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Princesse de Polignac

Music's Modern MuseA Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac

Sylvia Kahan

Superb new biography...The list of her achievements - music dedicated to her,

works commissioned by her, artists supported by her - are all scrupulously

recorded here...a dazzling and inspiring array...In Sylvia Kahan Winnaretta

[Singer-Polignac] has a biographer able to explain her special mixture of

arrogance, intelligence and bravery. --Margaret Reynolds, The Times

Her book is magnificently readable. The reader's complaint might be that it

stopped after 550 pages and has not yet been made into a movie. THE

VILLAGER

The American-born Winnaretta Singer [1865-1943] was a millionaire at theage of eighteen, due to her inheriting a substantial part of the Singer Sewing

Machine fortune. Her 1893 marriage to Prince Edmond de Polignac, an

amateur composer, brought her into contact with the most elite strata of

French society. After Edmond's death in 1901, she used her fortune to benefit

the arts, science, and letters. Her most significant contribution was in the

musical domain: in addition to subsidizing individual artists [Boulanger, Haskil, Rubinstein, Horowitz] and

organizations [the Ballets Russes, l'Opra de Paris, l 'Orchestre Symphonique de Paris], she made a lifelong

project of commissioning new musical works from composers, many of them unknown and struggling, to be

performed in her Paris salon. The list of works created as a result is long and extraordinary: Stravinsky's Renard,

Satie's Socrate, Falla'sEl Retablo de Maese Pedro, and Poulenc's Two-Piano and Organ Concertos are among

the best-known titles. In addition, her salon was a gathering place for luminaries of French culture such as

Proust, Cocteau, Monet, Diaghilev, and Colette. Many of Proust's memorable evocations of salon culture were

born during his attendance at concerts in the Polignac music room. Sylvia Kahan brings to life this eccentric andextravagant lover of the arts, whose influence on the 20th Century world of music and literature remains

incalculable.

DETAILS

29 b/w illustrations

576 pages

Size: 9 x 6 in

ISBN: 9781580461337

Binding: HardbackFirst published: 15/May/2003

Price: 49.95 USD / 30.00 GBP Imprint: University of Rochester Press

Series:Eastman Studies in Music

Subject: Music

BIC class: AVH

STATUS: Available

Details updated on 16/12/2009

Contents1 An International Child

2 Life with Mother3 A Woman of the World

http://www.urpress.com/EASIC.HTMhttp://www.urpress.com/EASIC.HTMhttp://www.urpress.com/C.HTMhttp://www.urpress.com/EASIC.HTMhttp://www.urpress.com/C.HTM

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4 The Sewing Machine and the Lyre

5 Marriage and Music

6 La Belle Epoque

7 Renovations

8 Modern Times

9 The Astonishing Years

10 Shelter from the Storm

11 The Magic of Everyday Things

12 Cottages of the Elite, Palaces of the People

13 A Pride of Protgs

14 Mademoiselle

15 All Music is Modern

16 The Beautiful Kingdom of Sounds

Reviews

This is a book to be referred to again and again...an authoritative study that will give any interested

reader an overview of a fascinating artistic epoch with a complex and intriguing survivor at its helm.

Underneath the forbidding exterior, "Aunt Winnie" was a sensitive and selfless philanthropist, both

acutely perceptive of genuine talent in others and wide-ranging in her patronage. These aspects shine

clearly through the mine of detailed information in Sylvia Kahan's important new study. --Robert

Orledge, Times Literary Supplement

Kahan appears to have gotten as close to Singer-Polignac as any scholar could in the many years she

worked on this good book. NOTES, March 2005

This is a compelling portrait of one of the Belle Epoque's most influential musical patrons. . . . Kahan

does justice to this inspiring woman's legacy by crafting a biography that is heartfelt and stimulating.FRENCH REVIEW, 2006, Eileen M. Angelini

Wonderfully researched. . . . Sensitively sets Singer Polignac's vibrant lesbianism in the context of

the times. CLASSICAL MUSIC [Andrew Green]