Poland's Fryderyk Chopin on Titanic
Although the last melody believed to have been played by the Titanic band as the ship went down was " Nearer My God, To Thee", the ensemble's last setlist also included Polish-born composer Frederic Chopin's nocturnes and his famous Funeral March.
Titanic is said to have struck an iceberg at ap. 2340 hrs ship's time on April 14, 1907 and had continued to sink until about 0220 hrs April 15 when it finally disappeared under the water. This year marks 105th anniversary of this major shipwreck.
The Chopin's Funeral March (March Funebre) subsequently found its way into several commemorations of the Titanic disaster, among others it was one of the opening pieces of a May 1912 concert commemorating the Titanic musicians at London's Albert Hall, and is mentioned in a dialogue in the 1958 film production "A night to remember" recounting the Titanic disaster. As a character playing Wallace Hartley - the Titanic's bandleader - tells his ensemble to play "nr. 24" they intone Chopin's Funeral March.
Among Fryderyk Chopin's works also Nocturne Op 9 No. 2 is said to have been played by Hartley's Titanic ensemble pianist on a regular basis.
The musicians of the RMS Titanic all perished when the ship sank in 1912. As the ship went down, they played music, while reportedly wading in rising water, with the very intent to calm the passengers, for which rare and heroic a feat were posthumously recognised.
Some deemed them as most courageous people on the sinking Titanic.
In 2016, when the globally shown "Titanic the Exhibition" display featuring around 300 artefacts from the ship came to Poland, its organisers recalled that the ship's band often played Chopin. Chopin's preludes are also featured as a historical reference on the soundtrack to the Cyberflix game "Titanic: An Adventure out of Time".
Chopin's music was not the only Polish accent connected with the disaster. Among others accounts mention Jozef Montwill, a Polish Catholic priest who gave up his lifeboat seat to administer last rites on board the sinking ship. His body was never recovered.
RMS Titanic was a British ocean liner which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning of April 15 1912, after colliding with an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Of the 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making it one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history. The largest ship afloat at the time, the Titanic was the second of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, and was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, her architect, died in the disaster.
One of the most widely-known facts about the disaster indeed concerns the ship's musicians, who continued to play to passengers until drowned with the sinking ship. (PAP)
mb/
