Karol Mikuli. Contributions to biography

Abstract

The figure and work of Karol Narcyz Mikuli have been well described in musicological literature, both in Polish and foreign one. The interest in him results above all from the fact that he was a student of Frédéric Chopin in Paris, and so he knew the great composer’s works and teaching methods. That fact and Mikuli’s subsequent fruitful teaching activity greatly obscured the other areas of his artistic activities and some of his biographical aspects.

The popular Encyklopedia muzyczna PWM (PWM Encyclopaedia of Music), Biographical Part, Vol. 6 – “M”, gives the date of his birth as 20 October 1819. The “Dictionary of Polish Musicians” has the same date, while the manuscripts in the collection of the Archive of Polish Armenians (the Lineage of Karol Mikuli) give the date as 22 October 1821. The latter date, confirmed in the Register of Births at Czerniowce in the Bukovina region, is currently accepted as the valid one. When Mikuli was still alive, the entry “Mikuli (Karol)” in Encyklopedia powszechna (Universal Encyclopaedia) published in Warsaw in 1864 included the correct year of his birth (1821), while the day was wrong (20 October). Because of the publication, we can determine thanks to whom Karol Mikuli heard Chopin’s pieces when both of his parents were still alive, in the living room of their house at Czerniowce, where the local social elite would meet to listen to concerts. The “Lineage of Karol Mikuli” preserved in the collection of the Archive of the Foundation of Culture and Heritage of Polish Armenians contains a large amount of biographical data regarding his ancestors; unfortunately, the data are not complete.

The few remaining sources include some less known facts from Mikuli’s life and shed some light on his activities and the many people he knew. There is some information relating to the composer’s concerts and organisational activities during his stay in Vienna in the years 1839–1844, and subsequently in Paris in the years 1844–1847. We know that it was then that Mikuli met some great composers and artists of the time: Alfred de Musset, Heinrich Heine, George Sand and Franz Liszt, whom he befriended. Because of Mikuli’s scope of acrivities, it is no wonder that he knew many of the most eminent artists of the epoch.

From more or less the 1840s come two letters written by Karol Mikuli to his friend, famous sculptor Cyprian Godebski (1835–1909). Unfortunately, the letters are not dated and we can only speculate that they were written when Mikuli was living in Paris. This is indicated by two aspects: the letters are in French and they mention one of the French female participants of a scheduled concert of chamber music. The letters, which are not mentioned in the literature on the subject, have survived in the manuscript section of the Ossolineum Library in Wrocław.

Karol Mikuli’s rich output is now being rediscovered by pianists. Unfortunately, what is mainly available now are the pieces that were published in print, because – as explained by the composer’s nephew – many of his manuscripts kept by the Flondor family at Storoinet were damaged in a fire in 1917, when during its withdrawal, the Russian army entered the Bukovina region.

The composer’s biographical details presented here have been explained to a large extent. Among Karol Mikuli’s ancestors on the paternal side were Armenians, and on the maternal side – one Polish woman and one German woman, which did not prevent the composer from feeling part of Polish culture.