Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Chopin's Ghosts

Chopin's Ghosts Abstract Chopin's Stuttgart diary, written in a state of fear for his loved ones after the defeat of the anti-Russian insurrection in fall 1831, reveals the exiled composer's emotional distress and morbid alienation. Chopin's intense feelings of mourning lent his imagination a peculiar fascination with the morbid. References to corpses and allusions to ghosts in the diary reflect a profound trauma caused by the uncertainty of his personal situation and his awareness of the political crisis. The Stuttgart crisis is only one of numerous instances in which Chopin mapped his personal losses onto the broader fate of those Poles forced into exile after the failure of the uprising. This identification with the estranged community was capable of producing a deeply subjective experience of haunting. Chopin's music carries a poignant relationship to loss and melancholia, exemplified in this article by the Étude, op. 10, no. 12 (“Revolutionary”), the Nocturne, op. 15, no. 3, and the Funeral March from the Piano Sonata, op. 35. These traits have prompted recent films by Andrzej Zulawski and Zbig Rybczynski to adopt Chopin's music as a means of collective mourning in post-Communist Poland. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png 19th-Century Music University of California Press

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-california-press/chopin-s-ghosts-FB4F3SXtHL

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of California Press
Copyright
© 2012 by the Regents of the University of California
ISSN
0148-2076
eISSN
1533-8606
DOI
10.1525/ncm.2012.35.3.204
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract Chopin's Stuttgart diary, written in a state of fear for his loved ones after the defeat of the anti-Russian insurrection in fall 1831, reveals the exiled composer's emotional distress and morbid alienation. Chopin's intense feelings of mourning lent his imagination a peculiar fascination with the morbid. References to corpses and allusions to ghosts in the diary reflect a profound trauma caused by the uncertainty of his personal situation and his awareness of the political crisis. The Stuttgart crisis is only one of numerous instances in which Chopin mapped his personal losses onto the broader fate of those Poles forced into exile after the failure of the uprising. This identification with the estranged community was capable of producing a deeply subjective experience of haunting. Chopin's music carries a poignant relationship to loss and melancholia, exemplified in this article by the Étude, op. 10, no. 12 (“Revolutionary”), the Nocturne, op. 15, no. 3, and the Funeral March from the Piano Sonata, op. 35. These traits have prompted recent films by Andrzej Zulawski and Zbig Rybczynski to adopt Chopin's music as a means of collective mourning in post-Communist Poland.

Journal

19th-Century MusicUniversity of California Press

Published: Mar 1, 2012

Keywords: Chopin George Sand Poland ghosts morbidity film

There are no references for this article.