Maria Agata Szymanowska
1789 — 1831
Maria Szymanowska was a Polish composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century. She toured extensively throughout Europe, especially in the 1820s, before settling permanently in Saint Petersburg. In the Russian imperial capital, she composed for the court, gave concerts, taught music, and ran an influential salon. The salons in 18th-century France were intellectual gatherings held at home by educated women. In 1837, the composer and music critic Robert Schumann defined salon music as elegant light music and stated that this type of social music should sound beautiful, delicate, and fashionable. Szymanowska was highly praised by Schumann for her salon music works, especially her etudes.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Maria Szymanowska.
From the period sources
Maria Szymanowska, born Maria Wolowski around 1790 in Poland, was a distinguished pianist who studied under John Field in Moscow. She toured extensively in Germany, France, and England, and her compositions, primarily for piano with a few songs, included five fantasias, a nocturne, a set of variations, and twelve studies, of which Robert Schumann “speaks with considerable warmth,” according to A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1880). Her playing was noted in London, where she performed in 1824, as recorded in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1904).
Szymanowska’s enduring fame, however, largely stems from her connection to Goethe, who developed an “infatuation for her,” as Grove’s Dictionary (1908) notes. Goethe knew her from as early as 1821, praising her playing above Hummel’s, though Felix Mendelssohn, then at Weimar, observed that “those who do so… think more of her pretty face than her not pretty playing.” Goethe renewed their acquaintance in 1823, calling her “an incredible player” and expressing his excitement at hearing music after a long interval. She is also credited with inspiring Goethe’s ‘Trilogie der Leidenschaft,’ with one poem, ‘Aussuhnung,’ directly alluding to her. In 1824, Zelter conveyed to Goethe that Szymanowska was “furiously in love (rasend verliebt) with you,” having given him “a hundred kisses on my mouth for you.” Szymanowska died in St. Petersburg in August 1831 of cholera, having introduced her daughter’s future husband, the poet Mickiewicz, to Goethe in 1829.