Princesse de Polignac

Music's Modern Muse

A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac
Sylvia Kahan

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

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's El 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 eccentric and
extravagant lover of the arts, whose influence on the 20th Century world of music and literature remains
incalculable.

DETAILS

29 b/w illustrations
576 pages
Size: 9 x 6 in
ISBN: 9781580461337
Binding: Hardback
First published: 15/May/2003
Price: 49.95 USD / 30.00 GBP Imprint: University of Rochester Press
Series: Eastman Studies in Music
Subject: Music

BIC class: AVH

STATUS: Available
Details updated on 16/12/2009
Contents
1 An International Child
2 Life with Mother
3 A Woman of the World
 4 The Sewing Machine and the Lyre
5 Marriage and Music
6 La Belle Epoque
7 Renovations
8 Modern Times
9 The Astonishing Years
10 Shelter from the Storm
11 The Magic of Everyday Things
12 Cottages of the Elite, Palaces of the People
13 A Pride of Protégés
14 Mademoiselle
15 All Music is Modern
16 The Beautiful Kingdom of Sounds

Reviews
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

This is a compelling portrait of one of the Belle Epoque's most influential musical patrons. . . . Kahan
does justice to this inspiring woman's legacy by crafting a biography that is heartfelt and stimulating.
FRENCH REVIEW, 2006, Eileen M. Angelini

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