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It was “the first illustration of the style modern pianoforte school” and of its “leaders, Thalberg, Henselt, and Chopin, has ever been offered to the Boston public.” When John Sullivan Dwight reflected on the musical season 1839-40 in Boston, Rakemann’s concert was among the few events he remembered “with most pleasure.” The compositions of the “new school of Piano Forte playing… are rich, brilliant, wild, astonishing.” In the “Notturnes” of Chopin he found “sweet pathos.” But thinking back in 1856, Dwight considered it “almost a sin to class a pure star of genius,” like Chopin, “with lights that must prove so much more ephemeral.” The Musical Magazine described the program as “probably the finest musical treat of the kind ever offered” in Boston. In Boston two weeks later Rakemann played “an exquisitely beautiful ‘Nocturne Mélancholique'” by Chopin, noted the Evening Transcript. This first documented performance of Chopin’s music in America was followed by Rakemann’s public debut on October 16th, when he played a “Notturno and Two Mazurkas.” Thus, Chopin was introduced in America through genres valued especially for two outstanding attributes of his musical style: expressive, often melancholic lyricism and musical nationalism.
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What nocturnes were played is not recorded in the Evening Star, which published that communication from a perceptive listener who recognized Chopin’s originality of musical and pianistic style. we know not that we were ever more charmed than in listening to these effusions of a master mind, given with an intensity of feeling and a power of expression which we have seldom heard equalled-never surpassed. He appears to expand the powers of the instrument by a masterly combination of melody and harmony- singing divinely. This author does not so much astonish by the velocity and apparent difficulty of his passages, as he entrances his auditors by the fire, the soul-stirring pathos of his compositions. Some nocturnes of a composer known here but to few-Chopin, a Pole.
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In October 1839 at a private party in New York City, a newly-arrived German immigrant named Ludwig Rakemann played Diaries, letters, and writings from other population groups and the publication history of Chopin’s music in America add voices from the audience and commercial sector. Topics discussed include the gradual dissemination of Chopin performance from New York City and Boston outwards in the young republic, the gradual changes in the repertoire performed and its reception by critics and listeners, and the diffusion of interest in this music from the elite class of concert-goers to the average American pianist at home-sometimes aided by simplified arrangements.Ĭritics’s reviews of performances in music periodicals and daily newspapers, and their essays about Chopin in journals of broad intellectual appeal such as the “Atlantic Monthly” provide ample evidence of their efforts to inform readers and of their varying opinions about both the music and the way in which it was performed. The early performing and teaching of a few German immigrants led by Otto Dresel (some trained at the Leipzig Conservatory under Mendelssohn and Schumann) the writing of Europeans and of European-born or trained critics living in America (e.g., Henry Watson, Roger Willis) and the remarkable work of John Sullivan Dwight all played important roles in preparing the ready acceptance that Chopin’s music generally received here. This paper investigates the previously unexplored and changing responses to Chopin’s works by pianists, critics, audiences, and music publishers during the period from 1839-1900.Įach decade presents a different stage in the growing knowledge and reception of Chopin’s music. The documented history of Chopin’s music in America began at a private party in New York City in October 1839, when Ludwig Rakemann, a German pianist, played “some nocturnes of a composer known here but to few-Chopin, a Pole.” At a subsequent public appearance Rakemann played “a Nocturne and two Mazurkas,” thus introducing Chopin through genres later valued for two outstanding attributes of his unique music: lyricism and Polish nationalism. The Reception of Chopin’s Music in Nineteenth-Century America