Chopin at the Boundaries : Sex, History and Musical Genre

Chopin cuts a curious figure in contemporary culture.

A Pole working among Frenchmen, he exudes exoticism even as he partakes of European tradition.

A male composer who wrote in "feminine" genres like the nocturne for domestic settings such as the salon, he confuses our sense of the boundaries of gender.

Central to our repertory, he nevertheless remains a marginalized figure.

The complex and unsettling status of Chopin in our culture - what it means and how it came about - is Jeffrey Kallberg's subject in this book.

Combining social history, literary theory, musicology and feminist thought, "Chopin at the Boundaries" situates Chopin's music historically within his native Polish and adopted French cultures and to demonstrate the effects of these historical constructions on present experience. "Raphaelesque", "an airy apparition", "small fairy voices sighing under silver bells" - these and other ethereal images were conferred on Chopin's music in his lifetime, all of them evoking notions of the feminine in the minds of contemporary listeners. Why this was - how Chopin, well before the late-19th century, came to be seen as a "woman's composer" - what this might have to do with Chopin's own somewhat marginal sexual identity, and what it can tell us about constructions of gender at the time are central concerns of this book.

Kallberg also shows how the nocturne as a genre became freighted with ideological significance and, focusing on the Polonaise-Fantasy, the "last" Mazurka, and the Preludes, examines certain social constructions that should figure in our understanding of Chopin's compositional methods and purposes.

Kallberg's approach to the composer reveals a new Chopin, one situated precisely where questions of gender open up into the very important question of genre.