FONTANA, JULIAN (July 31, 1810 -- Dec. 23, 1869)Pianist, composer, and author. Among the Polish musicians who made a contribution to the musical life of the United States was Julian Fontana. Records of his life were hidden, held under wraps of descendants, and scattered in obscure publications like a flock of birds. Until the search for these records was halted by his death in 1974, Alexander Janta, who had found a cache of Fontana mitems in New Orleans, Louisiana, devoted twenty of his 65 years on earth to a study of Fontana's life and collaboration with Frederic Chopin. The posthumous publication of Chopin's previously unpublished works stand out in bold relief. Without Fontana Poland's most famous composer may never have been able to compose as much as he did.
When he was asked about it, contrary to other sources, Jules Fontana said that his father, Julian Ignacy Fontana, was born in Krakow, Poland, where the Fontana family had lived since an Italian sculptor, Baltazar Fontana, was called to Poland in 1695 to decorate the interiors of royal palaces and churches. The Fontanas who came after Baltazar were for the most part architects. Julian's father, Jan, who had been a cashier for the last king of Poland, died in Krakow when Julian was a child.
After his father's death, Julian Fontana was educated in the Polish capital, where the mother of Frederic Chopin opened a pension for students of the Warsaw Lyceum who lived away from home. Nicholas Chopin, with whom Justyna (nee Krzyzanowska) had four children, was the French teacher at the secondary school, and in her spare time she taught her children and the boys in her care to play a piano. When nobody could keep up with Frederic Chopin, his mother sent him and Fontana to take piano lessons from another teacher. Julian Fontana graduated from the Warsaw Lyceum in 1828, but, owing primarily to his health, the son of the French teacher dropped out of the school in 1826. Mrs. Chopin took her son to a health spa in Silesia for several months. In the fall, when they returned, the Chopins moved to a larger home and their musical prodigy entered the Warsaw Conservatory of Music. Whether Fontana moved with them is uncertain, but he continued to play the piano with the younger Chopin in music soirees throughout Warsaw. One year they took English lessons together three nights a week. After graduating from the Warsaw Lyceum, Fontana attended the University of Warsaw and received a law degree in 1830. In November of the same year, while he was an artillery officer in the Polish army, Fontana took part in the uprising against the Russian czar. After the collapse of the uprising, while he was in hiding, Fontana got Chopin's address and took off for Paris.
The sight of a Pleyel piano in Chopin's flat surprised Fontana because it was worth more than he could afford. Camille Pleyel, the leading piano manufacturer in Paris, gave it to Chopin in order to promote his pianos. Fontana used the same piano to give lessons, and charged as much for his time as Chopin. For lack of students and concert work in the French capital, Fontana tried to find work in other cities -- the first two were Hamburg and London -- and returned to Paris after Chopin's first concert on February 26, 1832. As it turned out, no one dedicated more years of his life to Chopin's legacy than Fontana. When he was in Paris, he handled most of Chopin's personal and business affairs.
In 1844, when he wanted to find greener pastures, Fontana decided to go to Cuba, where Spanish musicians spawned more concert halls than there were in the United States, and was named the director of a philharmonic society in Havana. Hundreds of men and women came from high society in the Cuban capital to attend his concerts and the gala balls that followed. In the course of his affairs, he introduced himself to Stephen Cattley Tennant, an English businessman. and his wife, Juana Camila Dalcour, who owned a large sugar plantation in Matanzas, 51 miles west of Havana. After their third child was born in in 1844, they had moved from Matanzas to Havana to enjoy the concerts and other attractions.
When a merger of two musical organizations in Havana took place, Fontana lost his job. Soon afterward he ordered a Pleyel piano from Paris, rented a concert hall, and on July 8, 1844, was the first one to introduce Chopin's music to Cuba. He also became the first dealer in Cuba of Pleyel pianos. He also had an extramarital affair with the 26-year-old wife of Stephen Tennant. When her fifth child, Fernanda Leocadia, was born on May 30, 1845, it was rumored that Fontana was the father of the child. To escape a scandal, the pianist boarded a bark sailing to Philadelphia and set foot on American soil on December 2, 1845. Before leaving Cuba, he raffled the pianos he had on hand for a quick sale.
Shortly after landing in New York, the music critic of the New York Herald called Fontana "a new candidate for fame on the piano." The pianist made his debut in a half-empty Broadway music hall on January 3, 1846, playing his own composition Lolita, which he named after Camila's sister.
As the months went by, Fontana liked New York and told Chopin that he would stay there. Chopin wrote back, "I think you have done well to settle in New York instead of Havana." In 1853, four years after Chopin died, Justyna Chopin and her two daughters asked Fontana to edit Chopin's unpublished musical compositions and other works. Fontana dedicated years of his life to this and they are a significant part of Chopin;s legacy. He also held concerts to popularize Chopin's music and to earn royalties for Justyna Chopin.
Not knowing what to expect, more than a year after her drunken husband had been killed by a train in England, Camila Tennant left Havana on the 215-ton Ilsa de Cuba and joined Julian Fontana in New York on May 20, 1850. One assumes that she had five children with her, but the master of the ship listed only three children, ranging in ages from from four to nine years. One imagines that A. Dalcour, 25, who was one of the nine passengers on the squarerigger, was related to Camila. Camila and Julian spoke to each other in Spanish. He spoke six languages. She spoke no Polish. After Archbishop John Hughes of New York married them on September 9, 1850, at the old St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, Camila, who, like Julian, was college educated, probably enrolled her older children in St. Patrick's parochial school.
As a married man, in addition to giving piano lessons, composing and promoting his own music, Fontana, who now had access to his wife's money, lost more in gambling than ever before. They probably thought that moving to Paris would break his gambling habit.
Adam Mickiewicz, the poet laureate of Poland, with whom he dined and gambled in Paris, urged Fontana to settle near him in Montgeron, prettily situated on the Siene River, ten miles from the French capital. But they didn't. Camila gave birth to Jules, the French form of Julian, Fontana, in Paris on July 10, 1853, but baptized him in Montgeron. The child's godfather was Mickiewicz. Camila was pregnant again when she died March 30, 1855, in Paris by catching a cold at the funeral of Adam Mickiewicz's wife. The poet also died shortly after them.
After Camila was laid to rest in Paris, everything changed in Julian Fontana's life. He had no money to take care of the six children. Without thinking of the consequences, he handed over the children Camila had by her first marriage to the Terrant family in England, sold his furniture in Paris, and returned with his son to New York, where presumably he wanted to make a fresh start. He swore allegiance to the United States in a New York courtroom on September 7, 1855.
Over the next few years it is hard to find exactly how Fontana earned a living, whether he sold Pleyel pianos and his own music in New York, played the piano wherever he could, gave piano lessons, or did nothing but travel to Paris, where he had a lot to do with the publication of Chopin's works, and to Havana, where Camila Fontana's fortune was slowly taken apart.
The National Archives of Cuba has preserved the details of the settlement of her inheritance. No sooner was Robert Morrison of London, the brother-in-law of Stephen Tennant and Camila Dalcour and guardian of their children, named executor of Camila's will than Julian Fontana realized that he made a big mistake when he turned over the guardianship of his stepchildren to the Tennant family. During the hearing in Havana, where Fontana testified in 1857 and 1858, his stepchildren were in the care of tutors and guardians in London. Morrison convinced the Cuban judge that Camila did not change her will to include her second husband and Fontana was therefore not entitled to anything from her inheritance. It was different for his son. Jules got a little bit. Fontana left Havana without money to pay for his lodging, food, and other expenses.
After returning to Paris, he was plagued with a degeneration of the bones in his spine and swelling in his legs. He could hardly sleep without soaking his feet in cold water every night.
In dire circumstances, he was unable to perform and give piano lessons because of deafness. Reading and writing kept his mind off his illnesses. He translated Cervantes' Don Quixote from Spanish to Polish, but he was unable to find a publisher in Poland for his work. He also made a study of Polish grammar and wrote a book on astronomy. Still, it was impossible for him to make ends meet. He ended his life on December 23, 1869, by asphyxiation. He was buried with ex-patriate Polish scholars and military officers at Cimetiere Montmartre in Paris.
One is amazed that Janta, who collected material on Polish musicians like a vulture, was able to find some of Julian Fontana's belongings in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Jules Fontana died December 18, 1909. It's hard to figure out how the son saved so many items. He moved a lot with Maria Breton, with whom he had five children, and his memory of those places where they were born and raised was out of line with the evidence. For example, his wife, who was born July 27, 1849, in Tourai, Belgium, emigrated to the United States on November 20, 1884, with their three sons, including Henri Marcel, who said he was born in Paris, France, in 1883, yet on March 5, 1889, when an American passport was issued to him, Jules Fontana said he emigrated to the United States in 1858 and lived in Brooklyn, New York, without a break for 21 years. Although born in Paris in 1853, Jules automatically became an American citizen with his father in 1855. After his wife and three children arrived in 1884, the next child, Sophie, was born in New Jersey, November 16, 1886, and the one after her, Maria Dolores, was born in Spain, April 8,1891. As is noted, no wonder that Jules Fontana contradicted himself!
Because all his children lived later in New Orleans, he ended up in the largest city south of the Mason-Dixon line. Most likely Maria Dolores Tacea, with whom Jules and Marie Fontana lived in their last years, was the first one in line to inherit the priveless Fontana possessions. Her grandson, William J. Rodriquez, eventually received what remained of them. He has an arduous task ahead of him to hunt for items lost, stolen, or unknown for one reason or other, and to save a significant part of Chopin's legacy.
From: Edward Pinkowski - [email protected] - 2011
Fontana, Julian
Composer and pianist. Close friend of Frederick Chopin; born 1810 in Warsaw, Poland. Lived with Chopin in Warsaw from 1824 to 1827; in London from 1834 to 1837; from 1837 to 1838 helped transcribe Chopin's writings and wrote his improvisations during Chopin's illness. In 1848 came to U.S. and gave concerts in different cities; wrote several compositions. In 1849 went to Cuba and married a Creole woman with whom he had a son. His wife died six years after the marriage. Died Dec. 24, 1860 [?] in Cuba.From: "Who's Who in Polish America" by Rev. Francis Bolek, Editor-in-Chief; Harbinger House, New York, 1943