Julian Klemczyński

Julian Klemczyński was a Polish composer and teacher who spent the bulk of his career in France.

Julian Klemczyński was born in either 1807 or 1810 in the old section (Stare Miasto) of Kalisz, Poland. His father was a musician. He graduated high school in 1825 (today the Adam Asnyka High School) and began the study of law and administration in Warsaw. He joined the secret student society, the Association of Knights of Narcissus. That year he was arrested by the police and put in custody; he was expelled from university in 1827. In 1831 he participated in the November Uprising - he was in the 6th Lancers Brigade under General Maciej Rybiński and was awarded the Cross of the Order of Military Virtue.

1831 was the year Klemczyński emigrated to France, first settling in Meaux, and then in Paris in 1833. Between 1832-1837 he was a member of the Polish Democratic Society. He supported himself by giving lessons and through publication of his compositions. He specialized in writing salon music, often fantasies based on themes from opera, writing for solo piano or piano with violin. Twenty music publishers published his work, attesting to his popularity.

He was married to Margaret Louise Thevin with whom he had two children, Homberta and Mary (married surname: Ogez).

He is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery, on the Avenue des Anglais.

That Klemczyński's music was popular can be inferred from his music being published by twenty different music publishers. Various reviewers writing in the Gazette Musicale de Paris from 1834-35 indicate his music was typical salon music, emphasizing charm and brilliant style, although lacking in originality.

Henri Blanchard, also writing in the Gazette Musicale de Paris took a more critical view. While stressing Klemczyński's idiomatic knowledge of the violin, he found the composer's Fantaisie concertante sur une Cavatine des Puritani de Bellini op. 14 to be "common." Blanchard declared Klemczyński ignorant of musical rules because he composer chose unusual keys for the movements of his string quartet.

Later reviews from 1842 gave a negative review of Klemczyński's entire oeuvre, calling his Impromptus op. 10 worse than those of Frederic Chopin and describing a raw modulation in the duet, op. 45 as "grotesque." The negative reviews probably account for the drop in attention, so that Klemczyński's death went unnoticed in the press.