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Frederic Chopin was a great composer whose success in music was largely conditioned by his ability to accurately react, represent and reflect on the environment, and an inbuilt genteel, and graceful instinct of spontaneous creativity.
Films which have attempted to recreate the Polish iconic composer Frederic Chopin have centered on romanticism and patriotism as the two main ideologies that structured his life and career. The style and substance of his music is a creation of the dominant forces that acted in the world around him.
Chopins ability to accurately record the rhythms of the time and store them in his music is what elevated him as an accomplished artist. Most of his musical workmanship reflects an impeccable instinct of musical realism. The thematic concerns in the three films A Song to Remember , Impromptu and A Desire for Love sum up the forces that created Chopin into a composer of classical repute.
The thematic concerns that are explored in many of his songs include rebellion against oppression, love, peace and struggle. These have been captured adequately in the background music of these films.
A Song to Remember is a mid twentieth century film that gives a biographical account of Chopins life and times. The film was directed by Charles Vidor and had actor Cornel Wilde playing the role of Chopin, Paul Muni as Jozef Elsner, and Merle Oberon as George Sand among other prominent actors.
The thematic substance of this film must be understood from the geopolitical situation that marked the time setting of its production. Chopins life is captured from the time around the First World War. During this time Poland as a country was increasingly coming under domination from Russia and other competing forces (Niecks, 2004).
At the start of this film, young Chopin is seen attempting to play a tune from Mozart on the piano when he suddenly realizes that the Russian forces are taking his Polish people captive. This realization reflects in him physically as he starts banging on the piano with a kind of impatient rage that shows his developing patriotism.
As the film develops Chopin increasingly uses music and piano playing as a tool to express his patriotism and his romantic conceptualization of reality. The kind of composition he embarks on is that which promotes the themes nationhood and struggle (Wheeler, 1948). Some of his compositions that evoke patriotism include Etude, which was performed in C minor.
The Waltz which was performed in D evokes his romantic perceptions of reality. The Waltz in his own admission was a dedication to his youthful lover Constantia Gladowska. There is a palpable rhythm of freedom and liberation which he attempts to bring out in his compositions. In between these piano sessions Chopin is shown attending clandestine movies with fellow youth in some desperate attempt to liberate Poland from the seizure of Russians.
The height of this expression of patriotism is most manifest at the point when he stops playing in the middle of a concert after the Russian governor of Poland enters the concert hall. His indignation at this moment is that he does not play his piano for Russian butchers. The fictionalization of Chopins life achieves its most efficient artistic impulse through the action of the actors and the music. The biographical essence is however retained through Chopins own compositions that accompany the plot in the background (Chopin & Jerry, 2007). For instance when Chopin refuses to play piano for the Russian governor, one of his rebel tunes begins to play in the background.
To this extent therefore it might be argued that that the stylistic thrust of this movie is anchored on the portrayal of Chopin as a composer who reached his peak basically through an honest reaction to the social realities of his time. It is a film that testifies to the power of music to condense within its structure the rhythm of an ideology. In this case the ideology of struggle and contribute meaningfully towards the course of the emancipation of enslaved people.
Chopins biographical account as carried in the plot of this movie seems to portray his life as some kind of an odyssey where he travels away from home to a foreign land from where he plots the best possible way to fight the oppression back at home. In this movie after Chopin movies out of the concert, he quickly travels to France where he lives but appears to me continually tortured by the plight of his people back in Poland. His music career almost permanently revolves around the desire to create an alternative home for his oppressed kin and kindred.
While in Paris Chopin seems to dedicate much of his time to composing patriotic music in which he idolizes the scepter of freedom. At the same time he systematically dismantles through music the occupying powers that have settled in his homeland of Poland. However the entry of George Sand seems to dull the spirit of struggle as Sand endeavors to shift his attention away from home troubles into a romantic spheres of romance. This change at first seems to promise some sense of fulfillment but later gravitates towards despair and tragedy. For quite along time Chopin seems to forget his patriotism message until the times comes when he has to go round Europe where he tries to regain and improve his show amid failing health.
This film attempts to recreates and meshes the life and times of Chopin into the historical facts of his time. The factors that control the destiny of Poland are represented in this film as having a direct bearing on the music and attitude of Chopin. There is the hemorrhaging which happens at the point in time when Chopins life appears to be at the lowest ebb.
This point when the composer seems to be at the end of his medical health is metaphorical to the political difficulties that befell the state of Poland. This is because the failing of the composers life coincides with the collapse of the country under the pressure of invasion from foreign powers.
The potency of music to represent alternative forms of expression depends on the socio-political situations of the moment. At the time when the film was at its peak, there seemed to be little alternative is interpersonal relationships.
The dominant forms of communication at that wartime were propaganda. Nobody was willing to follow through any officialdom because the collapse of governments had already spelt the death of objective truths. Poland was even much more encumbered by the problems of logistics. Therefore music became one of the surest ways through which the ideologies of freedoms could reach the people.
The soulful compositions of Chopin became the only consolation for the frightened and hopeless citizenry. To this extent therefore it might be presumed that the desire to entrench patriotism into the hearts and minds of the population succeeded failrly because of the choice of music. Through music Chopin creates the tempo of rebellion, the rhythm of struggle and the tone of defiance which reach out the oppressed through several possibilities.
The composition of Chopin music therefore largely succeeded on the account that it gave voice to the Polish people so that their struggles became conditioned in the element of music. Whereas the movie A Song to Remember anchors its structure on the theme of patriotism, the movie Impromptu presents a romanticized biography of music composer Chopin (Venezia, 2000).
When Chopin flees his homeland of Poland to Paris, he encounters a divorced Baroness who has tried to change her identity into a manlike quality and now calls herself George Sand. Sands most consuming desire is to fall in love with Chopin and she knows she has to pursue him like a man if she wants him to yield. This reversal of roles also serves to bring out Chopin as decidedly feminine. But her endeavor is disturbed at the preliminary stages following another woman, Marie, a countess, who seemingly also desires Chopin.
Chopins stay in Paris is marked by lots of intrigues, suspicion and romantic mystery as women crave him while their lovers loath him. In the most memorable incident, Chopin is invited at a countryside party to entertain a duchess but ends up meeting Sand at the venue. There is the issue of the stolen letter which Sand had written for him but which dAgoult pretends to have authored. Later on however Sand proves that the love letter is indeed her and recites it romantically to Chopin.
In his early stages of romance there occurs a mix of romantic mysteries, drama and tension in the life of Chopin and Sand. Sand develops both romantic and maternal instincts towards Chopin which begin after a brief period of tending to his wounds. It is the same wounds he incurred during a fencing match with one of Sands former boyfriends. This development therefore draws Sand closer and closer into the central life of Chopin as the latter charts his musical career in the European metropolis (Liszt, 1998).
Love and passion are represented in this movie as structures that hold together music and composition. The two of them again leave Paris to a distant location so that they actualize an imaginative sense of freedom that they never felt anywhere in Paris. The two lovers develop a dislike for Paris because of petty jealousies and rivalries that seem to haunt them all through.
The place of music in society can also be explored through the act of Sand and Chopin of dedicating a whole volume of music to the countess as a sign of good relations. This shows that music in the world view of Chopin and his contemporaries would be accepted as transaction that would be used to mend relations (Karasowski, 2007).
The import of music had reached the stage of commodity that can be used in the transfer of power, feelings and other concerns of general and private interest. This film has an effect of carrying and portraying the cultural effects of the societies in which it is based. For instance through Impromptu , the viewer gets the chance to view the cultural life of the twentieth century France in terms of some of the fundamental values and mores that held the people together.
In the Desire for love Chopin social triumphs and down falls are curved around his music so that the growth and challenges of his art seems to externally guide the flow of his life. Like the mentioned two movies Desire for Love captures the tempestuous life of the acclaimed composer whose desire for an idyllic life full of love, and peace dislocates him from his national heritage and thrusts him into a spin of activities that resonate with the thematic concerns of his music. What begins as a promising relationship between him and Sand turns out to be a series of chaos as alliances within her household shift and tensions sour.
Eventually the marriage fails and Chopin retires to rebuild his problematic life. This failure carries the weight of the title for it suggests the elusive search for emotional fulfillment by a much profiled man. It is no doubt that the dying moments of Chopins life are full of misery. This is quite a contrast for a man who ruled the musical stage and won a place of honor in the society early enough.
In summary it might be argued that environmental factors of war, love, vanity, success, and failure governed the progress of Chopins life and music. His works as correctly represented in these three films show that patriotism and romanticism were the holding structures for most of the musical works and personal world view for the iconic singer.
The ability to capture the aspirations of the world around him and reproduce them into music is the quality that defines his mark of quality. The argument therefore is that probably the world would not have known much about Chopin had the jolting events of his formative years not have happened.
Nevertheless the fact that he flourished above fellow composers under similar influences is testament to the argument that there must have been something more intrinsic within the mould of Chopin that conditioned his triumphs.
References
Chopin, F. & Jerry, R. (2007). Simply Chopin: The Music of Frederic Chopin: 25 of His Piano Masterpieces. New York: Alfred Music Publishing.
Karasowski, M. (2007). Frederic Chopin: His Life and Letters. London: Kessinger Publishing.
Liszt, F. (1998).Frederic Chopin: Studies of Composers. Vienna: Vienna House. Web.
Niecks, F. (2004). Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician, Volume 2. London: Kessinger Publishing. Web.
Venezia, M. (2000). Frederic Chopin. San Val, Incorporated. Web.
Wheeler, O. (1948). Frederic Chopin: son of Poland, Volume 1. London: Dutton.
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