Department of Music

“The Warsaw Music Scene and the Development of Chopin’s Individuality,” by Zofia Chechlinska, Professor Emerita of Musicology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow

“Chopin’s Musical Education,” by Jim Samson, Professor of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London

“Hearing Chopin as a Pole, Hearing Chopin as a Parisian,” James Parakilas, Professor and Chair of Music Department, Bates College

Moderated by Robert Geraci, Associate Professor, Corcoran Department of History at U.Va. and Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies

Coffee and pastries will be served from 8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Lunch will be available at noon.

Zofia Chechlinska is Professor Emerita of Musicology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. She has published mainly on the music of Chopin (including a book on Chopin’s variations and variation technique, Krakow 1995), and on 19th-century Polish music. She has prepared Chopin’s polonaises for The Complete Chopin: A New Critical Edition (Peters Edition), and has also prepared critical editions of many works of 19th-century Polish composers. For many years she was an editor of the journals Rocznik Chopinowski and Chopin Studies published in Warsaw, and she is currently editor-in-chief of the Works by Chopin Facsimile Edition published by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw.

Jim Samson is Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published widely (including seven single-authored books, and seven edited books) on the music of Chopin and on analytical and aesthetic topics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. He is one of three Series Editors of The Complete Chopin: A New Critical Edition (Peters Edition, in progress). In 1989 he was awarded the Order of Merit from the Polish Ministry of Culture for his contribution to Chopin scholarship, and in 2000 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Among his recent publications are The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, 2002), Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of Liszt (Cambridge, 2003), which was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Book Prize in 2004, and (with J. P. E. Harper-Scott) the textbook Introduction to Music Studies (Cambridge, 2008). His edition of the Ballades (Peters Edition) won the 2009 Edition of the Year at the International Piano Awards.

James Parakilas is the James L. Moody, Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts at Bates College. His writings on Chopin include the book Ballads Without Words: Chopin and the Tradition of the Instrumental Ballade (Amadeus Press, 1992) and the article “‘Nuit plus belle qu’un beau jour’: Piano, Song, and the Voice in the Piano Nocturne,” which appears in The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, ed. Halina Goldberg (Indiana University Press, 2004). He is also the primary author of a cultural history of the piano, Piano Roles: 300 Years of Life with the Piano (Yale University Press, 1999) and of an undergraduate textbook on opera, forthcoming from W. W. Norton.

Robert Geraci is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at U.Va. A specialist on tsarist Russia and specifically on the ethno-national diversity of the Russian empire, he is the author of Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia (Cornell University Press, 2001) and co-editor of Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia (Cornell, 2001). He is presently writing a book about commerce and nationality in the Russian empire, and translating and editing a selection of memoir sources on social identities in tsarist Russia. As an amateur pianist, he has been playing and admiring the music of Chopin since childhood.

This event is part of the Chopin Bicentennial Celebration at the University of Virginia (September 16-19, 2010), which is sponsored by the Page-Barbour Fund, the Mcintire Department of Music, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, the American Institute of Polish Culture, the Chopin Foundation of the United States, the Slavic Literatures and Languages Department, the Media Studies Department, and by an Arts Enhancement Grant from the Vice Provost for the Arts to increase access and engagement with the Arts. For a listing of all festival events please visit: http://www.virginia.edu/music/chopin.