MARIA SZYMANOWSKA AND THE SALON MUSIC OF THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

Among the many concert pianists and composers of salon music in the early part of the nineteenth century were several musicians of Polish ances try, including Maria Wolowska Szymanowska (1789-1831), whose profes sional career directly preceded that of her famed Polish countryman Frederic Chopin (1810-1849). Maria Szymanowska was well known as a leading concert artist of this period and as a composer of salon music for the piano. She was one of the few women of the time who maintained successful ca reers as professional musicians or composers. Szymanowska performed in the leading concert halls of Europe and Russia and her compositions were published during her lifetime by some of the foremost publishing houses in Europe. We still know very little about Szymanowska's early life, since there has been little documentation about the beginning stages of her musical training. Additionally, her life and works have remained largely inaccessible to the general musical public since very little has been written about her music out side Poland. This article will present documentation from nineteenth-century sources regarding her activities as a pianist and composer, as well as a gen eral discussion dealing with characteristics of salon music, drawing upon il lustrations from Szymanowska's compositions written before 1820. Maria Szymanowska, nee Wolowska, was born in Warsaw on December 14, 1789. Her earlier years coincided with a turbulent period in Europe, on the eve of the Napoleonic wars. The flowering of Polish Romanticism de veloped around the turn of the nineteeth century, despite the partitioning of Poland by three foreign powers in 1794. Music, as well as the other arts, de veloped at this time in Poland during an era of difficult political, historical, and economic conditions. An excellent background cultural history of this period can be found in the two-volume work edited by Stefan Lobaczewski, Tadeusz Strumillo, and Zygmunt Szweykowski, Z dziejdw polskiej kultury muzycznej.1 Documentation of Szymanowska's early years remains sketchy. Accord ing to George S. Golos, writing in The Musical Quarterly: