Henryk Opieński, Chopin [1909]

Title: Chopin. With 74 illustrations.

Author: Henryk Opieński (1870–1942) [musicologist, composer, conductor, and educator; one of the founders of Polish musicology and Chopin studies].

Series Editor: Tadeusz Pini.

Publisher: Lviv, Publishing House of the Society of Higher Education Teachers; main distribution at H. Altenberg’s bookstore in Lviv and E. Wende & Co. in Warsaw. Series: Science and Art, vol. X.

Year of publication: 1909.

Format: 25 cm.

Volume: [4], 139, [1] pp., [7] plates, ill.

Binding: Publisher’s cloth binding with gold-embossed lettering.

Opieński’s monograph was published a year before the centennial celebrations of Fryderyk Chopin’s birth (1910) and has long been part of the canon of Polish literature on Chopin. It was published by the Lviv Society of University Teachers as Volume X of the popular science series “Science and Art,” edited by Tadeusz Pini. The series combined thorough scholarship with high editorial standards. The author presents Chopin’s work against the backdrop of Romanticism, with an emphasis on the development of the composer’s musical form and language. The volume features extensive illustrative material, listed on the title page as 74 illustrations. These include portraits, views, and facsimiles of manuscripts, some of which appear on separate plates. The book is bound in striking publisher’s cloth with gilded Art Nouveau-style decoration. A second, revised edition in the same series was published in 1925.

Henryk Opieński was born in 1870 in Kraków. He studied violin in Kraków, Prague, and Paris (with Władysław Górski), and composition with, among others, Władysław Żeleński, Zygmunt Stojowski, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Heinrich Urban, and Vincent d’Indy. He shared a lifelong friendship with Paderewski, with whom he studied in Paris in 1895, and in 1928 he wrote Paderewski’s biography. From 1908 to 1911, he was the conductor of a theater orchestra in Warsaw and an assistant to Grzegorz Fitelberg at the Warsaw Philharmonic. In 1911, he founded *Kwartalnik Muzyczny* (The Music Quarterly), the first Polish musicological journal, and edited it until 1914. That same year, he earned his doctorate in Leipzig with a dissertation on the lutenist Bálint Bakfark. From 1920 to 1926, he directed the State Music Conservatory in Poznań, and then settled in Morges, Switzerland, where he conducted the “Motet et Madrigal” choir. His edition of Chopin’s correspondence (1931) was one of the cornerstones of Chopin scholarship at the time. He was friends with Stanisław Wyspiański, Józef Mehoffer, and Stanisław Estreicher, and Wyspiański painted his portrait. He died in 1942 in Morges.

Provenance: a piece free of ownership inscriptions, stamps, and marginal notes.

This is the first edition of a classic Polish monograph on Chopin, in its original, ornate binding, in exceptionally good condition. A must-have for collectors of Chopin-related works and music materials, collectors of Lviv scholarly publications, and bibliophiles seeking pieces in pristine condition.

The piece is preserved in its original factory condition. The cloth binding is clean, free of stains, scuffs, and fading; the gold embossing on the front and spine is distinct and deep; the corners and edges of the cover are stiff and sharp. The block is compact and stable; the original stitching is strong, and the folds are even. The paper is stiff, bright, and completely free of foxing, water stains, creases, and underlining; all reproductions on coated paper are intact. The volume is complete.

Catalog ID: 17397-25-A-X