Chopin at the boundaries : sex, history, and musical genre / Jeffrey Kallberg.
| Author/creator | Kallberg, Jeffrey, 1954- |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1996. |
| Description | xiii, 301 pages : illustrations, music, facsimiles ; 25 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | Convergences : inventories of the present Convergences (Cambridge, Mass.) ^A281064 |
| Contents | Part I. Ideology, sex, and the piano miniature. The rhetoric of genre: Chopin's nocturne in G minor -- The harmony of the tea table: gender and ideology in the piano nocturne -- Small fairy voices: sex, history, and meaning in Chopin -- Part II. Social constructions and the compositional process. Chopin's last style -- Small "forms": in defense of the prelude -- Part III. The musical work as social process. Chopin in the marketplace -- The Chopin "problem": simultaneous variants and alternate versions. |
| Abstract | At once exalted and shadowy, Chopin cuts a curious figure in contemporary culture. A Pole working among Frenchmen, he exudes exoticism even as he partakes of European tradition. A male composer who wrote in "feminine" genres like the nocturne for domestic settings such as the salon, he confuses our sense of the boundaries of gender. Central to our repertory, he nevertheless remains a marginalized figure. The complex and unsettling status of Chopin in our culture - what it means and how it came about is the author's subject in this absorbing book. Combining social history, literary theory, musicology, and feminist thought. Chopin at the boundaries is the first book to situate Chopin's music historically within his native Polish and adopted French cultures and to demonstrate the powerful effects of these historical constructions on present experience. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| LCCN | 95042776 |