were given in private for royalty; in England alone during 1824, her performance schedule included concerts at the Royal Philharmonic Society (May 18, 1824), Hanover Square (with members of the royal family present, June 11, 1824), and other performances for the several English dukes. Her playing was very well received by critics and audiences alike, garnering her a reputation for a delicate tone and lyrical sense of virtuosity. Indeed, she was one of the first professional piano virtuosos in 19th-century Europe. After these years of touring, she returned to Warsaw for some time before relocating again to St. Petersburg in early 1828, where she was named the court pianist for the tsarina.
Compositions
Like many women composers of her time, she wrote music predominantly for instrumentation she had access to, including many solo piano pieces and miniatures, songs, and some chamber works. Her work is typically labeled, stylistically, as part of the pre-romantic period stile brillant and of Polish Sentimentalism. Szymanowska scholar Sławomir Dobrzański describes her playing and its historical significance as follows:
Her Etudes and Preludes show innovative keyboard writing; the Nocturne in B flat is her most mature piano composition; Szymanowska's Mazurkas represent one of the first attempts at stylization of the dance; Fantasy and Caprice contain an impressive vocabulary of pianistic technique; her polonaises follow the tradition of polonaise-writing created by Michal Kleofas Ogiński. Szymanowska's musical style is parallel to the compositional starting point of Frederic Chopin; many of her compositions had an obvious impact on Chopin's mature musical language (2001 abstract).
While scholars have debated the reach of her influence on her compatriot Chopin, her career as a pianist and composer strikingly foreshadows his own, as well as the broader trend in 19th-century Europe of the virtuoso pianist/composer, whose abilities as a performer expanded her technical possibilities as a composer.
Artistic reputation and circles
Because of her stature as a performance artist and because of her salon, Szymanowska developed a strong web of connections with some of the most notable composers, performing musicians, and poets of her day, including: Luigi Cherubini, Giochino Rossini, Johann Hummel, John Field; Pierre Baillot, Giuditta Pasta; Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Adam Mickiewicz. Hummel and Field dedicated compositions to her. Goethe is rumored to have fallen deeply in love with her. The salon she established in St. Petersburg drew especially prominent crowds, augmenting her status as a court musician.
Works (published volumes)
- Album per pianoforte. Maria Szmyd-Dormus, ed. Kraków: PWM, 1990.
- 25 Mazurkas. Irena Poniatowska, ed. Bryn Mawr, PA: Hildegard, 1991.
- Music for Piano. Sylvia Glickman, ed. Bryn Mawr, PA: Hildegard, 1991.
- Six Romances. Maria Anna Harley [now: Maja Trochimczyk], ed. Bryn Mawr, PA: Hildegard, 1999.
Discography
- Maria Szymanowska: Piano Works. Anna Ciborowska, piano. Dux, 2004.
- Szymanowska: Album. Carole Carniel, piano. Ligia Digital, 2005.
- Chopin und Polish Piano. Jean-Pierre Armengaud, piano. Man, 2001. (Includes works by other composers as well.)
- Inspiration to Chopin. Karina Wisniewska, piano. Denon, 2000.
- Riches and Rags: A Wealth of Piano Music by Women. Nancy Fierro, piano. Ars Musica Poloniae, 1993. (Includes works by other composers.)
Bibliography
Note: English language only; for more complete bibliographies, see “Online Resources,” below
- Chechlinska, Zofia. “Szymanowska [née Wołowska], Maria Agata,” in Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy. (Accessed February 13, 2007), <http://www.grovemusic.com>.
- Dobrzański, Sławomir. 2001. “Maria Szymanowska (1789--1831): Pianist and composer.” DMA Diss., U. of Connecticut, 2001. Abstract (pages unnumbered).
- _______. 2002. “Maria Szymanowska and Fryderyk Chopin: Parallelism and Influence.” Polish Music Journal (online). Vol. 5, No. 1 (2002). (Accessed February 12, 2007).
- Fierro, Nancy. 1987. "Maria Agata Szymanowska, 1789-1831." James R. Briscoe, ed. 1997. Historical Anthology of Music by Women. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 101-102. Includes an edition of her Nocturne in B-flat Major.
- Swartz, Anne. 1985. "Maria Szymanowska and the salon music of the early nineteenth century.” The Polish Review 30 no. 1: 43-58. New York: Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America.