18 May

'I am delighted to be reading [your] work on harmony, which, to my mind, is extremely exhaustive and accessible even to the most insusceptible of minds. It is a shame that real music aficionados, for whom the work has been written, are so few in this country, and are getting even fewer by the day. (...) I feel greatly humbled to see this fine book dedicated to me.'

This is an excerpt from Stanisław Moniuszko's letter to Napoleon Orda of 18 May 1870 after receiving a copy of Orda's Gramatyka muzyki (The Grammar of Music), containing the following dedication: 'I dedicate this work to my esteemed compatriot, our composer Stanisław Moniuszko, to express my admiration to him and his musical accomplishments, Napoleon Orda.'

Today, Orda is best known as the author of a drawing of the Moniuszko family home in Ubel, where the composer was born. Destroyed during World War II, the house was never reconstructed. The site where it had been standing was located thanks to a wide-ranging effort of Polish and USSR servicemen in the 1960s.