Early life
Ignacy Jan Paderewski was born on 6 November 1860 (18 November by the Julian calendar then in use in Russia) in Kuryłówka, in Podolia, at the time part of the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine). His father, Jan Paderewski, worked as an estate steward and came from impoverished noble stock; his mother, Poliksena Nowicka, died only months after his birth. Both parents were musical — his father played the violin as an amateur. As a small child Ignacy also lost his father for a time to arrest and imprisonment, a consequence of the elder Paderewski's involvement in the January Uprising of 1863, and the boy was raised for a period by an aunt before rejoining his father.
He showed early gifts for music and was largely self-taught as a child, though he did take some early lessons from Piotr Sowiński. At about the age of twelve he was brought to Warsaw, and from 1873 to 1878 he studied at the Warsaw Music Institute (Conservatory), where he then also worked for a time as a teacher of piano.
Formation as a pianist and composer
Paderewski's early adulthood was difficult. In 1880 he married a fellow student from the Conservatory, Antonina Korsakówna; she died of complications following childbirth, leaving him with a son, Alfred, who lived with a severe disability. Determined to pursue composition, Paderewski left the infant in the care of friends and travelled to Berlin, where he undertook further studies in 1882 and 1884 with Friedrich Kiel and Heinrich Urban, and gave his first concert as a composer there in January 1883 (followed by one in Warsaw in 1885). It was also in Berlin that he came to know Richard Strauss and Anton Rubinstein; Rubinstein's encouragement proved important in persuading him to pursue a full career as a performer and composer.
In the summers of 1883 and 1884 Paderewski stayed in Zakopane, becoming one of the first composers to draw on the folk music of the Tatra highlanders — work reflected in his Album tatrzańskie, Op. 12.
The turning point in his development as a pianist came through a meeting with the celebrated actress Helena Modrzejewska (Modjeska), who helped arrange and fund further piano study in Vienna under the leading pedagogue Theodor Leszetycki. This training opened the way to a teaching post at the Strasbourg Conservatoire, where he taught piano as well as harmony and counterpoint.
International career
Paderewski's first Paris recital, on 3 March 1888 at the Salle Érard, launched a touring career as a concert pianist that was to last more than fifty years. Success in Paris was followed by London in 1890 (where his forceful style at first earned him some mockery from English critics) and by an American debut in 1891 that triggered what was later called "Paddymania." From then on he returned to the United States repeatedly — PWM records 29 tours up to 1939 — travelling with a private railway carriage and a large entourage, and he also performed in Britain, continental Europe, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. He became known as a pioneer of the solo recital format, at a time when concert bills usually mixed several performers.
Paderewski used his wealth and fame for philanthropic and artistic causes throughout his life: in 1896 he endowed a foundation to support young American composers, and in 1897 he established a competition for Polish composers and writers.
As a composer, Paderewski's reputation was built above all by his Piano Concerto (premiered 1889) and the Fantaisie polonaise, Op. 19 (1893), both closely tied to his own concert career. In 1903 — one of his rare periods of relief from touring — he completed the Piano Sonata in E-flat minor, Op. 21, the Douze mélodies, Op. 22 (settings of Catulle Mendès), and the Variations et fugue, Op. 23, regarded by some as his most successful work for piano. He also began his large-scale Symphony in 1903, completing it only during a break from performing forced by ill health in 1907–08; it met a mixed reception, including a famously scathing verdict from the young Karol Szymanowski.
His most ambitious work was the opera Manru, begun in 1893 and completed in January 1901; it received its successful premiere in Dresden on 29 May 1901, and went on to productions in numerous other countries, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1902 — to date the only opera by a Polish composer ever staged there.
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941)
References
Dąbrowski, A. G. (2019, August 29). Orędownik sprawy polskiej Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941).
Przystanek Historia, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. https://przystanekhistoria.pl/pa2/tematy/emigracja/55512,Oredownik-sprawy-polskiej-Ignacy-Jan-Paderewski-18601941.html
Perkowska-Waszek, M. (n.d.). Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941). In Encyklopedia Muzyczna PWM (Vol. N–Pa). Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne.Samson, J. (2001).
Paderewski, Ignacy Jan. Grove Music Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.20672Sobolewski, E. (2017, January).
Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Culture.pl (Instytut Adama Mickiewicza). https://culture.pl/pl/tworca/ignacy-jan-paderewski
Marriage to Helena and public life before 1914
In 1899 Paderewski married Helena Górska, who had looked after him during his early years in Warsaw and had helped raise his son Alfred; she had previously been married to the violinist Władysław Górski. The couple settled at the Villa Riond-Bosson near Morges, on Lake Geneva, where Paderewski, now a wealthy man, entertained lavishly and increasingly took on the public role of an elder statesman of Polish culture. Helena was herself an active philanthropist, later heading the first Polish Red Cross; she died in 1934, seven years before her husband.
In 1910 Paderewski funded and unveiled the Grunwald Monument in Kraków, marking the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald — an event that became a rallying point for Poles from all three partitions and from abroad, and a prelude to his wartime political activity.
Statesman and advocate for Poland
The outbreak of the First World War found Paderewski in Switzerland. In January 1915 he became honorary vice-president, and effectively the leading figure, of a relief committee for war victims in Poland founded in Vevey; he went on to establish similar committees in Paris and London, and then undertook a long campaign among Polish communities in the United States, combining fundraising, concerts and impassioned public speaking. Through Edward House, adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, Paderewski met Wilson twice in 1916 and prepared memoranda on the Polish question in early 1917. Wilson's address to the US Senate of 22 January 1917 referred to the need for a united, independent Poland, and Poland's independence was later named among the Fourteen Points Wilson put before Congress on 8 January 1918.
Paderewski returned to a newly re-emerging Poland in late 1918. His arrival in Poznań, still under Prussian control, at the end of December 1918 helped spark the Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) Uprising, which succeeded in bringing the region into the reborn Polish state. In January 1919 he was appointed Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, holding both posts until his resignation in December 1919. As head of the Polish delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, he signed the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, alongside Roman Dmowski.
After leaving the premiership, Paderewski continued to represent Poland internationally for a time, returning to public service in the summer of 1920, when the Red Army advanced on Warsaw, as Polish delegate to the Conference of Ambassadors — effectively a continuation of the Peace Conference. He resigned this post in December 1920 and withdrew to Riond-Bosson, from where he played the role of an elder statesman rather than an active politician.
Later years and death
Paderewski resumed his concert career around 1922, and continued to tour and record until the outbreak of the Second World War. He taught piano to a number of pupils, including future Chopin Competition laureates Henryk Sztompka and Witold Małcużyński, drew up a 1929 will that included a bequest to the Jagiellonian University, appeared as himself in the 1936 British film Moonlight Sonata, and in 1937 took charge of an edition of Chopin's complete works. He remained politically engaged in the 1930s, troubled by the rise of fascism and Nazism, and after the German and Soviet invasions of Poland in 1939 he served on the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile and worked to rally American support for the Polish cause, including broadcasting to the United States and Canada.
In September 1940 Paderewski travelled once more to the United States. In 1941, American cities marked the 50th anniversary of his first US tour with a "Paderewski Week" of tribute concerts. He fell ill in the middle of 1941 and gave his last public address, to veterans of the Polish army, about a week before his death. He died in New York on 29 June 1941. His funeral at St Patrick's Cathedral drew a crowd of thousands, and by special dispensation from President Franklin D. Roosevelt he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery — a memorial plaque was later dedicated there by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In keeping with Paderewski's own wish to be buried in a free Poland, his remains were transferred to Warsaw in 1992 and placed in the crypt of St John's Archcathedral.