Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Polish pianist, composer, philanthropist, and statesman who became an international spokesman for Polish independence. Rising to prominence as a virtuoso in the late 1880s, he toured widely in Europe and the United States. As a composer, he wrote orchestral, instrumental, and vocal works and an opera, Manru, which remains the only opera by a Polish composer performed by the Metropolitan Opera. Paderewski's celebrity status allowed access to influential political and cultural circles in the West.
During World War I, he largely suspended concert touring to focus on political advocacy and fundraising, working with organizations such as the Polish National Committee in Paris and relief initiatives in Britain and the United States. In the United States, he met President Woodrow Wilson and contributed to efforts that helped make an independent Poland part of the postwar settlement. In newly independent Poland, Józef Piłsudski appointed Paderewski prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. He represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference alongside Roman Dmowski and signed the Treaty of Versailles, which recognized Polish independence after World War I. His government also oversaw parliamentary elections and legislation on minority protections, though he faced criticism as an administrator and resigned in December 1919.
After 1919, Paderewski returned to music and lived most of his later life abroad, while remaining involved in opposition politics in the 1930s as part of the Front Morges circle in Switzerland. After the 1939 invasion of Poland, Paderewski re-entered public life as head of the National Council of Poland, a parliament-in-exile in London, and again sought support for the Allied war effort through broadcasts and fundraising concerts. He died in New York in 1941; he was buried temporarily at Arlington National Cemetery, and in 1992 his remains were reinterred in Warsaw.
Early life and education
Paderewski was born to Polish parents in the village of Kurilovka, in the Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire. The village is now part of the Khmilnyk raion of Vinnytsia Oblast in Ukraine. His father, Jan Paderewski, administered large estates. His mother, Poliksena, née Nowicka, died several months after Paderewski was born, and he was raised mostly by distant relatives.From his early childhood, Paderewski was interested in music. He initially lived at a private estate near Zhytomyr, where he had moved with his father. However, soon after his father's arrest in connection with the January Uprising of 1863, he was adopted by his aunt. After being released, Paderewski's father married again and moved to the town of Sudylkov, near Shepetovka.
Initially, Paderewski took piano lessons with a private tutor. At the age of 12, in 1872, he went to Warsaw and was admitted to the Warsaw Conservatory. Upon graduating in 1878, he became a piano tutor at his alma mater. In 1880, Paderewski married fellow conservatory student Antonina Korsakówna. Their son Alfred was born severely handicapped the following year. Antonina did not recover from childbirth, and died several weeks later. Paderewski opted to devote himself to music, and left his son to be cared for by friends. In 1881, he went to Berlin to study music composition with Friedrich Kiel and Heinrich Urban.
In 1884, a chance meeting with a famous Polish actress, Helena Modjeska, began his career as a virtuoso pianist. Modrzejewska arranged for a public concert and joint appearance in Kraków's Hotel Saski to raise funds for Paderewski's further piano study. The scheme was a tremendous success and Paderewski soon moved to Vienna, where he studied with Theodor Leschetizky.
Pianist, composer and supporter of new composers
Paderewski dedicated three more years to diligent study, and a teaching appointment at the conservatory in Strasbourg which Leschetizky arranged. In 1887, he made his concert debut in Vienna, soon gaining great popularity, and had popular successes in Paris in 1889 and in London in 1890. Audiences responded to his brilliant playing with almost extravagant displays of admiration, and Paderewski also gained access to the halls of power. In 1891, he repeated his triumphs on an American tour. He toured the country more than 30 times for the next five decades and it would become his second home. His stage presence, striking looks, and immense charisma contributed to his stage success, which later proved important in his political and charitable activities. His name became synonymous with the highest level of piano virtuosity. Not everyone was equally impressed, however. After hearing Paderewski for the first time, when Paderewski was exhausted from his American tour, Moriz Rosenthal quipped, "Yes, he plays well, I suppose, but he's no Paderewski."Paderewski kept up a furious pace of touring and composition, including many of his own piano works in his concerts. He also wrote an opera, Manru, which had its official premiere in Lviv in 1901. A "lyric drama", Manru is an ambitious work that was formally inspired by Wagner's music dramas. It lacks an overture and closed-form arias, but uses Wagner's device of leitmotifs to represent characters and ideas. The story centres on a doomed love triangle, social inequality, and racial prejudice, and is set in the Tatra Mountains. It is still the only opera by a Polish composer that the Metropolitan Opera has performed in its 135-year history. In addition to the Met, a private royal viewing of Manru was staged in Dresden, and it was staged in Prague, Cologne, Zürich, Warsaw, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Baltimore, Moscow, and Kiev.
In 1904, Paderewski, accompanied by his second wife, entourage, parrot, and Érard piano, gave concerts in Australia and New Zealand, in collaboration with Polish-French composer Henri Kowalski. Paderewski toured tirelessly around the world and was the first to give a solo performance at the new 3,000-seat Carnegie Hall. In 1909 came the premiere of his Symphony in B minor "Polonia", a massive work lasting 75 minutes. Paderewski's compositions were quite popular in his lifetime and, for a time, entered the orchestral repertoire, particularly his Fantaisie polonaise sur des thèmes originaux for piano and orchestra, Piano Concerto in A minor, and Polonia symphony. His piano miniatures became especially popular, and the Minuet in G major, Op. 14 No. 1, written in the style of Mozart, became one of the most recognized piano tunes of all time. Despite his relentless touring schedule and his political and charitable engagements, Paderewski left a legacy of over 70 orchestral, instrumental, and vocal works.
All of his works evoke a romantic image of Poland. They incorporate references to Polish dances, such as the polonaise, krakowiak, and mazurka, and highlander music, themes, and musical settings of quotes from Polish poets.
Philanthropy
In 1896, Paderewski donated US$10,000 to establish a trust fund to encourage American-born composers. The fund underwrote a triennial the Paderewski Prize competition that began in 1901. Paderewski also launched a similar contest in Leipzig in 1898. He was so popular internationally that the music hall duo "The Two Bobs" had a hit song in 1916 in music halls across Britain with the song "When Paderewski Plays". He was a favorite of concert audiences around the globe and women, especially, admired his performances.By the turn of the century, Paderewski was an extremely wealthy man, generously donating to numerous causes and charities, and sponsoring monuments, among them the Washington Arch in New York, in 1892. Paderewski shared his fortune generously with fellow countrymen, as well as with citizens and foundations from around the world. He established a foundation for young American musicians and the students of Stanford University, another at the Parisian Conservatory, yet another scholarship fund at the Ecole Normale, funded students of the Moscow Conservatory and the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, as well as spas in the Alps, for the British Legion.
During the Great Depression, Paderewski supported unemployed musicians in the United States and the unemployed in Switzerland in 1937. He publicly supported an insurance fund for musicians in London and aided Jewish intellectuals in Paris. He also supported orphanages and the Maternity Centre in New York. The many Paderewski-sponsored concert halls and monuments included Debussy and Édouard Colonne monuments in Paris, Liszt Monument in Weimar, Beethoven Monument in Bonn, Chopin Monument in Żelazowa Wola, Kosciuszko Monument in Chicago, and Washington Arch in New York.
California
In 1913, Paderewski settled in the United States. On the eve of World War I and at the height of his fame, Paderewski bought a 2,000-acre property, Rancho San Ignacio, near Paso Robles, in San Luis Obispo County, in California's Central Coast region. A decade later, he planted Petite Sirah and Zinfandel on his vineyard in the Adelaida area and the fruit was processed at the nearby York Mountain Winery, which was, as it still is, one of the best-known wineries between Los Angeles and San Francisco.Politician and diplomat
In 1910, Paderewski funded the Grunwald Monument in Kraków to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald. The monument's unveiling led to great patriotic demonstrations. In speaking to the gathered throng, Paderewski proved as adept at capturing their hearts and minds for the political cause as he was with his music. His passionate delivery needed no recourse to notes. Paderewski's status as an artist and philanthropist and not as a member of any of the many Polish political factions became one of his greatest assets and so he rose above the quarrels, and he could legitimately appeal to higher ideals of unity, sacrifice, charity, and work for common goals.In World War I, Paderewski became an active member of the Polish National Committee in Paris, which was soon accepted by the Triple Entente as the representative of the forces trying to create the state of Poland. Paderewski became the committee's spokesman, and soon, he and his wife also formed other organizations, including the Polish Relief Fund in London, and the White Cross Society in the United States. Paderewski met the English composer Edward Elgar, who used a theme from Paderewski's Fantasie Polonaise in his work Polonia, written for the Polish Relief Fund concert in London on 6 July 1916.
Paderewski urged fellow Polish immigrants to join the Polish armed forces in France, and pressed elbows with all the dignitaries and influential men whose salons he could enter. He spoke to Americans directly in public speeches and on the radio, appealing to them to remember the fate of his nation. He kept such a demanding schedule of public appearances, fundraisers and meetings that he stopped musical touring altogether for a few years, instead dedicating himself to diplomatic activity. In January 1917, on the eve of the American entry into the war, US President Woodrow Wilson's main advisor, Edward M. House, turned to Paderewski to prepare a memorandum on the Polish situation. Two weeks later, Wilson spoke before Congress and issued a challenge to the status quo: "I take it for granted that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, autonomous Poland." Paderewski also proposed that same year to reorganise Poland into a federation called the United States of Poland. The establishment of "New Poland" became one of Wilson's famous Fourteen Points, the principles that Wilson followed during peace negotiations to end World War I. In April 1918, Paderewski met leaders of the American Jewish Committee in New York City, in an unsuccessful attempt to broker a deal in which organised Jewish groups would support Polish territorial ambitions in exchange for support for equal rights. However, it soon became clear that no plan would satisfy both Jewish leaders and Roman Dmowski, the head of the Polish National Committee, who was strongly anti-Semitic.
Reports of the Lwow pogrom reverberated around the world and gravely damaged the reputation of the newly recreated Polish state under Paderewski. Prime Minister Ignacy Paderewski, complained bitterly to the US President Woodrow Wilson about anti-Polish propaganda in the United States, declaring that the violence was mainly a result of 'Jewish arrogance and agitation'.
At the end of the war, with the fate of the city of Poznań and the whole region of Greater Poland still undecided, Paderewski visited Poznań. Following his public speech there on 27 December 1918, the Polish inhabitants of the city began the Greater Poland uprising against Germany.
In 1919, in the newly independent Poland, Józef Piłsudski, who was the Chief of State, appointed Paderewski as the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland. Paderewski and Roman Dmowski represented Poland at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and dealt with issues regarding territorial claims and minority rights. Paderewski signed the Treaty of Versailles, which recognized Polish independence won after World War I. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Polish deputation were irate at the Western powers insistence they sign a 'Minorities Treaty'. The treaty was supposed to guarantee fair treatment of their Ukrainian, Jewish and German minorities, a third of the population of their republic. The treaty was imposed by the Great Powers as a condition for their recognition of Polish independence.
The Polish legation's opposition to the treaty prompted David Lloyd George to say that the Poles were 'more imperialists than either England or France'. Paderewski heatedly rejected Lloyd George's suggestion, stating that Poland had shown in the past that it was fit to govern 'primitive people like the Ruthenians, even like the Ukrainians'.
There were some achievements during Paderewski's ten-month period in government: democratic elections to Parliament, the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, legislation on protection of ethnic minorities in the new state, and the establishment of a public education system. But Paderewski "proved to be a poor administrator and worse politician" and resigned from the Government in December 1919, having received criticism for his perceived submissiveness to the Western powers. At the request of his successor as Prime Minister, Władysław Grabski, Paderewski represented Poland at the Spa Conference, when Poland was threatened by the Polish–Soviet War, but Piłsudski's success at the Battle of Warsaw later that year rendered those negotiations redundant, and put to an end Paderewski's hopes of regaining office.