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Thank you, Frycek!

What an interesting question! and what is more interesting, it emerged in my head some days ago too!
So I started searching in the Polish and Russian web-pages. Poles don't write about the titel anything:) But
according to the info from Alexander Maykapar's page (Alexander Maykapar is the author of more than eighty works on the history of music, the art of performance and musical iconography) the epithet "Revolutionary" was added by Ferenz Liszt. But when? It is not mentioned...

congratulations, Kathleen! It must be a great event:)

A few names might have been in use if some of the editors named them. So...maybe.

Ksthleen

Let's see what Frycek finds out...

That's very interesting. I can pretty much guarantee it wasn't in Chopin's hearing. I feel like 10/12 does probably contain a lot of fury and angst about the November Uprising. It would be interesting to know whether Chopin would've denied the name if he'd been around to hear it, or whether he'd have let it go because it was true.

Great to see all the activity going on here!

I don't think I would join in with the lard-on-bread–– point me toward the haluski z kapusta though. Of course I can't call somebody else's food weird while sitting here at an Ayurvedic restaurant eating, would you believe, gluten-free cranberry-spinach lasagna with butternut squash bechamel. Oddest thing I've had in quite a while, and surprisingly delicious, though too fatty for me.

I do wish that I could be a fly on the wall during the discussions of Jeff and the other musicologists in Warsaw.

I don't know who applied the nicknames to those etudes. I find myself using them even though I know better. Some, like "Revolutionary," really do fit, and once the image is in one's mind, it tends to stick.

If I remember correctly, there were other names put on some of the pieces by British publishers, which didn't stick and aren't being used today-- Chopin mentioned them in a letter. The English ladies were saying things like, "Play me your 'Bells.'"

About the colors, there was also his dove-grey wallpaper, which seems to me like it would be soothing but also perhaps a bit depressing. Probably it made a good background for the flowers he liked to keep around. I always associate grey with him, though in the portraits he's usually wearing black (I think...).

(I am attracted to grey clothing but it doesn't look good on me.)

I hadn't heard of him owning a royal blue mantle. Very intriguing. I can think of at least three examples of people independently perceiving him in a dark blue or purple cloak in recent times, but I didn't know he actually had anything like that. (Also one instance of a purple waistcoat and one instance of a midnight blue one.) Perhaps it was a favorite item of his, and it stuck to his image somehow. I imagine him wearing it to the opera.

Mme. Sand wrote something about him preparing for a concert and dithering over what to wear, finally borrowing a suit-- was it beige or light blue? Memory fails. Not that it matters.

An item of Chopin's clothing that remains in the world is a dark blue waistcoat with some small bird's-eye type of pattern on it. Some years ago the pianist Byron Janis had a photo taken holding this waistcoat up in front of his own body. It was a little off-putting. This had to do with his discovery of some Chopin manuscript; the published version of it included pictures. I don't remember what the piece was, but I don't think it changed anything materially for players.

Elene

Chopin was wearing the blue mantle in the last year of his life. He visited his publisher's place of business but didn't get out of the carriage. The publisher came out to him. He said Chopin threw the mantle to one side to show him how swollen his legs were.

What a poignant image.

Elene

One of my mom's old friends came to her funeral, but was unable to get out of the car to come in--- too frozen-up with arthritis. The gesture of respect must have cost him dearly. It was very deeply touching; the more as the impact of the moment has receded and the clarity has grown greater.

I'm sure the impact was not lost on Chopin's publisher. These things really mean a lot.

Dear Frycek,

The quick answer is no. I haven't done work on the long answer (who named them, and when), though I have been poking around in a semi-desultory way on the question of when the title "Minute Waltz" came into being.

Chopin hated the descriptive titles his English publisher, Wessel, routinely added to his pieces without Chopin's permission. So much so that, after the piece was initially published, he changed the title of the third movement of op. 35 from "Funeral March" to just "March".

Jeff Kallberg

I didn't know that Chopin removed the "funeral" part from the march title. Just looked to make sure-- the "Paderewski" edition does say "Marche Funebre." Fryderyk would never have any luck getting that title out of our collective heads.

(I've wondered how he'd feel about the use of the march theme in all those cartoons....)

At any rate, doesn't the Op. 35 march have a relationship to Beethoven's Op. 26 sonata, with its "Marcia funebre sulla morte d'un eroe," a sonata which Chopin admired and often taught? In that case, isn't the "Marche funebre" title perfectly reasonable, and why should he be so bothered by it? Perhaps he was bothered by other people imposing the titles even more than by the titles themselves.

As I write this, my husband and his Brazilian band "Saudade" have just finished playing and being interviewed on KUNM public radio. Bob was asked what choro is (it's sort of Brazilian indigenous jazz, with threads of African and of European classical music), and he mentioned specifically that Chopin's work influenced the development of that form. You can't get away from him. Well, Bob certainly can't-- he's stuck with hearing Chopin around here.

Elene

Jeff, thanks very much.

I also share a distaste for naming pieces (I think it's corny) but somehow I've never thought of the "Funeral March" as a title, more as a generic description, as in "March, funeral."

Yes, it does seem like "funeral march" is a genre in itself.

But I think a composer should be able to call a piece anything he or she wishes.

Of course, when you send a piece, or a poem, or a story, or whatever bit of art out into the world, you have little or no control over its ultimate destiny, and if it touches people they will often mess with it in some way.

Elene

Or nothing at all - -

Check out this thread - I put in a little plug for us:
https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb...20the%20first%20years...html#Post1337071

Thanks for the credit, Frycek. But as I have stated so often, I might have started it, but it couldn't be where it is today if it weren't for so many others. So, I am deeply indebted to all of you for keeping Chopin and his music alive and very, very well. I do think we are quite unique as far as the internet goes. And I, for one (I know there are others who will help) will never, ever let Chopin slip out of sight or out of our hearts.

CHOPIN RULES!!

Kathleen

I may be alone here, but right in the middle of that "March," I hear a great shout of defiance. It almost reminds me of Beethoven, on his death bed, shaking his fist at God, right before he dies. So while the rest of this march might be somber, there is that glimmer of hope and rebirth of spirit. I find it both chilling and wonderful.

Kathleen

Dear Elene,

The Paderewski edition isn't so good for works with complex issues in the sources. Opus 35 is one of those complex works, with (among other difficulties) there being 4 states of the French first edition that appeared in print during Chopin's life, all including changes by the composer. You can compare the first state:

Chopin First Editions Online

[CFEO seems not to let me link directly to the page of op. 35 I'd like you to see, but you can surf there pretty easily: go to op. 35, then to Mvt 3, click the "F" box, then the link to "p. 14 bs. 1-26".]

With the third state:

Opus 35 Marche

Notice the change in the title (and the consequent addition of a tempo marking).

Chopin obviously knew Beethoven's Marcia funebre (Beethoven's opus 26 sonata was one of Chopin's favorites), but I think the more proximate model for Chopin's Marche was the funeral march in the Act II finale of Rossini's La gazza ladra. (Chopin mentions the famous tune from this finale in a letter of 5 October 1830 to Tytus Woyciechowski.) The key link between Rossini and Chopin can be found by comparing their middle sections, both lyrical (unlike in Beethoven), which could suggest that Chopin intended the middle section of his March to function as a "preghiera", or prayer.

Sorry to natter on: I published a long article on this in 19th-Century Music back in 2001!

Jeff Kallberg

I am not exactly sure how to say "szczÄ™" but ...

Szczęśliwego nowego roku!!!

I hate to break it to you, but this story is quite a lot of romanticised myth. In reality, just after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, the urn containing Chopin's heart was moved to the town of Milanowek, where it was kept between September 1944 and October 1945. The Church of the Holy Cross (where Chopin's heart resides), though badly damaged during the Uprising, was not obliterated to rubble by the Germans until 1945.