Maria Szymanowska

Maria Szymanowska (Polish pronunciation: [ˈmarja ʂɨmaˈnɔfska]; born Marianna Agata Wołowska; Warsaw, 14 December 1789 – 25 July 1831, Saint Petersburg, Russia) was a Polish composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century. She toured extensively throughout Europe, especially in the 1820s, before settling permanently in Saint Petersburg. In the Russian imperial capital, she composed for the court, gave concerts, taught music, and ran an influential salon. The salons in 18th-century France were intellectual gatherings held at home by educated women. In 1837, the composer and music critic Robert Schumann defined salon music as elegant light music and stated that this type of social music should sound beautiful, delicate, and fashionable.¹ Szymanowska was highly praised by Schumann for her salon music works, especially her etudes.²

Her compositions—largely piano pieces, songs, and other small chamber works, as well as the first piano concert etudes and nocturnes in Poland—typify the stile brillant of the era preceding Frédéric Chopin. She was the mother of Celina Szymanowska, who married the Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz.

Biography

Marianna Agata Wołowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, on 14 December 1789 into a prosperous Polish family with Frankist Jewish roots,³⁴ one of her ancestors being Salomon Ben Elijah (or Jacob ben Judah Leib/Jacob Leibowicz), the personal assistant of Jacob Frank. Her father Franciszek Wołowski was a landlord and a brewer. Her mother Barbara Wołowska (née Lanckorońska) came from a noble Polish . The history of her early years and especially her musical studies is uncertain; she appears to have studied piano with Antoni Lisowski and Tomasz Gremm, and composition with , and . Wołowska's salon was frequently visited by outstanding artists and intellectuals of the time. The guests at her salon included not only artists but also poets, pianists, and composers. The renowned Polish poet , the Russian poet , the Russian composer and pianist , and the Irish composer and pianist all made appearances. Immersed in music from an early age, she attended concerts by famous musicians and, over time, played in front of them in her own house. She gave her first public recitals in Warsaw and Paris in 1810.