Cornell University
Fryderyk Chopin and Geography of Memory
In May 1945, members of the Warsaw-based Fryderyk Chopin Institute hatched an ambitious plan: a yearlong celebration to mark the centenary of Chopin’s death would not only fete Poland’s most canonic composer, but also broadcast Poland’s wartime resilience to an international audience. By the opening of the 1949 Chopin Year, the festivities had grown in scale, with state patronage ensuring concerts in factories, a publication of Chopin’s complete works, the commission of compositions in Chopin’s honor, countless performances, and even a feature film. This paper considers the 1949 Chopin Year’s international activities, as officials and musicians organized events across Europe, as well as in Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and Egypt.
By drawing on hitherto unconsidered archival sources of the Polish Ministry of Culture's Office of Foreign Cooperation, I offer a new view of musical transnationalism in the immediate wake of WWII. Although scholars have long considered how contemporary political circumstances contributed to the musical opposition of Western and Soviet musical practices, I argue here that early cold war exchanges also re-interpreted longer transnational music histories. The Ministry organized "historical concerts" in the cities where Chopin had lived or performed, re-enacting nineteenth-century performances with appropriate repertoire and Polish pianists. In this way, the worldwide organization of Chopin celebrations drew on the networks laid by Chopin's own travels and exile. I consider the rich paper trail left by such efforts, showing how organizers found Chopin a ideal figure for breeding international cooperation, all the while adapting his image to fit local conditions. By extending the geographical scope of the celebrations beyond Chopin's own European travels, organizers and musicians hoped to reinterpret an earlier history of exile and of the international circulation of musicians, while suggesting the historical roots of their present-day aspirations.
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Mackenzie Pierce is a doctoral candidate in musicology at Cornell University, where he is writing a dissertation entitled “Music and war in midcentury Poland, 1930-53.” Pierce’s research has been presented at the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting (2015), the University of California Berkeley, Columbia University, and the French Academy in Rome. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Kosciuszko Foundation, the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, and the DAAD. His article on Chopin’s Préludes recently appeared in the volume Piano Culture in 19th-Century Paris (Brepols, 2015).