Nieznany polonez Józefa Elsnera z 1821 roku
An Unknown Polonaise from 1821 by Józef Elsner

Summary/Abstract: The subject of this report is a Polonaise in C Major, a work unknown until recently, composed by Józef Elsner in 1821 for the name day of Warsaw merchant Józef Dyzmański, for performance by his then eleven-year-old daughter Józefa Dyzmańska, and published by the Warsaw printing house of Ludwik Letronne. Its only copy known to date was purchased for the National Library of Poland in Warsaw in 2016 as part of a large collection of sheet music printed in 1820–29 in Warsaw, bearing the handwritten property note ‘Josephine’. The thus discovered polonaise is one of Elsner’s five late works in this genre (the others were dedicated to Emilia Gumińska and Konstancja Tymowska). They were written after nearly a decade’s break during which the composer did not exhibit interest in this genre. With the other four, the Polonaise in C Major shares such qualities as influences of the stile brillante, as well as a somewhat different approach to the dynamics of form, evident in the blurring of the tripartite structure of the main section, which brings it closer to binary form.

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