(Post deleted because it was extremely wrong)

Sorry Kathleen, I made a mistake!!

Maybe "greg" was taken and he decided to spell his name backward.

Is "gerg"'s name actually Greg?
If so, of course I retract my post.

I have no idea. Twas just throwing a theory out there.

Reasonable theory. I was guessing it was just inadvertent letter reversal.

What you said. I didn't want "Greg522" or some such. Mozart supposedly played stuff backwards. My cousins and I used to say each others' names backwards, so why not? :-)

YESSSSSS! I rock! Just kidding haha =p

As the king said in Amadeus, "Well there it is."

Let's see if I can delete my "correction" post......

No need to be kidding.
Maybe you don't always know what "the 9th" means (inside joke) .....but you're pretty good at figuring out everything else.

Good job!!!!

Dear Kathleen,

How is 72/1 marked? I think even this recording is a bit fast for my taste. Perhaps this opinion spawns from having the Arrau recording emblazoned upon the memory.

YES, you can do this piece! Remember that you can do anything you put your mind to, and needn't push for that which might be uncomfortable or that which you do not love.

Fondest regards,

Greg

Well, I figured "THE 9th" HAD to be what he meant, but like I said, I've seen crazier things here, so I wasn't completely positive.

You remember how it's been demonstrated that the mind can unscramble words no matter in what order the letters are if they're all there? - Well, I always read "gerg" as Greg. The mirror image had to be pointed out to me.

.....and I never for a second thought of "Greg"!

OH HAPPY DAY!!Frycek is back!! Welcome back, dear friend.

Yes, I do remember thinking I was so brilliant when I could read those sentences, only to discover most people could.

Thank you, Greg (or Gerg) for your kind support. I believe I will try for an Lentgo tempo.

If you haven't had a laugh lately, read the current thread by 10 fingers, presently going on. He is hysterical. He is the one who put out that thread about spending all his money on a piano, practicing 10 hours a day and then his musical background with a triangle.

Regards to all. Color me joyous!

Kathleen

Very glad to hear from Frycek as well!

"Lentgo"-- lento with a little more forward motion? Maybe that works well! I've been practicing my dances for March 5, and have sat down for a moment because the mazurka steps wear me out so fast-- meaning I don't practice remotely enough. My husband thought my adagio concept for the slow movement of the cello concerto was a bit too static. So maybe it should be more "lentgo."

Or possibly "letgo"-- more flexible?

I always kind of wondered if Greg was called "Gerg" as a childhood nickname or something. Guess not. But a gerg by any other name would still be useful to have around as an e-cital webmaster and congenial poster.

Elene

Interesting.... This site says Chopin was born on the 22nd of February, while other sites (including the Wikipedia) say the 1st of March.... But if you google it, there are other sites that say the 22nd of February, which is already today in Australia....
So when was he born? Does anybody know for sure? This is very important....

PS: Sorry for cross-posting!

His family celebrated March 1 as his birthday. I figure his mom knew, since she was there. His birth certificate said February 22. There are varying ideas about why that was the case, but I don't think anyone knows for sure.

One can bypass all that by celebrating his name-day, March 5.

I was just now working on dancing to 67/4 for a small performance (really small) on that date. It's very strange in some measures trying to fit the steps in with the rubato. It's making me wonder again about the nature of rubato in mazurkas generally-- while Chopin's mazurkas weren't meant for dancing, people were dancing to other mazurkas all the time, and if they weren't generally played in a straight 3.... The ballroom mazurkas I've heard are more like waltzes, "boom-chuck-chuck," very straight, but the folk model wasn't like that... I guess.

Anyway, most of it is manageable, except for a couple of measures where I have to sort of hang in midair if I use the steps I'm thinking of. I have to come up with something else for those measures.

Forgive me if I'm repeating myself.

Elene

That is interesting, Elene, thanks for the information.
I will celebrate Chopin today too, and then again on the 1st of March.... He deserves to be celebrated twice anyway!



Good luck with the mazurka! I haven't tried that mazurka yet, but it is very nice!

I'm back momentarily at least. We'll just see how bad a tussle I get into because of the Flint recordings.

Re Fryc's birthday - I'm afraid to say anything not being able to cite chapter and verse - but somewhere I read that Mikolaj, his father, was not very good with dates and was apparently not quite sure of his own date of birth and given that as February 22 and March 1st fell on a Thursday, he may have simply misremembered. I've also heard it may have had to do with the tax situation but have never heard any details about that. I'm with Elene on March 1st though. I'm a mother and a mother knows. Justyna would've known to the minute if there'd been a clock handy. Chopin himself wrote "Born March 1st, 1810 under the sign of Pisces" on an application to the Polish literary society so that should seal it.

Under the sign of Pisces... Like me!

Goodness, in some places it's already February 22! I'm way looking forward to the mazurka recital. Happy near-birthday to Fryc! And why not celebrate more than once?

I didn't realize that Chopin had at one point identified himself as a Pisces. At least he did formally give his birthdate, so we know which date HE thought was correct.

(By the way, my own mother has a confusion over her own birthdate; her mom and the certificate say different things. But in her immigrant family's case there could possibly have been language issues that caused a problem. We don't know. We go with her mother's date.)

Frycek, I felt honor-bound to join the fray over there at the discussion of the Flint material. Yikes. I was glad you were there. I've spent too much of the day on it, but then, it is a major aspect of the subject I do most of my writing about. And after my profession(s) was disparaged, I couldn't very well shut up. But things have stayed pretty civil, happily.

I don't have any birthday stuff to add right now, but I am going to post the entirety of one of the Flint sessions with the Chopin voice on my blog later tonight. I still haven't thought of anything big to do for March 1.

Elene

I am fond of Arrau's recording of 72/1, as I am of most of Arrau's interpretations of Chopin.

We already said: Andante

P.S. About the B-day: I made sure to check on the time of day.

Looks like it was 6 PM, Zelazowa time.
Which would be noon, New York time, 11 A.M. Chicago time, etc.

This might seem silly since we're not even sure exactly what day it was.

But I'm celebrating on Monday, March 1, at noon.

Oh, I'll have to make some quiet time at 10 am next Monday, then! Thanks, Mark, it never even occurred to me to ask what time of day he was born.

(I think Strings & Wood just meant to give a quote, but forgot the quotation marks. It wasn't meant as a repeat of the question of how 72/1 was marked.)

Elene

I would think the other Jeff would know, if anyone would.

I think the tradition is he was born at night. There's some tale that a local festival was going on (it seems odd to me - in Poland - in March - outside in the snow at night- but what do I know) and that there was there was singing and dancing going on within earshot of the house when he was born.

Looking for clarification on that I just found this horrid little story.
http://teacherbulletin.org/TB_VOL8/dl_pdfs/Chopin.pdf

¡Ay! That story reminds me of Desire for Love. They didn't even get the birth order of the kids right. It did get me trying to remember, though, what was really supposed to have happened with little Frycek and music, when he was very young. Didn't his parents think he hated music at first, because it made him cry? Perhaps because it simply was sad music? Or perhaps because it wasn't up to his standards?

I don't know-- is it dark at 6 pm near Warsaw on March 1? It's still fairly dark here at that time this week. I suppose I could check the time of sunset in Warsaw in a few days. Maybe the hardy Poles didn't mind being out in the snow?

It's said that Aurore Dupin was born while a quadrille was being played, if I remember correctly.

Elene

Looking forward to hearing the mazurka e-cital later today when I am not in a public place.

On the way to the office this morning, I turned on "Performance Today" on public radio. They were playing the Fantaisie-Impromptu. "Dang," I thought, "They got his birthday wrong." But after the piece Fred Child said, "Frederic Chopin's 200th birthday is one week from today." He added that PT is going to do Chopin works, interviews with major players, etc., throughout March. Then he said that the public is invited to submit recordings. "It doesn't have to be note-perfect, just heartfelt."

OK, here's our chance, with our present and former e-cital recordings:

http://performancetoday.publicradio.org/my_performance_today/

Elene