CULTURE OF POLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 14, 29 September 1939, Page 19

CULTURE OF POLAND

Radio Pays A Tribute

FTER the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795; after the dishonouring of the arrangements of the Congress of Vienna in 1815; after all these, when Poland at last regained her independence and individuality, it was a musician, Paderewski, who became her first Prime Minister. There is something behind that simple fact. As in most countties on the continent, music and the arts have played a large part in the history of Poland. It is perhaps fitting that one of her greatest statesmen should also be a world-famous musician. Little is known of music in the preChristian era in Poland. But with Christianity came religious music, and from the eleventh century many religious songs came into existence. By the sixteenth century, the music of the Church reached a high state of cultivation. The great composer of the period was Nicolas Gomdlka, whose works are still performed and "highly valued. Another important composer of the same period was Nicolas Zielinski, who published in Venice a collection of over a hundred of his works. In the field of opera, Poland followed Italy, and a royal opera-house was inaugurated in Warsaw by Ladislas IV., where the works performed were almost exclusively Italian. Then came a

troubled time for Poland, with the invasions of the Swedes, Cossack risings and other disruptions of a mnone-too-stable peace. Yet, even among the common people, and without encouragement from the Nobles, music continued to flourish; church music went on, and the first theoretical treatise appeared in the Polish language. In the early part of the seventeen hundreds, Polish music was finding reception in other lands; and Bach, in a letter to the council of Leipzig, mentions

that his choir performed it. The first composer of opera in the Polish language was Matthew Kamienski, whose works enjoyed high favour, His operas were written at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. By far the greatest composer from Poland is, of course, Chopin. By birth he was half Polish, half French, and "strong sympathies with the country of his birth in the darkest period of her oppression moved him often to proud and defiant musical utterance .. ." Like that of his beloved country, Chopin’s history was stormy and tragic. Iil-health plagued him early, and when he had to leave France because of the revolution that was to lead to the Second Empire, the life he led in England exhausted him, and he rushed back to Paris, there to die. He left the world a great legacy of pure loveliness in his music. As he was lowered into his last resting place, the silver box of Polish soil given to him twenty years before, when he left his native land for ever, was sprinkled on his coffin. In our own century we have seen the brilliant Paderewski, who, besides being a magnificent pianist, helped his country through difficult years after the Great War. As a pianist, "by the possession * ¢ « Of a romantic personality, high

interpretive qualities, and an amazing head of hair, he established a position with the crowd and with the connoisseurs without parallel since the times of Rubinstein and Liszt." Poland has always been a land of dancers, and some of her dances which have become famous are the Polonaise, Cracovienne and Mazurka. At 3 p.m. on Sunday, October 1, a special programme, "A Salute to Poland," will be presented from 2YA Wellington,