Moniuszko, Stanislaw

Moniuszko, Stanislaw – 5 Overtures: Halka, Flis, Jawnuta, Paria, Verbum Nobile

/ in a slip case /

Editor’s Preface
If listening to and understanding music places high demands on the listener, speaking and writing about it poses further quite special challenges to writers and readers alike. How is it possible or feasible to think about something so intangible and to convey it to other people? This question applies not only to music in general, but especially to Stanislaw Moniuszko and his forgotten works.

In the 2011-12 winter semester, I held a seminar on “Writing about Music” at the Musicological Institute of Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf. The result was five prefaces to opera overtures by Moniuszko: Halka, Flis, Jawnuta, Paria, and Verbum Nobile. The relevance of such practical experience became immediately apparent in that, happily, there were more seminar members than prefaces to be written. As a result, students from the arts and humanities formed teams to write joint essays. The combinations produced a very broad and varied array of intellectual and personal prerequisites, which led to productive discussions. During the regular seminar sessions, the emerging and expanding versions were debated, altered, and optimized both within the group and in individual discussions using various approaches and methods of reading.

One primary “difficulty,” and at the same time an opportunity, was the paucity of scholarly writings on Moniuszko in German. The ability and necessity of proceeding more or less from scratch made it possible to view his works with a fresh and independent eye. As a result, all the prefaces represent wholly different and original approaches, convincingly demonstrating that the study of music outside the standard “canon” is always worth the effort.

Yvonne Wasserloos, May 2012

You look for prefaces online to the 5 overtures? Search by SKU 1241/ 1242 / 1243 / 1244 / 1245