She's also the creator of the recently released biopic about John Keats called Bright Star. (which may explain why Keats, a strawberry blond, was portrayed as a dark brunette.)

Elene: Folks around my department like the Sibelius music notation software. They claim it has a shorter learning curve than Finale. As in all software-related things, YMMV.

Jeff Kallberg

Dear Steven:

I meant no offense by my post. Of course, you are right. All need role-models. I simply meant (and I admit I expressed myself badly) that I was tired of hearing about Chopin's possible homosexuality. As if that was all he was about.

Off topic: My brother is now the proud grandpa of 6 granddaughters. Number 6, Amy, was born this morning at 1 a.m. She weighed in at 9 lbs, 6 ounces. Our family is noted for very big babies.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Kathleen

Congratulations on your new grandniece!

Kathleen, I understand your point and I didn't take offense. I hope my post didn't come across that way; I just wanted to offer an "insider" viewpoint and admit my own longstanding personal interest in the topic.

Steven

I would disagree about learning curves, but Sibelius is an excellent and fully capable choice as well.

Kathleen -

Congratulations on baby Amy! What a wonderful blessing. I hope mom and baby are doing well.

Kathleen, congratulations on the new family member. And I don't think I answered your recent question-- yes, my daughter and I are definitely planning to go to Warsaw next October, also Paris and probably Bratislava, maybe Prague. And I will be heading for Essex if Mary-Rose can't join me at any other point in the journey.

Frycek, I thought Bright Star was Campion's, but wasn't sure. Did you like it? And what is this with getting the hair color wrong? Dye is cheap!

Horowitzian and Jeff, thanks for the replies about notation programs. I was fooling around with them all day. Only one has the flexibility to put in exactly what you want without artificially "correcting" things, which I need for what I'm doing.* It's Music Publisher from Braeburn in the UK, and unfortunately it doesn't have a Mac version. I downloaded a trial on our Windows desktop, and tried it just a little; looks like it has possibilities. A Mac program, Nightingale, might work but I don't know because there is no Leopard version as yet and my MacBook is recent.

I also downloaded a trial of Sibelius 6. It has the same deficiencies (and same types of strengths) as Finale PrintMusic, but costs twice as much at the educator price and three times as much for everybody else. I do see why a school would very much want it, as you can get lots of educational goodies. The learning curve seems about equally steep for both, from my small experience. They're really pretty similar in a lot of ways.

None of the above will allow me to write lyrics in Polish. I'm resigned to having to write in all the diacritical marks by hand. Strangely, in Finale one can add symbols in titles and other text boxes, but not in lyrics. Sibelius will let you write lyrics in Spanish, French, German, or Italian, but that's no help with Chopin.

Nevertheless, I have completed a copy of "Melodia" for mezzo or alto instead of soprano. This may be the very first such edition with the Polish lyrics.

*At the beginning of the accompaniment for "Melodia," the RH has 4 eighth notes, the first being also marked as a dotted quarter note, and the last having a two-note chord. This is perfectly reasonable, but in Finale or Sibelius the only way to do it is to write two separate lines in two of what they call "layers." That sort of works, but the "extra" line doesn't continue in this piece, and the program insists on putting in a bunch of unnecessary and intrusive rests. The best solution seems to be for me to put the dots in with a pen. Music Publisher allows you to write things that are "wrong" like this.

Elene

I haven't seen it yet, just the trailers. As Keats is "my other man," not quite up there with Our Friend but still much loved, I keep abreast of such things. As I live in the sticks I probably won't see it until it hits Netflix. I'm just hoping it won't be as irritating as Desire for Love!

No problem. I got a screamin' deal on Finale 2009 on education discount at Academic Superstore; might look into that. I don't know about support for Polish lyrics in the full version, though. A lot of people swear by Lilypond (also from the UK, I believe), but it requires programming experience.

Thank you all for the congrats on my family's new addition.

I so disliked the movie Desire for Love that I will gladly send it to anyone who wants it...for free.

I mailed it all the way to Mati in Poland, but it was returned to me, unopened??? I have a feeling that the Poles didn't want it in their country either.

Kathleen

I prefer Sibelius too. I started with Finale and went over to Sibelius.

CA

It would be very, very difficult for ANY movie to be as irritating as Desire for Love! But Bright Star might still be inaccurate and/or disturbing.

(I'd still love to have a chance to see La note bleue. No luck thus far.)

Horowitzian, I looked into Lilypond. Very interesting. Free. No graphical interface. Output is beautiful music typography, but input is letter names, brackets, etc. and it's as far from WYSIWYG as could be. Like the olden days of DOS.

It doesn't look like even the $600 version of Sibelius ($239 at Academic Superstore) supports Polish lyrics. It's conceivable that it does, but if so I can't tell from their website.

I've done a rough copy of "Dwojaki koniec" ("Double Ending") in Finale now too; I've climbed pretty far up the learning curve in a couple of days, I would say. Haven't done the lyrics yet. I think I'm going to hand over the cash to the Finale folks. (Sibelius gives discounts for Finale users if I should wish to get that later.) I may buy Music Publisher later on.

As soon as I have copies as perfected as I can get them, I'll make them available to you all. Still need to add a translation for "Melodia" and a couple of details I don't know how to do yet.

Elene

I'm very impressed with your project, Elaine. Sometimes this language thing is resolved by a global fix, such as loading a character set via your OS. Kanji, the Japanese character set (I think) comes to mind. If it's absent, empty squares replace the characters.

One of our members posted some lovely transcriptions to the Conservatory Whiz Kids forum; Alkan, I believe; Lilypad, if I remember right; maybe six or eight months ago. He was able to select the typeface he wanted, which was a bit more elegant that you usually see. That suggests you should be able to use a font with eastern European characters for your lyric.

Once done, he turned it into PDFs for uploading.

While you're doing that, I'm pounding away at the scales and arps that I "Put off 'til later." Well. It is later.

Hehe, I've never tried it. But I have heard that fairly advanced programming abilities are needed to get acceptable output. Personally, I think that GUI is the way to go for the ordinary user in this case (and that is coming from someone who uses the command line for a lot of things and is an amateur programmer!); the learning curve may be steep, but it's going to easy compared to Lilypond if you aren't a programmer.

Good luck with your work! I don't think you'll regret Finale; it's done everything I need flawlessly. Note entry via a numeric keypad is highly intuitive; more so than the numeric keypad entry Sibelius provides IMHO. There's probably ways to remap those things if you don't like the way they work though.

Cheers!

~H

Elene,

Before you shell out big bucks, check out a freeware program called MuseScore. I don't have other notation software to compare it to, but it seems very capable to me and user-friendly enough that a short on-line handbook sufficed for the "training" I needed to be comfortable.

I messed around with the specific issues you mentioned. I already knew from experience that MuseScore is capabile of notating up to four voices per staff, and I was able to recreate easily the opening measure of Melodia without needing to employ that second voice in subsequent measures.

I'm not sure what defines a program's capacity to display lyrics in foreigh languages. Even if it's not possible to enter the desired symbols directly, couldn't they be copied and pasted? I tested some Polish in MuseScore by pasting the correct text from Word, and it displayed fine. Unfortunately, I found the features that attempt automatically (1) to address the hyphenation of multisyllabic words over multiple notes, and (2) to depict the prolongation of a single syllable with a string of underscores to be glitchy.

Steven

Congratulations from me too!

It looks very nice for a free program.
Finale by the way also had a free version. I just checked, it is not free any more....: http://www.finalemusic.com/NotePad/

CA

OK, continuing the reviews, and thanks for all the advice:

MuseScore downloaded but would not allow me to select instruments to create a document; that is, there was some incompatibility or something and the program wouldn't run usably. It appears to work similarly to Finale and Sibelius, but in this case wouldn't work at all. Dang.

My husband found a product called Neuratron that doesn't allow one to enter notation but will scan printed or handwritten sheet music (that part is less usual), or "listen" to audio, and convert it to a printed score. Less useful for what I'm doing, but good for what he needs-- if it works. (Finale's scanning seems not bad for single lines but was not able, at least with my equipment, to scan the Chopin songs; only a few lines actually came out, with most of the page blank.) Neuratron weighs in at somewhere around $300.

I also noticed a program called "Music Score Publisher" which is Windows only and costs just $49.99. The website is written by a non-English speaker and is unintentionally amusing.

The trial copy of Finale has some glitches that I hope may not be present in the "real" copy. One problem is that although there is a block to enter the name of the lyricist, this block does not appear on the actual document, and I haven't found a workaround as yet. I need to give Zaleski and Krasinski their proper credit!

None of the products I've tested allow pasting in of lyrics from another program or document, at least not in any way that I can see so far. Strangely, some do allow pasting of text blocks other than lyrics, just not lyrics. Of course I could go ahead and buy a Polish version of something if I insisted. Probably easier to use a pen.

Elene

Elene: I am also so impressed by your passion. It's all I can do to get up in the morning and practice a few hours, feed the dog and read. You aren't even Polish and yet you are going through so much trouble trying to speak and write it well, not ot mention taking mazurka lessons. Where do you get the energy and the motivation? You put me to shame and I am half Polish.

I am going to edit this post to include ALL of you who have ever posted here. I am so proud to be just a small part of this intelligent, glorious and classy group. As the year draws to an end, I wanted to express my appreciation and warmest regards and love to all of you for making our thread so totally OUTSTANDING!! May we continue to keep Chopin OUT THERE for as long as we can.

My very best to you,
Kathleen

Another nice (not free, but not really expensive) program is this: http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/harmony.htm
It even has a plugin called "Virtual Singer" that can actually sing the lyrics...

CA

Thank YOU, Kathleen, for creating this forum!

CA

–Thanks, ChopinAddict. Harmony Assistant looks like it may be worthwhile.

–I’m afraid my brain must have coughed. Jane Campion had nothing to do with Impromptu. I don’t know why I thought she did. (But I really do have a lot of the movie memorized.)

–Well, Kathleen, I don’t play video games or anything. Historical research, language study, and picky editing are my crazy idea of fun. You can also chalk it all up to OCD.

And while I’m not Polish, I swear on my grandmother’s babushka that I’m a Slav. (Unless you put me in a roomful of Italians– then you see my father’s side.)

I also do not practice several hours a day. I have great admiration for those who do.

Here’s why I’m working on the Chopin songs, a few of them anyway, with such alacrity. They are not well known overall, and I think they deserve more attention; I’d like this to be my little contribution to the literature. Now, at long last, thanks to Jan Ekier and company, there is an edition with the Polish lyrics. However, all the songs are in their original keys only, making the edition less than useful for those of us with different voice ranges. So first, I am moving some of the higher ones downward. This furthers my goal of making the world safe for mezzo-sopranos– sopranos and tenors get everything, you know. As a mezzo, I have so often had to do a bunch of transcribing and transposing to get songs in keys I can use that there’s nothing unusual about this project for me, really.

I spent the bulk of my piano lesson today singing, mostly the Chopin stuff, with the luxury of having a superb accompanist– one of my teacher’s main occupations. ("Soooo many consonants!" quoth Stephen.) Unfortunately, my formerly reliable vocal mechanism has been having a lot of physical problems for years now, and most of the time I’ve simply given up on singing. I’ve decided that I am going to find ways to work around all that, by hook or by crook. I don’t know what to expect. For a while I sounded pretty good today, and then my voice just plain stopped working.

The mazurka lessons– also spotty success. I am not managing to practice that enough either. It’s one more thing than my schedule can handle. But after all the sitting with those notation programs, I sure could use more exercise!

Elene

I’ve mentioned that Chopin’s life was not especially dramatic. You want drama, Delfina Potocka is your girl.

I’ve finally happened upon some information about Delfina’s life other than the parts of it connected with Chopin and Krasiński. Running a Polish essay about her through a translation program gave hilarious but useful results. For example, the name of her father, Stanisław Delfin Komar, comes out as “Stanisław Dolphin of the Mosquitoes.” And poor Joanna Bobrowa becomes “Beaver’s Joanna.”

The author, Jerzy Jankowski, goes along with the assumption that Mme Potocka and Chopin were lovers. Here’s the part about him. Bits of translation in brackets are my own attempts:

‘W połowie listopada 1830 roku Delfina poznała Fryderyka Chopina. Młody kompozytor, w którym coraz więcej osób widziało rodzącego się geniusza, miał duże wzięcie w towarzystwie i bywał częstym gościem na różnych ekskluzywnych przyjęciach, na których spotykał Potocką. "Rozrywany jestem na wszystkie strony - pisał. - Wszedłem w pierwsze towarzystwa, siedzę między ambasadorami, książętami, ministrami. Dla mnie jest to rzecz najpotrzebniejsza, bo stamtąd niby dobry gust wychodzi; zaraz masz większy talent, jeżeli cię w ambasadzie angielskiej czy austriackiej słyszano, zaraz lepiej grasz, jeżeli cię księżna Vaudemont protegowała". Pomiędzy Delfiną a Chopinem zawiązała się nić sympatii, która przerodziła się później w gorący romans.
[Between Delfina and Chopin a thread of sympathy was tied, which later turned into a hot romance.]
Najpierw odwiedzała go pod pretekstem nauki gry na fortepianie, potem preteksty nie były już potrzebne.

‘Half of November of 1830 a Fredericka of Chopin got to know the Dauphin. The young composer, in which more and more persons could see the genius being born, had the great popularity in the company and he was a regular guest on different exclusive parties, on which he met Potocka. "I am being torn in all directions - wrote. - I entered the first societies, I am sitting between ambassadors, with princes, with ministers. For me it is the most needed thing, because from there supposedly the good taste is coming out; right away you are having a lot of talent, if you in the English or Austrian embassy could heard, right away better you are playing, if the Vaudemont princess recommended you ". Between Delfiną and with Chopin thread started for the girlfriend which turned later into the torrid affair. At first she visited him under the pretext of the learning of the playing of the grand piano, then pretexts weren't already needed.

‘Związek ten przetrwał cztery lata, ale przyjaciółmi pozostali przez całe życie.
[This bond survived only four years, but they continued to be friends their whole lives.]
Delfinie Fryderyk poświęcił swój Koncert fortepianowy f-moll.
[To Delfina Fryderyk dedicated his F minor piano concerto.]’


There are multiple soap operas going on here. One concerns Mieczysław Potocki and his mother. It seems that when Potocki’s father died, his mother insisted that he was not his legal father’s son and therefore should not inherit the gigantic family fortune. According to her, he had been conceived when she was raped by an Italian thug during her honeymoon! The son prevailed in court, arguing that his father had legally recognized him and that was what counted. Good grief, no wonder Mieczysław was so screwed up. (Chopin was known to pal around with him at times, though. Eek.) After his mother's death, Mieczysław exiled her posthumously by having her body dug up and sent away.

I didn’t know about this sorry situation: Zygmunt Krasiński, pressured into marrying Eliza Branicka but still hopelessly in love with Delfina, had the bright idea that he and his new wife would move to Nice and live near her, and they would all be the best of friends. Yeah, like THAT was going to work. It just goes to show that being a literary genius doesn’t necessarily mean you have a lick of sense. They were all miserable-- big surprise there. Delfina finally ended the torture by ending the affair. However-- as with Chopin-- she and Krasiński remained friends till the end of his life.

When I found all this, I’d been trying to discover something about Delfina’s relationship with yet another count, Charles de Flahaut. His name is always linked with hers, but when I Googled him, all I could find was his famous affair with another Countess Potocka, the older and not closely related Anna. Apparently Delfina came along later-- this was when she first tried to leave her abusive husband. Flahaut seems to have been a dashing and highly popular guy who had his pick of ladies. Interestingly, he was the illegitimate son of Talleyrand, as Delacroix is thought to have been. And his mother was a novelist.

Then there was the French crown prince, Ferdinand d’Orléans. I still don’t know what the deal was between him and Delfina, though whatever it was seems to have taken place before his marriage in 1837. He died at age 32, in 1842. I do know that the untimely death of the prince was bad for his father’s regime and bad for the country. Ferdinand was well-liked by the people, and more importantly, well respected, considered intelligent and competent. He had liberal and progressive leanings.

We’re told that Mickiewicz referred to Delfina as “the Great Sinner” not specifically because of her many affairs, but because she conducted them while claiming to be exceptionally pious, and he thought she was a hypocrite. Might remind us of another “loose” woman we’ve discussed here.

I was glad to see that Delfina was friends with Norwid; I’ve always had a soft spot for that uncompromising artist.

But what has most arrested my attention is the horrifying thought of surviving breast cancer and a mastectomy in the 1870s. At least ether had come into use the decade before, and they had opiates.

Rather than post the longest post in PW history, 10 pages or so, I’ve put this new Delfina material up for you at http://www.box.net/shared/92cnbgpopq.

Elene

Elene: You truly are amazing. I can't even type five words without typos in 3 of them.

Gosh, what a great soap opera the above would make.

I received Dr. Kallberg's book today, and I can see that my brain is going to get a real work-out.

I'm going to take it with me to FL on Friday and hope that all the abundant sunshine there will help clear my head.

Kathleen

"To what extent was it is a true opinion, it is hard today to say. In the memory of friends however she has always remained the beautiful, sensitive and loving woman which exerted her significant effect both to the music of Chopin, as well as the poetry of Zygmunt Krasiński and Cyprian Norwid. She went down in history as the muse of the Polish Romanticism."

Thanks, Elene. The translation programs do give us some lovely and unusual turns of phrase, and the ending (quoted above) can't be beat in any language.

I remember asking in the Pianist Corner about just why this is. While I have little knowledge of Lieder, many people are connoisseurs; still, I got no real answers as to whether Chopin's songs are really as ignored as they appear to be, and, if so, why. To my uneducated ear, they're quite appealing.

Dang, I wonder if I once posed this question here, too.

Steven

"I got no real answers as to whether Chopin's songs are really as ignored as they appear to be,"

It was the uneasy silence of the connoisseur who realizes that if, oh, Madonna, or Hannah Montana, or even Britney or Billy Ray Cyrus (of the mullet), or Celine Dion got hold of them, mashed them up with some lyrics that that they liked, scored them for a band not too big or expensive to tour, and sold them to a movie that was going to be a big hit with teenage girls... everyone would be liking them. Copyright is long-expired, composer's not going to make a fuss. Eventually you would hear them in elevators, even funeral homes, and know that Chopin was spinning in his resting place at Pere LeChaisse.

There's a long history of this very thing.

If you could amend the wish to get a more satisfactory result, they might be just as glad to grant it.

At the risk of stating the painfully obvious, one thing that holds them back here is being in Polish, a language extremely daunting to non-Poles. The only recordings I've seen have been Polish ones - as in made in Poland by and for Poles.

And yet except for the original Polish edition of 1859, the only scores I've seen were not in Polish!

I just looked at CFEO, and the original German edition of 1859 and French edition of 1879 were in those respective languages only; the original English edition of 1874 had text in both English and German, just like the later Schirmer publication most familiar to Americans.

While Polish is unfamiliar and daunting (and English is, presumably, too déclassé for art songs), the language of Lieder is German. If singing these songs in a familiar language was always a convenient option, then I think there must be other factors.

I guess it's possible that there's an unwritten rule among singers that if a Lied cannot be sung in its original language, it mustn't be sung at all—but I would be surprised if such purism could be the dominant force that's kept Chopin's songs obscure for 150 years.

Steven