Tarnowski, Władysław (EN)

Tarnowski Władysław, pen-name Ernest Buława (and others), *4 June 1836 Wróblewice (Drohobych county, now Ukraine), †19 April 1878 (according to the article in “Musiker-Courier” 10 March 1878) aboard the steamer Pacific off the coast of San Francisco (California), Polish pianist, composer, poet, playwright and translator. He was a son of count Walerian Tarnowski. In 1860, he took over the Wróblewice estate from his father, where he founded a village school.

He studied in Lviv and Krakow (law at the university), later with F. Auber at the conservatory in Paris, but he stopped studies due to the outbreak of the January Uprising, in which he took part; during the uprising, he wrote a popular song, still sung today, entitled Jak to na wojence ładnie. In the autumn of 1864, he came back to Paris to continue his studies. He also studied in Löwenberg (now Lwówek Śląski) and Mannheim. Later he took lessons from I. Moscheles (piano) and E.F. Richter (theory of music, composition) in Leipzig, ca. 1869 in Rome from F. Liszt who appreciated Tarnowski’s piano technique and compared him to An. Rubinstein and H.V. Bülow, and described his relations with him as “friendly” (The Letters…). From around 1872, Tarnowski gave concerts in Vienna, Venice and Florence, and in 1873 in Paris. He gave numerous charity concerts, the last one in Lviv in 1877. Passionate about the cultures of southern Europe and the Orient, he gave concerts, among others, in Greece, Egypt, and Syria; he lived in India and Japan for some time, but constantly returned to Wróblewice; his palace was famous for its wonderful museum collections.

Tarnowski’s biography is poorly known and his musical activity is unexplored. The first information about Tarnowski’s concert in Poland comes from around 1860 from Wrocław, where his works were also played in 1875: String Quartet and the overture to the drama Joanna Gray, which Tarnowski conducted; he also performed in Lviv.

He held Chopin in high esteem, as he probably met him as a child in Paris; K. Lipiński probably recommended him to Chopin in a letter from Dresden on 26 August 1844. Tarnowski did not marry. He died suddenly, probably of a heart attack, while travelling from Japan to America. He was an outstanding pianist; his compositions were once successful, but today they are forgotten. He translated a shortened version of F. Brendel’s work Grundzüge der Geschichte der Musik and published it under the title Zarysy historii muzyki (Leipzig before 1869 P. Rhode).

Literature: J.I. Kraszewski Władysław hr. Tarnowski, “Kłosy” 1877 no. 630; Władysław hr. Tarnowski, “Tygodnik Ilustrowany” 1878 no. 132; A. Korytyński Ladislaus Graf Tarnowski, “Musik-Courier” 1879 no. 47 of 21 September; The Letters of Franz Liszt to Marie Sayn-Wittgenstein, published by H.E. Hugo, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1953; Korespondencja Fryderyka Chopina, collected and edited by B.E. Sydow, 2 volumes, Warsaw 1955; T. Zielińska Poczet polskich rodów arystokratycznych, 1997.