Mirecki, Franciszek (EN)

Mirecki Franciszek, baptised *31 March 1791 Krakow, †29 May 1862 Krakow, Polish composer, conductor, teacher. Son of Franciszek Mirecki, the organist of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Krakow, and Teresa Gorączkiewicz, from a family of Krakow musicians. He was learning piano from his father at the age of four. In 1800 he made a public appearance in Krakow as a pianist. In 1806 he was descant in the choir of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. From 1810–1814 he studied in the Department of Philology of the Jagiellonian University and also taught French and Greek in the St. Anne’s Gymnasium. In 1814 he went to Vienna, where he was librarian and secretary to Count J.M. Ossoliński. He also used to work with A.T. Chłędowski, providing him with materials for the history of Polish literature. Mirecki studied composition and piano under J.N Hummel in Vienna. In this field he also sought advice from I. Moscheles, A. Salieri, J.P. Pixis. He attended many concerts and became acquainted with works by, among others,  L. van Beethoven, C. Czerny, M. Clementi, and a number of Italian operas (D. Cimarosa, G. Paisiello, G. Rossini, G. Donizetti). In April 1816, he met Beethoven, who was living with Ossoliński at the time. Beethoven had invited Mirecki to obtain original Polish folk songs from him for use as material in a collection of 23 songs of various nationalities (WoO 158). Mirecki provided him with 2 songs (Oj, upiłem się w karczmie and Poszła baba po popiół) along with information about the manner of performance of Polish bands (letter from F. Mirecki to A. Grabowski from 16 April 1816. In the summer of 1816, Mirecki visited Leżajsk, Lwów and Przemyśl, among other places, with Ossoliński. That year, specifically on 28 November, he lost his job due to the intended relocation of Ossoliński’s library to Lviv. At the beginning of 1817 he moved to Venice, where he dedicated eleven months to learning instrumentation, became familiar with Italian opera, and provided piano lessons. Towards the end of the year, he briefly sojourned in Milan. There he became friends with G. Ricordi, his later publisher.

At the turn of 1817/1818 Mirecki went to Paris, where, at the suggestion of G. Ricordi, the Parisian publisher A. Carli commissioned an arrangement of 50 psalms by B. Marcello, vocal duets by F. Durante and madrigals by G. Clari. These studies brought Mirecki European fame and material stability. However, this would not have been possible without the assistance of L. Cherubini, who patronised this work and guided Mirecki’s further compositional education. Little information is available regarding the composer’s stay in Paris. From letters to A. Grabowski, it seems that he had the intention of returning to his homeland. Encouraged by A. Czartoryski, he composed three operas in Paris: Cyganie [Gypsies], Pułaski (according to unconfirmed information, performed in Paris) and Piast, which was planned for performance in the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw in 1822.

Invited by Ricordi, Mirecki returned to Milan in November 1822, where he wrote, among other things, four Italian ballets, of which Essex was the most successful. The composer then became orchestra director of the Genoa theatre and wrote the opera Evandro in Pergamo (1824) for that stage. It enjoyed enormous success with 26 performances, as a result of which Mirecki
was subsequently invited to theatres in Rome and Naples, where he presented two ballets written for the stage in Milan. He also visited Florence (supported by M. Kl. Ogiński) and Turin. In the year 1825 he published a treatise on instrumentation with Ricordi, well received by the critics. This established Mirecki’s reputation in Italy as an expert in orchestral craft, especially in the field of wind instruments. In July 1825 he signed a one-year contract as director of the Italian
Opera in Lisbon. I due forzati, Mirecki’s best Italian opera apart from Evandro, was written there. The composer also corresponded with “Rozmaitości Warszawskie” and “Kurier Warszawski” from this place. Forced to leave, he stopped work on the opera Adriano in Siria and, travelling through England, France, and Germany (where he met K. Lipinski in Dresden), he arrived in Genoa. In 1826, he once again assumed the direction of the theatre orchestra and became a singing teacher. In April 1831, Mirecki met with Adam Mickiewicz passing through Genoa. During this encounter, they conceived a joint opera project titled Legionista, which, however, was never realised.

Consumed by the desire to return to his homeland, Mirecki sent offers regarding this matter to various Polish institutions and individuals. He received only one response, from A. Fredro in 1836, which contained a draft libretto for the opera Rajmund mnich; however, the planned staging of the work in Lviv did not come to fruition. Probably in July 1838, Mirecki submitted a proposal to the Senate of the Free City of Krakow to establish a school of dramatic singing. Upon relocating to Krakow, he inaugurated the school on 22 December 1838, within his residence at Na Piasku Nr 95, despite the absence of subsidies or support from wealthier citizens. The high standard of the school was documented by the annual performances featuring the students (the first on 8 December 1839), who presented a complex repertoire that usually included Italian operatic, solo, and choral works. It was this fact, along with Mirecki’s successful acquisition of funds from the Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Muzyki i Bursy Muzycznej [Society of the Friends of Music and Music Boarding House] of the University Collegiate Church of St. Anne, that allowed the institution to be transformed into the School of Music and Boarding House in 1841. Subsequently, it became one of the departments affiliated with the Instytut Techniczny in Krakow. Throughout his life, Mirecki directed the department of dramatic and church singing at the school, significantly contributing to the development of musical culture in Krakow from 1840 to 1860. He also consistently endeavoured to establish a Polish opera theatre in Krakow, which he successfully accomplished in 1844 under the direction of H. Meciszewski. Following Meciszewski’s resignation in 1845, Mirecki continued to serve as the artistic director of the opera until its eventual dissolution after November 1846. In the years 1841–1844, Mirecki composed operas: Cornelio Bentivoglio with an Italian libretto, which was performed at La Scala in 1844 with slightly less success than the previous ones, and Nocleg w Apeninach based on A. Fredro’s comedy, which was successfully performed in 1845 by Franciszek Mirecki’s students in Krakow. In 1852, the composer sent 2 masses and 4 offertories to a competition in London, which was unfortunately cancelled. In 1855, he submitted the Symphony in C minor to a competition in Mannheim, where he was awarded the prize. In 1848 Franciszek Mirecki was appointed a member of the Towarzystwo Naukowe in Krakow, and in 1858 an honorary member of the Galicyjskie Towarzystwo Muzyczne in Lviv. Despite his compositional successes and favourable evaluations of Mirecki’s pedagogical activities, he nonetheless felt undervalued, especially within the circles of Warsaw composers. His aesthetic, moulded on the models of Italian opera, had become outdated, as evidenced by sharp critique published in Krakow’s “Czas” by L. Chrzanowski. Furthermore, Mirecki encountered widespread condemnation for his anonymously published work in Prague, Pogląd na muzykę (1860), which contained a caustic attack on Polish folk music and its artistic arrangements. Mirecki was married to an Italian woman and had five children. From a young age, he struggled with material difficulties throughout his lifetime. However, he had friends and knew many influential people who supported him with kindness.

Mirecki’s music represented the period of the turn of Classicism and Romanticism in Polish culture. Throughout his life, his ideal was only Italian music, including old Italian and Italian comic opera, especially the works of Rossini and Donizetti. He completely rejected the music of Berlioz, Liszt, and Verdi, reluctantly accepting the work of Beethoven. He consistently opposed all manifestations of Romanticism, believing it to be an effect of deformed taste. In his brochure Pogląd na muzykę [Opinion on Music], he referred to Romanticism as “real Utopia” and nearly announced his downfall. He accused composers, from whose work he anonymously quoted musical examples, of ignorance and found mistakes in musical prosody (for instance, in Moniuszko’s Halka and Hrabina), despite allowing himself false declamation in the opera Cyganie (this was already highlighted for him in 1822 by K. Kurpiński in the in-depth analysis included in the “Warszawianin”). He accused Chopin and Schumann, whose works (Bacarolle and Phantasiestücke) he anonymously quoted in Pogląd…, recognized by M. Bristiger, of ostinato bass, seven six chords, and figurative melodics. To his criticism, he added his own “fixes”. He interpreted Polish folk music and dances as “poziome źródła,” which can be explained as unmelodic and monotonous, not useful as artistic inspiration, even though he himself wrote numerous dances. J. Sikorski engaged in a polemic with Mirecki’s theses in “Ruch Muzyczny” (1861 No. 3-6).

Franciszek Mirecki had serious success as an opera composer, but assessing his output in this field is difficult due to the lack of complete scores. Printed reductions of overtures and various fragments witness a clear understanding of the rules of the stage and a fanatical admiration for Rossini. The piano works of Mirecki, abundant in quantity, are preserved in foreign collections; alongside F. Lessel and J. Elsner, he stands as the primary representative of Polish piano sonatas before Chopin. Franciszek Mirecki’s sonatas are based on a classic pattern and show formal simplification (barely expressive themes, abbreviated developments and reprises); characterised by simple harmony and simple keyboard technique. His dances, apart from the polonaises, maintain a classical convention, introducing accents of early Romantic lyricism. Mirecki’s variations and rondo exhibit a richness in compositional technique, demonstrating a fusion of classical style and brilliance (e.g., Variations Op. 6 and Op. 18). “Style brillante” is most prominently featured in the Adagio et Allegro Op. 24 for piano sextet, as well as in both Piano Trios (Op. 11 and Op. 22), and in the bravura introductions to some of the Polonaises. A Beethovenian model, coupled with elaborate instrumentation, is evident in the later Symphony in C minor. Mirecki’s arrangements of early music (by B. Marcello, F. Durante, G. Clari) in collaboration with L. Cherubini, in which the piano part added by Mirecki demonstrates his good mastery of counterpoint, were a great artistic success. Mirecki was an excellent teacher and a knowledgeable expert in Italian operatic singing. He organised his music school following the model of Italian conservatories, implementing a structured curriculum and entering into agreements with students, requiring them to complete their education. He trained many good singers, including H. Hoffman-Majeranowska; shortly before his death, he gave lessons to H. Modrzejewska. He also taught composition – from about 1855 he taught E.W. Śmietański, and W. Żeleński from 1857 to 1859. Mirecki’s oeuvre has been completely forgotten and has never been the subject of scholarly research. However, his operatic successes in Italy, the acclaim received for his treatise on instrumentation (one of the first in Europe and the first in the Italian language), as well as numerous foreign editions of his works, allow Mirecki – alongside F. Janiewicz and before Chopin – to be considered the first Polish composer to gain recognition abroad.

Literature: K. K. [K. Kurpiński] O muzyce Pana F. M. w operze wierszem napisanej przez Fr.D. Kniaźnina „Cyganie,” “Warszawianin: tygodnik mód” 1822 No. 16 and 17; M. K. [M. Karasowski] Franciszek Mirecki, “Tygodnik Ilustrowany” 1862 No. 151 and 169 (obituary); A. Grabowski. Wspomnienia, published by S. Estreicher, Vol. 2, Kraków 1909; J. Reiss Franciszek Mirecki, published in Almanach muzyczny Krakowa 1780–1914, Vol. 1, Kraków 1939; K. Herman Franciszek Mirecki w setną rocznicę śmierci, “Ruch Muzyczny” 1962 No. 11; K. Nowacki Listy Franciszka Mireckiego, “Rocznik Krakowski” 1970 Vol. 40 (letter to his friend, the Kraków bookseller A. Grabowski from years 1815–38); Z. Lissa Beethoven i Franciszek Mirecki, “Ruch Muzyczny” 1972 No. 5; M. Bristiger Riflessi italiani e classici nel pensiero musicale di Francesco Mirecki, published in Conveni sulla musica italiana e polacca, Bologna 1975, expanded version entitled Włoskie i klasyczne momenty argumentacji muzycznej Franciszka Mireckiego, «Pagine» III, Kraków 1979; M. Negrey Franciszek Mirecki – „Symfonia c-moll” (1855)…, published in Muzykolog wobec dzieła muzycznego, in celebratory publication for E. Dziębowska, edited by M. Woźna-Stankiewicz, Z. Dobrzańska-Fabiańska, Kraków 1999.