A pianist lost in history... Chopin's possible inspiration, Alexander Rembielinski

I am currently reading through all of Polish composer's Frederick Chopin's letters that he wrote in his life, and I seem to have stumbled upon an artist that Chopin mentions during his life... This artist appears to be of great inspiration to Chopin (or at the very least Chopin, a brilliant musician, thinks this pianist has a great deal of talent). With Chopin being somewhat of an idol to me, I am very curious, as you must assume, to who this person is and more importantly what this man's music sound like!

In a letter to Jan Bialoblocki (Which he calls Jasia) from Warsaw, Poland on Sunday the 30th of October in 1825, Chopin writes his letter explaining this person about 4 paragraph into the conversation... He says

...a certain Mr. Rembielinski, a nephew of the President, has come to Warsaw from Paris. He has been there for 6 years, and plays the piano as I have never yet heard it played...

He then describes that the man calls himself an amateur, not an artist, and then compliments his "quick, smooth, rounded playing" and that "his left hand is as strong as the right".

I am most fascinated... and wish to know of somewhere I can hear this music that this man played, and better yet what music he composed (if so he did). The author who put the collection of letters together makes a note for the reader to observe, stating that the pianist's full name was Alexander Rembielinski.


I hope someone can help me with finding some things out about this man, especially his music.

I'll try, but I probably can't do much better than you, just a lot of Googling and searching the net. My background is in music, but theory/comp rather than musicology. History is full of really good pianists, composers, violinists, etc. who never made the "best remembered" list like Chopin, but rest assured (as you probably already suspect) that if Frederic Chopin thought this guy was good, he most definitely was!

reply to post by godspetrat


Yes for a genius to compliment other artists work... it must mean something! I have googled him with not to much success... Nothing to be learned than the basic information of which is irrelevant or already mentioned... To find a piece of sheet music though would be most ideal, even if extremely unlikely.


Google only yields forth 7 pages of possible entries, some of which are ATS, others of which are a cycle of the same three books... and then the rest are genealogy or foreign.

Originally posted by PhysicsAdept
reply to post by godspetrat

 

Yes for a genius to compliment other artists work... it must mean something! I have googled him with not to much success... Nothing to be learned than the basic information of which is irrelevant or already mentioned... To find a piece of sheet music though would be most ideal, even if extremely unlikely.


Google only yields forth 7 pages of possible entries, some of which are ATS, others of which are a cycle of the same three books... and then the rest are genealogy or foreign.

edit on 15-4-2012 by PhysicsAdept because: (no reason given)

I'm Googling the same stuff you are, and I'm pretty good at finding things! I am not finding anything you haven't found. I remember as an undergraduate music student, I was very taken with Rachmaninoff (still am) and he mentioned a pianist/composer he had met and liked, and danged if I haven't forgotten the name by now! Anyway, back then, I searched for this composer in a card catalog, not the net, and it seems his most enduring work was a book decrying the modern state of classical music, and how rock fan kids somehow seem to prefer Bach to Hindemith and Schoenberg: no-brainer, really!

Well, if there are written records of this guy, and we aren't finding them on the Internet, they may be somewhere, but probably in out of print musicological stuff. Perhaps a real musicologist or music historian with access to original, unpublished documents? You could contact the musicology dept. of a really good university for music, like Indiana-Bloomington? They would probably scratch their heads as well, however. Somehow, I think if it's not on the net, this guy is really lost to history, unfortunately.

I'm afraid all we will ever know about Alexander Rembielinski is that Chopin heard him in October 1825, and liked his playing, and commented that his "left hand was as strong as his right." Keep in mind that Chopin was 15 years old at the time, but still well on his way to becoming a great composer and pianist!

reply to post by godspetrat


Yes, I assume you are correct...I will one day make the move to pursue this with the big-leagues. I have to think of the proper way to go about asking about this to a musically-educated group of people... Thanks!

books.google.com... This site has some of his sheet music go to page 134

Originally posted by PhysicsAdept
reply to post by godspetrat

 

Yes, I assume you are correct...I will one day make the move to pursue this with the big-leagues. I have to think of the proper way to go about asking about this to a musically-educated group of people... Thanks!

I don't think they would mind you asking, just think if more was known, they would have published it already.

Originally posted by lonewolf10
books.google.com... This site has some of his sheet music go to page 134

edit on 15-4-2012 by lonewolf10 because: (no reason given)

OK, that's a good find, if it's the same guy. Seems to be. Kudos; I have a Master's Degree in Music Theory, and you sure trumped me! I just briefly listened to that waltz in my head, and will give it a closer look after I post this, but it sounds a lot like a Chopin waltz! I guess not lost to history after all, but in the more obscure sources. OP, take note!

Yes. Implied syncopation over the regular "oom-pah" of the bass and chords. I can see why this was an influence on the young Chopin!

reply to post by PhysicsAdept


Nice work and nice research. It's always fun to find a historical nugget which has been overlooked, to a great extent, in the literature.

May I suggest that once this thread plays out, and as much data as possible is gathered, that you update the Wikipedia article (which I haven't looked at) on this fellow, as well as Chopin's article, to reflect Chopin's interest in, and admiration of, Rembielinski.

star for good work, a flag waving in the cyber-breeze for a find shedding further light on neglected historical information.

Originally posted by Aleister
reply to post by PhysicsAdept

 

Nice work and nice research. It's always fun to find a historical nugget which has been overlooked, to a great extent, in the literature.

May I suggest that once this thread plays out, and as much data as possible is gathered, that you update the Wikipedia article (which I haven't looked at) on this fellow, as well as Chopin's article, to reflect Chopin's interest in, and admiration of, Rembielinski.

star for good work, a flag waving in the cyber-breeze for a find shedding further light on neglected historical information.

edit on 15-4-2012 by Aleister because: edit

There is no Wikipedia article! I tried to capture the image of the sheet music from that Google books result Lonewolf10 found, but no go. Apparantly, there are three published walzes by this guy, somewhere, and one was quoted in this book. Lonewolf has found a few measures of actual music, so that is a start.

Originally posted by lonewolf10
books.google.com... This site has some of his sheet music go to page 134

edit on 15-4-2012 by lonewolf10 because: (no reason given)

Anyway, Lonewolf, tell me how you found that, so I can improve my technique!

i just googled, "pianist rembielinski" and i think it was the 2nd site to come up. there were several other references to him on on many other sites too.

i'm a search fanatic.

for some reason, i cant copy the music on page 143. i was going to paste it on here but oh well. maybe someone else can figure it out.

reply to post by lonewolf10


Yeah thanks for finding that piece for us! I searched his full name, which yielded little

Glad we got a bit closer though... I think the problem is that back then documentation was so sparse... especially because this man died young so it was likely unexpected, and thusly unplanned for-- he never had a chance to get much of his music published or anything.

Originally posted by PhysicsAdept
reply to post by lonewolf10

 

Yeah thanks for finding that piece for us! I searched his full name, which yielded little

Glad we got a bit closer though... I think the problem is that back then documentation was so sparse... especially because this man died young so it was likely unexpected, and thusly unplanned for-- he never had a chance to get much of his music published or anything.

edit on 16-4-2012 by PhysicsAdept because: (no reason given)

Lonewolf has found for us, that he did have three waltzes published. They ain't on Youtube! But they are there. Enough digging, and you can find them, and find some friend who plays piano (better than me) to perform them for you. Yay for the Internet! I have been spending my time while waiting for replies on this thread trying to find out if Jerry Garcia played pedal steel on One Toke Over the Line

www.youtube.com...

And learning that song on guitar (trying, anyway; pretty hard).