Chopin and Polish FOLK
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Date
2010
Authors
Advisor
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
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Abstract
Although Chopin’s music is continually analysed within the context of its
affinities with traditional folk music, no one has any doubt that these are two separate
musical worlds, functioning in different contexts and with different participants, although
similarly alien to the aesthetic of mass culture. For a present-day listener, used
to the global beat, music from beyond popular circulation must be “translated” into a
language he/she can understand; this applies to both authentic folk music and the
music of the great composer.
In the early nineties, when folk music was flourishing in Poland (I extend the term
“folk” to all contemporary phenomena of popular music that refer to traditional music),
one could hardly have predicted that it would help to revive seemingly doomed
authentic traditional music, and especially that it would also turn to Chopin. It is
mainly the mazurkas that are arranged. Their performance in a manner stylised on
traditional performance practice is intended to prove their essentially “folk” character.
The primary factor facilitating their relatively unproblematic transformation is their
descendental triple-time rhythms.
The celebrations of the bicentenary of the birth of Fryderyk Chopin, with its
scholarly and cultural events of various weight geared towards the whole of society,
gave rise to further attempts at transferring the great composer’s music from the
domain of elite culture to popular culture, which brings one to reflect on the role that
folk music might play in the transmission and assimilation of artistic and traditional
genres.
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Keywords
Chopin Fryderyk, Mazurkas, Traditional music, Folk music
Citation
Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology 9, 2010, pp. 343-355.
Seria
ISBN
978-83-232-2148-7
ISSN
1734-2406