Maria Szymanowska

Origins and early life

Maria Szymanowska was born Marianna Agata Wołowska in Warsaw on 14 December 1789, and her Jewish descent is on her father's side: the Wołowski family had been the Schor family of Rohatyn, and Elisha Schor's son took the name Franciszek Wołowski when he was baptized at Lwów on 19 September 1759 with about a thousand followers of Jacob Frank, in the collective conversion of the Frankist movement. This fiche states plainly what the sources establish and what they do not: Maria's father Franciszek Wołowski, a landowner and brewer, belonged to that converted family, and her mother Barbara Lanckorońska came from the Polish Catholic nobility; whether Maria's father was himself the man baptized in 1759 or was born shortly after into the already-converted family has not been fixed with certainty, so that her Jewish ancestor stands at the level of her father or her grandfather — either way within the descent rule of this site. She was raised a Catholic.

Work and career

She studied in Warsaw, played for Cherubini and for John Field, and from 1815 to 1828 toured Europe as a professional virtuoso — one of the first women to live by public concerts — playing in Paris, London, Rome, Berlin and across Russia. In 1822 Tsar Alexander I made her first pianist to the imperial court. Her Vingt Exercices et Préludes and her nocturnes, published in Paris and Leipzig, use a singing right hand over a wide spread left, and Chopin, who admired her, took up that manner.

Goethe, at seventy-four, was captivated by her playing at Marienbad and wrote for her the poem Aussöhnung, the third part of the Trilogy of Passion. Her Warsaw and Petersburg salons drew Mickiewicz, Pushkin and Glinka; Mickiewicz married her daughter Celina. She died of cholera at Saint Petersburg on 24 July 1831.