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Saudi Culture Ministry, King's Foundation Sign Cooperation Agreement to Participate in Year of Handicrafts 2025

The signing ceremony was held in the presence of Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Farhan. SPA
The signing ceremony was held in the presence of Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Farhan. SPA
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Saudi Culture Ministry, King's Foundation Sign Cooperation Agreement to Participate in Year of Handicrafts 2025

The signing ceremony was held in the presence of Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Farhan. SPA
The signing ceremony was held in the presence of Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Farhan. SPA

The Saudi Ministry of Culture has signed a cooperation agreement with The King's Foundation to participate in the Year of Handicrafts 2025 initiative through the Foundation's School of Traditional Arts.

The signing ceremony, which was held in the presence of Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Farhan, took place on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Saudi International Handicrafts Week Exhibition (Banan), held at the Roshan Front in Riyadh.

The ministry was represented at the signing ceremony by Deputy Minister of Culture Hamed bin Mohammed Fayez, while the foundation was represented by the director of the King Charles School of Traditional Arts at The King's Foundation, Dr. Khaled Omar Azzam.

The agreement aims to revive and promote handicrafts in the Kingdom in 2025 through collaboration to prepare and implement training programs in the field of crafts in several Saudi regions. A key component of the agreement entails launching the "Regeneration of the Crafts of Saudi Arabia" program, which commences in early January 2025.
The School of Traditional Arts at The King's Foundation will develop a customized program and execute training initiatives focused on design and crafts, primarily to regenerate and renew Saudi craft traditions across different regions of the Kingdom.
The King's Foundation is a charitable, educational institution established in 1986 by Britain’s King Charles, formerly the Prince of Wales.
It aims to teach and demonstrate the principles of urban design and traditional architecture, highlighting the importance of prioritizing the people and communities at the center of the design process.
The Foundation's School of Traditional Arts places significant emphasis on traditional arts and skills through graduate programs and training courses in the creative artistic practice of these arts.
The agreement constitutes a strategic implementation of the Ministry of Culture's commitment to fostering international cultural exchange, which represents a core objective within the comprehensive National Culture Strategy under the framework of Saudi Vision 2030.
Through this agreement, the ministry seeks to support the Year of the Handicrafts 2025 activities by implementing targeted training and development programs in design and craftsmanship for Saudi artisans. This initiative falls under the ministry's broader efforts to enhance craft production across the Kingdom.

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Has a Waltz Written by Composer Frederic Chopin Been Discovered in an NYC Museum?

A previously unknown musical manuscript, possibly by Frederic Chopin, rests in a display case after it was discovered at The Morgan Library & Museum, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in New York. (AP)
A previously unknown musical manuscript, possibly by Frederic Chopin, rests in a display case after it was discovered at The Morgan Library & Museum, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in New York. (AP)
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Has a Waltz Written by Composer Frederic Chopin Been Discovered in an NYC Museum?

A previously unknown musical manuscript, possibly by Frederic Chopin, rests in a display case after it was discovered at The Morgan Library & Museum, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in New York. (AP)
A previously unknown musical manuscript, possibly by Frederic Chopin, rests in a display case after it was discovered at The Morgan Library & Museum, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in New York. (AP)

The brooding waltz was carefully composed on a sheet of music roughly the size of an index card. The brief, moody number also bore an intriguing name, written at the top in cursive: “Chopin.”

A previously unknown work of music penned by the European master Frederic Chopin appears to have been found at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan.

The untitled and unsigned piece is on display this month at the opulently appointed institution, which had once been the private library of financier J. P. Morgan.

Robinson McClellan, the museum curator who uncovered the manuscript, said it's the first new work associated with the Romantic era composer to be discovered in nearly a century.

But McClellan concedes that it may never be known whether it is an original Chopin work or merely one written in his hand.

The piece, set in the key of A minor, stands out for its “very stormy, brooding opening section” before transitioning to a melancholy melody more characteristic of Chopin, McClellan explained.

“This is his style. This is his essence,” he said during a recent visit to the museum. “It really feels like him.”

McClellan said he came across the work in May as he was going through a collection from the late Arthur Satz, a former president of the New York School of Interior Design. Satz had acquired it from A. Sherrill Whiton Jr., an avid autograph collector who had been director of the school.

McClellan then worked with experts to verify its authenticity.

The paper was found to be consistent with what Chopin favored for manuscripts, and the ink matched a kind typical in the early 19th century when Chopin lived, according to the museum. But a handwriting analysis determined the name “Chopin” written at the top of the sheet was penned by someone else.

Born in Poland, Chopin was considered a musical genius from an early age. He lived in Warsaw and Vienna before settling in Paris, where he died in 1849 at the age of 39, likely of tuberculosis.

He’s buried among a pantheon of artists at the city’s famed Père Lachaise Cemetery, but his heart, pickled in a jar of alcohol, is housed in a church in Warsaw, in keeping with his deathbed wish for the organ to return to his homeland.

Artur Szklener, director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, the Polish capital city where the composer grew up, agreed that the document is consistent with the kinds of ink and paper Chopin used during his early years in Paris.

Musically, the piece evokes the “brilliant style” that made Chopin a luminary in his time, but it also has features unusual for his compositions, Szklener said.

“First of all, it is not a complete work, but rather a certain musical gesture, a theme laced with rather simple piano tricks alluding to a virtuoso style,” Szklener explained in a lengthy statement released after the document was revealed last month.

He and other experts conjecture the piece could have been a work in progress. It may have also been a copy of another's work, or even co-written with someone else, perhaps a student for a musical exercise.

Jeffrey Kallberg, a University of Pennsylvania music professor and Chopin expert who helped authenticate the document, called the piece a “little gem” that Chopin likely intended as a gift for a friend or wealthy acquaintance.

“Many of the pieces that he gave as gifts were short – kind of like ‘appetizers’ to a full-blown work,” Kallberg said in an email. “And we don’t know for sure whether he intended the piece to see the light of day because he often wrote out the same waltz more than once as a gift.”

David Ludwig, dean of music at The Juilliard School, a performing arts conservatory in Manhattan, agreed the piece has many of the hallmarks of the composer’s style.

“It has the Chopin character of something very lyrical and it has a little bit of darkness as well,” said Ludwig, who was not involved in authenticating the document.

But Ludwig noted that, if it's authentic, the tightly composed score would be one of Chopin’s shortest known pieces. The waltz clocks in at under a minute long when played on piano, as many of Chopin’s works were intended.

“In terms of the authenticity of it, in a way it doesn’t matter because it sparks our imaginations,” Ludwig said. “A discovery like this highlights the fact that classical music is very much a living art form.”

The Chopin reveal comes after the Leipzig Municipal Libraries in Germany announced in September that it had uncovered a previously unknown piece likely composed by a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in its collections.