Chopin and his World

ed. Jonathan D Bellman & Halina Goldberg Princeton University Press

ISBN: 978-0-691-17776-2

384pp (pb) £27.95 rrp

This valuable collection of essays is the latest in the series of composer studies under the auspices of the Bard Music Festival. As always, the moving spirit is Leon Botstein, who contributes an erudite study on the consequences of exile for Chopin and other figures. Documents from the period when Poland was ‘a memory, an illusion, and a dream’ include the earliest published essay on Chopin, and the modern musicology comes with plenty of musical examples.

Stimulating essays include an exploration of Chopin’s vocabulary for expressing dreams, placing him as a forerunner of Proust; Chopin’s position in relation to his literary colleagues, especially the often overlooked Antoni Malczewski; a Gothic reading of the Preludes; and affinities the tubercular Chopin might have felt for operatic heroines, even the way in which a cache of George Sand-chopin letters possibly informed La traviata. The figure who Marie d’agoult dubbed an ‘oyster sprinkled with sugar’ does not always emerge well – Chopin’s anti-semitism is explored in context – yet the enduring appeal of his music is brilliantly articulated. John Allison ★★★★