Szymanowska, Maria Agata (1789–1831)

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Szymanowska, Maria Agata (1789–1831)

Polish composer, pianist, and teacher known especially for her nocturnes. Name variations: Szymanowski; Shimanovskaya. Born Maria AgataWolowska in Warsaw, Poland, on December 14, 1789; died of cholera in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 24, 1831; married Theophilus Jozef Szymanowski (a Polish landowner), in 1810 (divorced 1820); children: three, including daughter Celina Szymanowska , who married Adam Mickiewicz, the poet.

By the 1830s, Romantic music combined with the piano had become the rage throughout Europe and America. Throughout the 19th century, a number of women became famous concert pianists, including Clara Schumann and Teresa Carreño . Many of these artists wrote their own compositions so that audiences could buy their sheet music to play at home. In the age before phonograph recordings, tapes, and CDs, sheet music guaranteed a more widespread audience, as well as additional revenue. With the growth of the European middle class, pianos became common, so the market for sheet music grew. It was this market Maria Agata Szymanowska exploited.

Born Maria Agata Wolowska in Warsaw in 1789, Szymanowska was the first Polish pianist to gain a European reputation. Although her parents were not musical, they had seen to it that their daughter acquired the best education Warsaw could provide. She toured continental Europe in 1810, the same year she married. Her husband, landowner Theophilus Jozef Szymanowski, did not support her concert career, so Szymanowska left him, taking their three children with her. From 1820, she sustained her family through her concerts and compositions.

The great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was infatuated with Szymanowska; she was one of the aging Olympian's last passions. He considered her playing superior to that of the reigning virtuoso Hummel, describing her performing as "incredible," and wrote his Aussöhnung for her. Robert Schumann also had a very high opinion of her Etudes. Szymanowska was appointed pianist to the Russian imperial court in 1822 and won the admiration of Russian intellectuals, including the poet Alexander Pushkin and the composer Mikhail Glinka.

As a composer, Szymanowska was sometimes called "the feminine John Field," after the Irish-born inventor of the nocturne. Her mazurkas were derived from folk music while the nocturnes sometimes resembled those of Field, though some are clearly superior, including the one in B-flat, which Frédéric Chopin knew well. Szymanowska was one of the first composers to use Polish dance forms such as the mazurka and polonaise as the basis for her compositions. She used these forms in nocturnes, waltzes, and etudes which were known and played throughout Europe; anyone with a piano could more or less duplicate the sound. Szymanowska's use of Polish folk music had an enormous influence on the young Chopin who used this concept in his own works. As a composer and artist, Szymanowska was quite the rage, paving the way for other Polish musicians who would play their music on concert stages throughout the world.