Music's Modern Muse

A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58046-333-1
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 22, 572 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 149 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 838 g

Reihe: Eastman Studies in Music

A biography of Winnaretta Singer-Polignac, heiress to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, who befriended and subsidized some of the most important musical and literary artists of the 20th Century, including Stravinsky, Proust, Ravel, Cocteau, and Colette.

The American-born Winnaretta Singer (1865-1943) was a millionaire at the age of eighteen, due to her inheriting a substantial part of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Her 1893 marriage to Prince Edmond de Polignac, an amateur composer, brought her into contact with the most elite strata of French society. After Edmond's death in 1901, she used her fortune to benefit the arts, science, and letters. Her most significant contribution was in the musical domain: in addition to subsidizing individual artists (Boulanger, Haskil, Rubinstein, Horowitz) and organizations (the Ballets Russes, l'Opéra de Paris, l'Orchestre Symphonique de Paris), she made a lifelong project of commissioning new musical works from composers, many of them unknown and struggling, to be performed in her Paris salon. The list of works created as a result is long and extraordinary: Stravinsky's Renard, Satie's Socrate, Falla'sEl Retablo de Maese Pedro, and Poulenc's Two-Piano and Organ Concertos are among the best-known titles. In addition, her salon was a gathering place for luminaries of French culture such as Proust, Cocteau, Monet, Diaghilev, and Colette. Many of Proust's memorable evocations of salon culture were born during his attendance at concerts in the Polignac music room. Sylvia Kahan brings to life this eccentic and extravagant lover of the arts, whose influence on the 20th Century world of music and literature remains incalculable.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kahan, Sylvia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Geschichte der Musik Geschichte der Musik: Klassische Musik des 20./21. Jahrhunderts
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunstförderung, Mäzenatentum, Auktionen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

An International Child
Life with Mother
A Woman of the World
The Sewing Machine and the Lyre
Marriage and Music
La Belle Epoque
Renovations
Modern Times
The Astonishing Years
Shelter from the Storm
The Magic of Everyday Things
Cottages of the Elite, Palaces of the People
A Pride of Protégés
Mademoiselle
All Music is Modern
The Beautiful Kingdom of Sounds