Ignacy Paderewski (sometimes referred to internationally as Ignace Paderewski) was born on 6 September 1860 at Kuryłówka in Podolia (now Ukraine). He was a world-famous virtuoso pianist and composer. He began his music studies in 1872 at the Warsaw Conservatoire and six years later he became a piano teacher at the same school. In 1881 he went to Berlin, where he continued his education studying composition with F. Kietl, after which he moved to Vienna to perfect his skills in performance under the tutelage of T. Lesztycki. He made his debut as a pianist in Vienna in 1887, quickly gaining renown and acclaim worldwide. He spent the next nine years travelling and giving concerts throughout Europe, Australia, the Americas and Africa. In 1896 he finally settled in Riond Bosson, Morges, Switzerland. Six years later he moved to the United States.
It was in the USA that Paderewski began his political activities. Towards the end of the First World War, following the establishment of the KNP (Polish National Committee) in Lausanne on 5 August 1917, Paderewski became actively involved in its work. His efforts in Washington brought good results; in 1918 President Wilson declared in the thirteenth point of his address, on the bringing of the war in Europe to an end, that the Polish state should be re-established for the country's indigenous population and with free access to the Baltic Sea (viz. a coastline). There had been no sovereign or independent Polish state since 1795, following the three partitions (1772, 1793, and 1795), when the territories of Poland-Lithuania had been successively divided up and annexed by the partitioning powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia. On 29 August 1918 a decree on the annulment of the partitioning treaties was issued, and on 3 June the Allied Conference declared the creation of the Polish state but without a specific determination of its future borders. This fact gave rise to a series of conflicts between the former masters of these territories and the new Polish government, which did not enjoy enough international support to implement the Conference's resolution, although officially Poland was restored as a sovereign and fully independent state on 11 November 1918.
Ignacy Paderewski's arrival in Poland on Boxing Day 1918, which coincided with the outbreak of the Greater Polish Uprising (in the new state's western territories, against the Germans) alleviated the nascent conflicts. His appointment to the office of Prime Minister met with the approval of all the main political forces in Poland and abroad, where Paderewski had already built up a reputation not only as a composer and virtuoso pianist, but also as a politician. As Poland's Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, he signed the Treaty of Versailles on 28 August 1919, on the grounds of which the territories of Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) and Pomerania around the City of Gdańsk were ascribed to Poland. This fell short of what the Polish delegates had demanded, but these territories provided the core of the restored Polish state.
In 1921 Paderewski withdrew from politics. Nevertheless, he did return to it after nearly twenty years, during the Second World War, when he became Chairman of the National Council, an émigré Polish parliament in London, in 1940. He died on 29 June 1941 in New York. His ashes, buried at the Arlington Cemetery in Washington, were brought to Poland in 1992 and laid to rest in Warsaw Cathedral.
However Ignacy Paderewski's public work was by no means restricted to music and politics. He was also a philanthropist. He loved the Polish Tatra Mountains, where he often visited his friend Tytus Chałubinski and took down records of the local Podhalanian folk music, which he later put into his Tatra Album, a collection of piano pieces inspired by folk music. He also supported the idea of building a modern hospital and convalescence home for tuberculosis patients at the foot of Mt. Giewont, and became a shareholder in the company that initiated its construction in 1902. He provided financial support for a students' convalescence home and health centre in Zakopane. He was involved in the Tatra Museum project. Highland accents can also be found in Paderewski'sopera Manru (1901) and the Krakowiak Fantasy composed for actress Helena Modrzejewska.
Other famous compositions by Paderewski include the Piano Concerto in A minor opus 17 (1888), the Piano Sonata in E flat minor opus 21 (1903), Variations for the Piano in E flat minor opus 23 (1903), and his cycle of songs to the poetry of C. Mendes (1903).
In 1910 he founded the Grunwald Monument desiged by A. Wiwulski, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald (14 July 1410). During the First World War he was one of the organisers of the Polish volunteer forces in the USA, and, together with Henryk Sienkiewicz (Polish Nobel laureate in literature), established a committee in Vevey (Switzerland) to aid Polish war victims, and a Polish relief fund in London. In his will he left the fortune that had accumulated from his royalties to two Polish universities, Lwów and Cracow, but following the imposition of Soviet-dominated Communism in Poland after the Second World War and the loss of the country's eastern territories, the only public benefit resulting from this huge legacy was the completion in 1964 of the Collegium Paderevianum Building, now housing the Faculty of Philology in the Jageillonian University of Cracow.
