Six Menuets by Maria Szymanowska
Maria Agata Wolowska was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1789. From an early age she showed great talent at the keyboard despite her lack of formal music education. She embarked on an ambitious tour of Europe culminating in a tour of Paris where she played before royalty and several famous musicians including Luigi Cherubini, the director of the Paris Conservatory.
By the time Maria returned to Poland, her family had arranged for her to marry Jozef Szymanowski, a landowner, Maria soon became the mother of three children. After the marriage, her musical career continued to thrive. Frequent performances and time away from home caused great tension with her husband and their eventual divorce in 1820. Maria then became both a single mother and the first professional female pianist in Europe, supporting her young family through performing, composing, and teaching.
Most of Szymanowska’s compositions were written between 1815 and 1820 and were published during her lifetime. As Maria had no formal compositional training, her works are more creative and less confined by the strict rules of compositional structures and styles of this period. She composed over 110 works including 20 songs, chamber music and 90 piano pieces in the form of nocturnes, waltzes, polonaises, mazurkas, études, and minuets.
Throughout the 1820’s, Maria crisscrossed Europe on concert tours, charming audiences with her pianistic virtuosity and gracious personality. Reportedly, she was the first professional pianist to perform from memory, a decade ahead of Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann. Her performances were praised by composers Muzio Clementi and Gioachino Rossini. She enjoyed the support and friendship of fellow composer/performers Johann Hummel and John Field. She made quite an impression on young Frédéric Chopin who first heard Szymanowska play in 1823.
In Russia, Czar Alexander I gave her the honorary title of “First Pianist of the Royal Princesses Elizabeth and Maria”. By November 1827, Maria relocated to St Petersburg definitively. There she divided her time between the education of her daughters, composition, lessons, and concerts. Sadly, at the height of her career, she fell victim to the cholera epidemic of 1831.