The life and works of Sergei Bortkievich (1877-1952), part 1: The artist’s profile

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The life and works of Sergei Bortkievich (1877-1952), part 1: The artist’s profile

Journal Title: Notes Muzyczny - Year 2016, Vol 1, Issue 5

Abstract

Sergei Bortkievich was a composer whose creative output has been recently rediscovered. Since his death in 1952, his works for many years had been almost completely forgotten. Fortunately, at the end of the 20th century, there were artists and researchers who began to be more and more interested in his works . Thanks to them, Bortkievich's music was retrieved from the archives and included into concert programmes. Hence, the profile of Sergei Bortkievich as a pianist, composer, teacher and author of literary works is becoming more and more famous and appreciated in the artistic community. This paper opens a cycle of articles based on the doctoral thesis entitled Dance idiom in Sergei Bortkievich's works, which is a result of a several years of research on the artist’s compositions and biography. In numerous source texts, including various music encyclopedias, authors speculate about Sergei Bortkievich’s nationality. Some of them claim that he was Russian , others write about his Ukrainian origin . Researchers often mention he was a member of the Austrian community . That is most certainly due to the fact that the artist spent most of his life in Austria and received an Austrian citizenship in the 1920s. The author of one of web pages writes that "Sergei Bortkievich was born in the Ukrainian town named Kharkov to a noble family of a Polish origin, as a son of the landowner Edward Bortkiewicz" . Due to the mentioned state of research, the need determine the composer’s nationality and to study the history and genealogy of his family in great detail seemed natural. That is why one of the aims of the article is to discuss the assumption of Bortkievich’s Polish lineage even though he was born and raised in the territory of the present-day Ukraine. Results of these studies and justification of the idea could serve as a basis for promoting the composer, especially within Poland’s artistic community. Luckily, it was possible to contact Juliusz Bortkiewicz, the author of the website quoted here. He also proved to be the composer’s distant relative. With his help A. Nadolska managed to access numerous interesting documents on the life history and genealogy of the Bortkievich [Polish: Bortkiewicz] family, especially the composer’s father – Edward Bortkiewicz. The result of the research is a well-based conclusion of Sergei Bortkievich’s Polish lineage. The article also describes Sergei Bortkievich's artistic career in various areas of musical activity, i.e., as a pianist, composer, conductor, teacher and author.<br/><br/>

Authors and Affiliations

Agnieszka Kościelak-Nadolska

Keywords

Sergei Bortkievich dance

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EP ID EP517726
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