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Sylvia Kahan

Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac (Eastman Studies in Music, 22) Paperback – Illustrated, July 15, 2009

by Sylvia Kahan (Author)

4.6 22 ratings

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A biography of Winnaretta Singer-Polignac, heiress to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, who befriended and subsidized some of the most important musical and literary artists of the 20th Century, including Stravinsky, Proust, Ravel, Cocteau, and Colette.

The American-born Winnaretta Singer (1865-1943) was a millionaire at the age 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'Opéra 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 eccentic and extravagant lover of the arts, whose influence on the 20th Century world of music and literature remains incalculable.

Print length

572 pages
Language

English
Publisher

BOYE6
Publication date

July 15, 2009
Dimensions

5.75 x 1.5 x 8.75 inches
ISBN-10

1580463339
ISBN-13

978-1580463331
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A splendid biography of the munificent princess. --Alex Ross [online at http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/04/merci-beaucoup-domo-arigato.html] 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

A pleasure to read and a good reference book to keep. . . . [Winnaretta's] beautiful kingdom created a musical reality that we enjoy to this day. -- Julie Cross ― JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR WOMEN IN MUSIC

The list of those who owed much to [the Princesse de Polignac] is simply breathtaking. . . . This biography by Sylvia Kahan [now available . . . in paperback] is easy to read as an adventure story just as much as it is a sideways glance at over half a century's cultural history. -- Geraint Lewis ― GRAMOPHONE

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

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

Wonderfully researched. . . . Sensitively sets Singer Polignac's vibrant lesbianism in the context of the times. -- Andrew Green ― CLASSICAL MUSIC

About the Author

Sylvia Kahan, a pianist and scholar, is Professor of Music at the Graduate Center and College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ BOYE6; Illustrated edition (July 15, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 572 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1580463339
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1580463331
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.83 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1.5 x 8.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,072,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #195 in Historical Spain & Portugal Biographies
- #222 in Spanish & Portuguese Literary Criticism (Books)
- #654 in Classical Musician Biographies

Customer Reviews:
4.6 22 ratings

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Patrick Brady

Winnaretta Singer Roman a’ Clef

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2023

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Music’s Modern Muse is such a good biography of Winnaretta Singer it enables identification of her as the impresario Sebastian Levinne in Agatha Christie’s autobiographical Giant’s Bread written as “Mary Westmacott.”

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Cassandra Langer

Winnaretta Singer, a remarkable woman

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2015

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If you never knew anything about Winnie Singer (clue yes she is that singer sewing machine guy's daughter) this book is a must read. Most people don't realize how talented, musician in her own right, painter exhibiting at the salon, expatriate and patroness extrodinaire. Kahan's book fleshes out Winnaretta's many contributions to fostering modernism in music and her own fascinating life.
We hear much about the American heiresses who went to France and married into French nobility but Winnaretta's life was anything but a fairy tale. She was married off to a sadistic penniless French aristocrat as were may girls of her class. He beat her and abused her. She eventually won an annulment and then married a much older and gay prince who she enjoyed a companionable relationship with. She was lovers with any number of women including the American expatriate painter and subject of my new biography, Romaine Brooks. Her life and loves make for fascinating reading.

One person found this helpful

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F.E. Cooper

Perfectly titled, well-presented, totally fascinating biography of a phenomenon in music

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2019

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How's this: I have read this book from cover to cover three times, each separated by about a year - and bought copies as gifts for friends and students who ought to know of the good that came from having a great fortune at the beginning of the last century. The lady, whose father perfected the domestic sewing machine, may not have possessed money at the level of Carnegie, Morgan, or Rockefeller but she used hers for just the right type of marriage, and to encourage through unbridled patronage Faure, Ravel, Poulenc and others whose names are today legends. Furthermore, she could play such works as Poulenc's Organ Concerto! Need I say more?

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Samantha Buker

Well-paced tale of Princesse de Polignac... the love and the life

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2011

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If you're looking for a casual biography of Winaretta Singer, this is the one. Intimacies abound. Details can border on the downright gossipy.

Yet the author doesn't skimp on the hard facts. You'll get great insight into her relationships with Marcel Proust, Debussy, Renaldo Hahn, Stravinsky, de Falla and others.

You'll also get to glimpse the parts of her life she most wanted to keep private: her love affairs. Any fan of painter Romaine Brooks will be interested to find she plays a role here. In fact, many of her portrait sitters also have walk-on roles in Winaretta's life.

Anecdotes abound, if you like program-note tidbits. I used this book and also Food of Love to write several articles on the salon culture of Belle Epoque Paris and Winaretta's role in it. She was at the center of it all, continuing on into the War years. Find out more...

2 people found this helpful

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Bennett Lerner

A romp!

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2008

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Sylvia's Kahan's bio of Winnaretta Singer-Polignac is a real romp. If you are at all interested in French culture at the turn of the century (the salons, the music and art, the lesbians), it's an absolute must. A really fun read and EVERYBODY is in it! (If you have read Proust, this is almost like reading Proust all over again.) The book is wonderfully written, with just the right balance between story-telling and scholarship. As in all biographies, the subject dies at the end, but one is not always sorry. When finishing this book I was saddened and felt that I had lost a friend whom I had gotten to know well.

4 people found this helpful

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Byron Adams

Fascinating!

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2018

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Excellently written and researched!

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2013

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Very thorough. There is a lot of information.
Very scholarly.
But fun to read—lots of interesting tidbits.
Excellent index; helpful to scholars.

One person found this helpful

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James Connelly

A good book on music in Belle Epoque France, well worthy of your attention

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2016

It is surprising that no thorough biography of this leading figure in musical influence preceded this excellent study. Apart from offering a view of the life of a remarkable woman, this book offers insight into the salon world of Belle Epoque Paris. There's a lot of solid research here: the appendix alone is a revelation about the mix of music at the Polignac salon and who was there to hear it (some readers will recognize the names of Marcel Proust and Charles Haas [model for Charles Swann] among the attendees). Prof. Kahan book on Singer's husband, the Prince de Polignac, is a fine companion volume.

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A. M. Glenville

Simply Marvellous

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2022

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I am going to be brief. If you’re interested in the subject; buy this book. I have the other one which is very good, indeed excellent, but this is simply marvellous. A great woman and a great human being is wrapped up between the covers of this book in a manner worthy of her. Thank You.

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Music's Modern Muse

Reviewed in Italy on February 27, 2016

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Un biografia esaustiva e scritta benissimo, è difficile interrompere la lettura del libro di S.Kahan, sembra quasi un film su Winnaretta Singer e la sua epoca.

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P. Hamilton

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2016

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Very pleased with this item.

James W. Johnston

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2015

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Fine product; quick service.

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