Music in Chopin's Warsaw

Book excerpt: "Warsaw was aware of and in tune with the most recent European styles and fashions in music, but it was also the cradle of a vernacular musical language that was initiated by the generation of Polish composers before Chopin and which found its full realization in his work. Had Chopin been born a decade earlier or a decade later, Goldberg argues, the capital - devastated by warfare and stripped of all cultural institutions - could not have provided support for his talent. The young composer would have been compelled to seek musical education abroad and thus would have been deprived of the specifically Polish experience so central to his musical style."--BOOK JACKET.