A Reflection Upon Recent Events In Chopin Scholarship
Let’s review what has happened:
Swiss public broadcaster, SRF’s arts channel played a 2 hour long program called Chopin’s Men
Within this program, music journalist Moritz Weber talks about his ‘discovery’ of a “flood of declarations of love aimed at men”
The Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Poland, issued a statement saying, “If you read [the letters] in the Polish original, it sounds a little bit different,” he said. “The way Chopin uses language is so musical and complicated, to translate all that is madness.”
Rose Cholmondeley, the president of the UK’s Chopin Society spoke to CNN saying, “He is a symbol of Poland, but you’ve got a government now which is absolutely anti-gay – and were he to be gay, God knows what they would make of it,”
If we do some quick google search research we see that searches for simply ‘Chopin Gay’ have shot up.
And it was mostly searched in Poland itself.
Hi, I’m Jackie. and what this specific surge in Chopin media coverage means to me is complex. I have been in the stages of researching and writing a dual biography on Frederic Chopin and George Sand during their nearly 10 year relationship for the past three years.
What is currently brushing me, a bisexual historian who was reinforced in my identity through the two historical figures I devote my free time to, is seeing Chopin referred to as only gay in this new media coverage.
I have scoured many of the articles about this two hour special (which I have not been able to listen to firsthand because unfortunately I don’t speak nor understand German) and a lot of them portray Chopin’s relationships with women in the romantic sense in a negative light. We see his and Sand’s 10 year unorthodox relationship being simmered down to a part of the traditional story of Chopin’s love life. Or Weber not being able to find evidence of Chopin’s affections for Konstancja Gładkowska, nor his ill fated engagement to Maria Wodzińska.
Why must it be one or the other? Why can it not be both?
You can study Chopin’s relationships with women while still respecting his relationships with women.
Just as well, saying that this was all new information, as if LGBT researchers and historians have been critiquing Alan Walker’s Chopin biography and many others like it for years without recognition. Why Weber, why only now?
This obviously barely scratches the surface on what this discussion means politically for Poland, which frankly deserves its own post. But if this is how the majority of reporting being for him being gay, I doubt normalization of bisexuality would be an easy public conversation either.
When one of Poland’s most foremost LGBTQ rights activists deems him “at leas” bisexual, I felt relieved.
Then I thought more about that phrasing. Why must it be “at least”? Is being bisexual not enough?
Because his bisexuality is more than enough for me, it affirms me. If he can produce works of beauty, so can I.
Please feel free to ask me questions or reblog with your own thoughts, I’m interested to see everyone else’s thoughts. It is an interesting time to be a Chopin enthusiast.
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