Józef Damse

Józef Damse was born in Sokołów, in the Małopolska region, on 26 January 1789, and died in Rudna, near Warsaw, on 15 December 1852. He was a Polish composer of popular appeal, who worked mainly for the stage and who, according to some accounts, did not aspire to a high artistic value in his output.

Between 1809 and 1812 he played the clarinet and the trombone and conducted military bands. From 1813 he devoted himself to singing and performing, first in Vilnius and then in Warsaw, the city where he began to compose. There he wrote music for the theatre: forty comic and burlesque operas, sixteen melodramas and three operas. His output was geared to the taste of the public, although echoes of Mozart and Rossini, both very well known in the capital at the time, can be heard in it, as well as folk melodies.

His most celebrated work was the ballet Wesele w Ojcowie (The Wedding at Ojców, 1823). The melodrama Chłop milionowy (The Millionaire Peasant, 1829), based on a work by Raimund, caused a sensation in Warsaw. With the parody Robert Birbanduch (Robert the Libertine, 1844), based on Meyerbeer, he also achieved success. His piano transcriptions of excerpts from his stage works helped to spread his fame.

The value of his legacy is considered modest, but his music helped to shape the popular stage repertoire of Warsaw during the first half of the nineteenth century.