Experiencing Chopin

A Listener's Companion

By (author) Christine Lee Gengaro

Not available to order

Publication date:

20 December 2017

Length of book:

206 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442260870

Experiencing Chopin: A Listener’s Companion, Christine Lee Gengaro surveys Chopin’s position as a composer at a time when the piano stood at the center of musical and social life. Throughout, she shines a spotlight on Chopin and his music, which illuminated the Romantic period in which he lived, the social and artistic climate that surrounded him, and the importance of the individual artist at a time of political foment. Gengaro considers the different genres among Chopin’s works, linking each to the historical, social, and biographical issues that shaped them.

Series Editor Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Timeline
Chapter 1: The Piano Lesson
Chapter 2: Adventures Abroad
Chapter 3: Two Pianos, Four Hands
Chapter 4: The Artistic Process of the Romantic
Chapter 5: “Cannons Among the Flowers”
Chapter 6: Yours With All Devotion
Chapter 7: Chopin and the Voice
Chapter 8: Influences, Past and Contemporary
Chapter 9: Physical and Mental Health
Chapter 10: Chopin in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
Selected Reading
Selected Listening
Glossary
About the Author

The great pianist Arthur Rubinstein wrote that ‘Chopin was a genius of universal appeal.’ The popularity of his music – long beloved of pianists and the concert-going public – endures unabated to this day. It has proven its value time and again, impervious to criticism and the tides of fashion. Chopin has also secured an enduring foothold in popular culture and film that is rare among composers. In her account of Chopin’s turbulent life and times, Christine Lee Gengaro describes the extraordinary extent of his influence. She tells us about the composer’s friends and associates, the political climate of his times, the pianos he played, his teaching, his personal life, his ever-fragile health, and the repertoire of masterpieces he bequeathed to us all. Gengaro’s writing is engaging and suitable for readers of all levels of knowledge and musical experience.