Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/Francis Schonken portion (revised 31/12/2020)

Proposal by Francis Schonken (talk), 31 December 2020 revision (Rink source added):

3rd and last subsection to be added to Frédéric Chopin
The text proposed below would replace the explanatory footnote "n 6":

====Passions====

Early October 1829 Chopin wrote to Woyciechowski: The "adagio" is the second movement (Larghetto) of his Piano Concerto Op. 21, and the "little waltz" is his Op. posth. 70, No. 3, in D-flat major. Translators Arthur Hedley (1962) and David Frick (2016) assumed that the "ideal", unnamed in Chopin's letter, refers to a woman. According to, among others, biographers Frederick Niecks (1888), Adam Zamoyski (1979, rev. 2010) and Alan Walker (2018) that woman was Konstancja Gładkowska. According to Walker, the passage is "[t]he clearest indication we have of Chopin's infatuation with Konstancja." In April 1830 Chopin wrote Woyciechowski that the new concerto he was composing (Op. 11) has no value until Woyciechowski has heard it and approved of it. The summer of that year Chopin spent a few weeks with his friend on his estate in Poturzyn. From a letter he wrote him after returning to Warsaw: According to Niecks, Chopin had two passions: his love for Gładkowska and his friendship for Woyciechowski, while he expressed his friendship for the latter sometimes in words a lover would use towards his beloved. Zamoyski considered the quoted passage from the letter of 4 September consistent with how feelings were expressed in the Romantic era. According to Walker, the passage is undeniably erotic, and Chopin transferred what he was feeling for Gładkowska to Woyciechowski. Music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim saw hand-wringing in such explanations of this and other fervent letters Chopin wrote to his friend. According to a 2020 radio broadcast by Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, the "ideal" which Chopin mentioned in his letter of 3 October 1829 was Woyciechowski himself, the object of the composer's affection for many years.

Paragraph to be added between the 4th and 5th paragraphs of the "Reception and influence" section
In this part of the proposal, the prose and section title of the "Sexuality" section are removed, and replaced by this text, placed as a new paragraph between the current 4th and 5th paragraphs of the "Reception and influence" section:

Musicologist Erinn Knyt writes: "In the nineteenth century Chopin and his music were commonly viewed as effeminate, androgynous, childish, sickly, and 'ethnically other.'" The music historian Jeffrey Kallberg says that in Chopin's time, "listeners to the genre of the piano nocturne often couched their reactions in feminine imagery", and he cites many examples of such reactions to Chopin's nocturnes. Such genderization was not commonly applied to other piano genres such as the scherzo or the polonaise. "To be associated with the feminine was also often to be devalorized", and such associations of Chopin's music with the "feminine" did not begin to shift until the twentieth century, when pianists such as Artur Rubinstein began to play these works in a less sentimental manner, away from "salon style", and when musical analysis of a more rigorous nature (such as that of Heinrich Schenker) began to assert itself.

References and sources

 * Sources
 * Kallberg, Jeffrey (2010). "The Harmony of the Tea Table: Gender and Ideology in the Piano Nocturne", in Representations , No. 39 (Summer, 1992), pp. 102–133
 * Walker, Alan (2018). Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374714376
 * Walker, Alan (2018). Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374714376
 * Walker, Alan (2018). Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374714376
 * Walker, Alan (2018). Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374714376

Versions of the proposal
The main versions of the proposal are:
 * 3rd statement version: 07:38, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 4th statement version: 07:51, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 5th statement version: 21:29, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * 6th statement version: 16:59, 23 December 2020 (UTC): version at the start of RfC
 * 31/12/20 revision: 06:55, 31 December 2020 (UTC)