Twelve Studies in Chopin ― Style, Aesthetics, and Reception

Tying into Chopin’s set of studies (which differ in content and musical problems, yet are stylistically coherent), Golab presents her retrospective collection representative of her musicological research, highlighting chief thematic areas--artistic formation and style, creative output, musical aesthetics, and reception. There are 12 chapters divided into four parts: the origins of Chopin’s artistic formation; Chopin’s musical language and individual style; Chopin’s music aesthetics; transcriptions of Chopin’s works. Chapters are: studies at the Main School of Music of the Royal University of Warsaw (1826-1829); teaching of music theory by J<’o>zef Elsner at the Main School of Music of the Royal University of Warsaw; on the fragments of music from the last sheet of the Trio in G Minor op.8; stylistic change: from Stile brillante to the late “synthetic style”; harmony and tonality; on the Tristan Chord; contribution to western European Romanticism; Imaginatio Crucis in the last song Melodia?; polonaise: the riddle of its melodic figure; nineteenth-century transcriptions of masterworks: an attempt at typology; nineteenth-century transcriptions of the polonaise in C sharp Minor op. 26 no. 1 for violin and piano; on Jan Karlowicz’s concept of the revolution in musical notation (with the example of his “philological” transcription of the Prelude in B Minor op. 28 no.6). Annotation c2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Maciej Golab is head of the Department of Musicology at the University of Wroclaw. He specializes in 19th and 20th century music history and theory, Chopin studies and methodology of musicological research. He is editor of the series Eastern European Studies in Musicology and author of the monograph Musical Work Analysis. An Epistemological Debate (Frankfurt am Main 2008).