Frederic Chopin

Frédéric Chopin (Polish: Fryderyk (Franciszek) Chopin, sometimes Szopen; French: Frédéric (François) Chopin; English surname pronunciation: or ; March 1, 1810Some sources give February 22; please see Life for details., Żelazowa Wola – October 17, 1849, Paris) was a Polish piano composer of the Romantic period. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers for piano of all time.
Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, Duchy of Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French-expatriate father. Hailed in his homeland as a child prodigy, at age twenty Chopin left for Paris. There he made a career as performer, teacher and composer, and adopted the French version of his given names, "Frédéric-François." From 1837 to 1847 he had a turbulent relationship with the French writer George Sand (Aurore Dudevant). The couple were very close friends of French painter Delacroix, who painted a portrait of them. Always in frail health, at 39 he succumbed to pulmonary tuberculosis.
All of Chopin's extant work includes the piano in some role (predominantly as a solo instrument), and his compositions are widely considered to be among the pinnacles of the piano's repertoire. Although his music is among the most technically demanding for the instrument, Chopin's style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than mere technical display. He invented some musical forms, such as the ballade, Scholes, Percy (1938), The Oxford Companion to Music. Article Ballade. but his most significant innovations were within existing structures such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu and prelude. His works are often cited as being among the mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century classical music. Additionally, Chopin was the first western classical composer to imbue Slavic elements into his music; to this day his mazurkas and polonaises are the cornerstone of Polish nationalistic classical music.
==Life==
Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, near Sochaczew in the Masovia region, which was part of the Duchy of Warsaw. He was born to Mikołaj (Nicolas) Chopin, a Frenchman of distant Polish ancestry from Lorraine who had adopted Poland as his homeland when he moved there in 1787. Nicolas had married a woman from an upper-class but impoverished Polish family, Tekla Justyna Krzyżanowska.
According to the composer's family, Chopin was born March 1, 1810. There is no known birth certificate. His baptismal certificate lists his birthdate as February 22, 1810, but this was most likely an error on the part of the priest.
===Formative years===
In October 1810, when Frédéric was seven months old, the family moved to Warsaw, where the father took a position as teacher of French language at a school housed in the Saxon Palace. The family lived on the palace grounds. 
Young Chopin received his first piano lessons from his older sister Ludwika ("Louise" in English), and was subsequently taught by his mother. His musical talent was early apparent, and he gained a reputation in Warsaw as a "second Mozart." At age seven he was already the author of two polonaises (G minor and B flat major), the first being published in the engraving workshop of Father Cybulski, director of a School of Organists and one of the few music publishers in Poland. 
The prodigy was featured in the Warsaw newspapers, and "little Chopin" became an attraction at receptions given in the capital's aristocratic salons. He also began giving public charity concerts. He is said to once have been asked what he thought the audience liked best; seven-year-old Chopin replied, "My shirt collar." He first appeared publicly as a pianist when he was eight. 
Chopin received his first professional piano lessons, in 1816–22, from Wojciech Żywny. Chopin later spoke highly of Żywny, although the youngster's skills soon surpassed those of his teacher. The further development of Chopin's talent was supervised by Wilhelm Würfel. This renowned pianist, a professor at the Warsaw Conservatory, gave Chopin valuable though irregular lessons in playing the organ, and possibly also the piano. From 1823 to 1826 Chopin attended the Warsaw Lyceum, the school where his father taught. 
In the autumn of 1826, Chopin began studying music theory, figured bass and composition with the composer Józef Elsner at the Warsaw Conservatory. Chopin's contact with Elsner may date to as early as 1822, and it is certain that Elsner was giving Chopin informal guidance by 1823. Chopin completed a normal three-year course at the conservatory in 1829.
That same year in Warsaw, Chopin heard Niccolò Paganini play, and he also met the German pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel. It was also in 1829 that Chopin met his first love, a singing student named Konstancja Gładkowska. This inspired Chopin to put the melody of the human voice into his works. 
In August 1829, three weeks after leaving the Warsaw Conservatory, Chopin made a brilliant debut in Vienna. He gave two piano performances and received many very favorable reviews, along with others that criticized the small tone that he produced from the piano.
In Warsaw in December 1829 he performed the premiere of his Piano Concerto in F minor at the Merchants' Club. He gave the first performance of his other piano concerto, in E minor, at the National Theater on March 17, 1830.
On November 2, 1830, Chopin left Warsaw to give concerts in Western Europe, never to return to Poland. At month's end the November 1830 Uprising broke out, and his traveling companion Titus Woyciechowski went home to take part. Chopin stayed in Vienna, tortured by anxiety for his loved ones, then visited Munich and Stuttgart (where he learned of Poland's occupation by the Russian army; see Congress Poland) and arrived in Paris by September 1831. He had already composed a body of important compositions, including his two piano concertos and some of his Études Op. 10.
===Paris===
In Paris, Chopin was welcomed by eminent Polish exiles and by leading artists such as Heinrich Heine, Alfred de Vigny and Eugène Delacroix. He was introduced to some of the foremost pianists of the day, including Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Ferdinand Hiller and Franz Liszt, and he formed personal friendships with composers Hector Berlioz, Felix Mendelssohn, Charles-Valentin Alkan and Vincenzo Bellini (beside whom he is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery). Chopin's music was already admired by many of his composer contemporaries, among them Robert Schumann who, in his review of the Variations on "La ci darem la mano" (from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni), Op. 2, wrote: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius."
During his years in Paris, Chopin participated in a number of concerts. The programs provide some idea of the richness of Parisian artistic life during this period, such as the concert on March 23, 1833, in which Chopin, Liszt and Hiller played the solo parts in a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's concerto for three harpsichords, and the concert on March 3, 1838, when Chopin, Alkan, Alkan's teacher Pierre Joseph Zimmerman and Chopin's pupil Adolphe Gutman played Alkan's 8-hand arrangement of Beethoven's 7th symphony. He was also involved with the composition of Hexaméron (1837), because the sixth (and last) variation on the Bellini's theme is his.
A distinguished English amateur described seeing Chopin at a salon:
From Paris, Chopin made various visits and tours. In 1834, with Hiller, he visited a Rhenish Music Festival at Aachen organized by Ferdinand Ries. Here Chopin and Hiller met up with Mendelssohn, and the three went on to visit Düsseldorf, Koblenz and Cologne, enjoying each other's company and learning and playing music together.
In 1835 Chopin arranged to meet his family in Karlsbad. While there he made the acquaintance of Count Franz von Thun-Hohenstein, whose daughters Chopin had taught in Paris. The Count invited Chopin and his parents to stay at his family castle on the Elbe at Děčín. Afterwards Chopin saw his parents off back to Warsaw; he would never see them again. He returned to Paris via Dresden, where he stayed for some weeks, and then Leipzig where he met up with Mendelssohn, Schumann and Clara Wieck. However, on the return journey he had a severe bronchial attack that was so serious he was reported dead in some Polish newspapers.
In 1836 Chopin became engaged to a seventeen-year-old Polish girl, Maria Wodzińska, whose mother insisted that the engagement be kept secret. The following year the engagement was called off by her family.
===Chopin and Sand===
In 1836, at a party hosted by Countess Marie d'Agoult, mistress of fellow-composer Franz Liszt, Chopin met Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, better known by her pseudonym, George Sand. She was a French Romantic writer noted for her numerous love affairs with Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Musset (1833–34), her secretary Alexandre Manceau (1849–65) and others, possibly including the actress Marie Dorval.
Chopin initially did not find her attractive. "Something about her repels me," he told his family. Sand, however, in an extraordinary June 1837 letter to her friend Count Wojciech Grzymała, debated whether to let Chopin go with his fiancée Maria Wodzińska or to abandon another affair in order to begin a relationship with Chopin. Sand had strong feelings for Chopin and pursued him until a relationship developed.
A notable episode in their time together was a turbulent and miserable winter on Mallorca (1838–1839), where they had problems finding habitable accommodation and ended up lodging in the scenic but stark and cold Valldemossa monastery. Chopin also had problems having his Pleyel piano sent to him. It arrived from Paris after a great delay, to be stuck at Spanish customs, which demanded a large import duty. He could use it for little more than three weeks; the rest of the time he had to compose on a rickety rented piano to complete his Preludes (Op. 28).
During the winter, the bad weather had such a serious effect on Chopin's health and his chronic lung disease that – to save his life – he, George Sand and her two children were compelled to return first to the Spanish mainland where they reached Barcelona, and then to Marseille where they stayed for a few months to recover. Although his health improved, he never completely recovered from this bout. He complained, with his habitual wit, about the incompetence of the doctors in Mallorca: "The first said I was going to die; the second said I had breathed my last; and the third said I was already dead."
Chopin spent the summers of 1839 until 1843 at Sand's estate in Nohant. These were quiet but productive days during which Chopin composed many works. They included his great Polonaise in A-flat major, Op.53 "Heroic," still one of his most famous pieces. On Chopin's return to Paris in 1839, he met the pianist and composer Ignaz Moscheles.
In 1845 a serious problem emerged in Chopin's relationship with Sand at the same time as a further deterioration occurred in his health. Their relationship was further soured in 1846 by family problems; this was the year in which Sand published Lucrezia Floriani, which is quite unfavorable to Chopin. The story is about a rich actress and a prince with weak health, and it is possible to interpret the main characters as Sand and Chopin. In 1847 the family problems finally brought to an end the relationship between them that had lasted ten years, since 1837.
===Death and funeral===
In 1848 Chopin gave his last concert in Paris, and visited England and Scotland with his student and admirer Jane Stirling. They reached London in November, and although Chopin managed to give some concerts and salon performances, he was severely ill. He returned to Paris, where in 1849 he became unable to teach or perform. His sister Ludwika, who had given him his first piano lessons, nursed him in his apartment at Place Vendôme, 12, where he died in the small hours of October 17. Later that morning, a death mask and a cast of Chopin's hands were made by the young sculptor, Jean Baptiste Clesinger. 
Before Chopin's funeral, pursuant to his dying wish, his heart was removed (he dreaded being buried alive), to be taken by his sister in an urn to Warsaw, where it remains sealed within a pillar of the Holy Cross Church (Kościół Świętego Krzyża) on Krakowskie Przedmieście. 
Chopin had requested that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral. The Requiem has major parts for female singers, but the chosen church, the Church of the Madeleine, had never permitted female singers in its choir. The funeral was delayed for almost two weeks, until the church finally relented and granted Chopin's final wish, provided the female singers remained behind a black velvet curtain. The funeral was held on 30 October and was attended by nearly three thousand people. The soloists in the Requiem included the bass Luigi Lablache, who had sung the same work at the funeral of Beethoven and also sang at the funeral of Bellini. Preludes No. 4 in E minor and No. 6 in B minor were also played. He was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, also at his own request. At the graveside, the Funeral March from the Sonata Op. 35 was played, in Napoléon Henri Reber's instrumentation. Later, some of Chopin's Polish friends journeyed to Paris with a jar of earth from their native land and scattered it over his grave, so that Chopin would lie under Polish soil. His grave attracts numerous visitors and is invariably festooned with flowers, even in the dead of winter.
==Music==
Chopin's music for the piano combined a unique rhythmic sense (particularly his use of rubato), frequent use of chromaticism, and counterpoint. This mixture produces a particularly fragile sound in the melody and the harmony, which are nonetheless underpinned by solid and interesting harmonic techniques. He took the new salon genre of the nocturne, invented by Irish composer John Field, to a deeper level of sophistication. Three of his twenty-one nocturnes were only published after his death in 1849, contrary to his wishes.Letter of 12 December 1853 from Camille Pleyel to Chopin's sister, Louise Jedrzejewicz, cited in Chopin — Nocturnes, with note by Ewald Zimmermann, winter 1979/1980, published by G. Henle Verlag (ISM N M-2018-0185-8). He also endowed popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurka and the waltz, Viennese Waltz, with a greater range of melody and expression. Chopin was the first to write ballades and scherzi as individual pieces. Chopin also took the example of Bach's preludes and fugues, transforming the genre in his own preludes.
Several of Chopin's pieces have become very well known — for instance the Revolutionary Étude (Op. 10, No. 12), the Minute Waltz (Op. 64, No. 1), and the third movement of his Funeral March sonata (Op. 35), which is often used as an iconic representation of grief. (It is to be noted that Chopin himself never named an instrumental work beyond genre and number, leaving all potential extramusical association to the listener. The expressive or atmospheric names by which we know many of them today have all been invented by others.) The Revolutionary Étude was not written with the failed Polish uprising against Russia in mind; it merely appeared at that time. The Funeral March was written before the rest of the sonata within which it is contained, but the exact occasion is not known; it appears not to have been inspired by any specific personal bereavement.Kornel Michałowski, Grove Other melodies have been used as the basis of popular songs, such as the slow section of the Fantaisie-Impromptu (Op. 66) and the first section of the Étude Op. 10 No. 3. These pieces often rely on an intense and personalised chromaticism, as well as a melodic curve that resembles the operas of Chopin's day — the operas of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and especially Bellini. Chopin used the piano to re-create the gracefulness of the singing voice, and talked and wrote constantly about singers.
Chopin's style and gifts became increasingly influential. Robert Schumann was a huge admirer of Chopin's music — although the feeling was not reciprocated — and he took melodies from Chopin and even named a piece from his suite Carnaval after Chopin.
Franz Liszt, another great admirer and personal friend of the composer, transcribed for piano six of Chopin's Polish songs. However, one myth about Liszt's admiration for Chopin should be dispelled. In 1853, Liszt published a piano suite called Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses. The seventh movement, Funérailles, is subtitled "October 1849". That this was the month of Chopin's death, and that the middle section seems to be modelled upon the famous octave trio section of Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53, have led many to presume that Liszt wrote the piece in memory of Chopin. However, Liszt denied this, saying the piece had been inspired by the deaths of three of his Hungarian compatriots in the same month.
Chopin performed his own works in concert halls but most often in his salon for friends. Only later in life, as his disease progressed, did Chopin give up public performance altogether.
Chopin's technical innovations also became influential. His Préludes (Op. 28) and Études (Opp. 10 and 25) rapidly became standard works, and inspired both Liszt's Transcendental Études and Schumann's Symphonic Études. Alexander Scriabin was also strongly influenced by Chopin; for example, his 24 Preludes, Op. 11 are inspired by Chopin's Op. 28.
Jeremy Siepmann, in his biography of the composer, named a list of pianists he believed to have made recordings of works by Chopin generally acknowledged to be among the greatest Chopin performances ever preserved: Vladimir de Pachmann, Raoul Pugno, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Moriz Rosenthal, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alfred Cortot, Ignaz Friedman, Raoul Koczalski, Arthur Rubinstein, Mieczysław Horszowski, Claudio Arrau, Vlado Perlemuter, Vladimir Horowitz, Dinu Lipatti, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, Murray Perahia, Krystian Zimerman, Evgeny Kissin.
Rubinstein said the following about Chopin's music and its universality:
===Style===
Although Chopin lived in the 1800s, he was educated in the tradition of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Clementi; he even used Clementi's piano method with his own students. He was also influenced by Hummel's development of virtuoso, yet Mozartian, piano technique. One of his students, Friederike Muller, wrote the following in her diary about Chopin's playing style:
Chopin's polonaises brought the musical form to a higher level than anyone had envisioned the musical style to be capable of. The series of seven polonaises published in his lifetime (another nine were published posthumously), beginning with the Op. 26 pair, set a whole new standard for composing and playing the music and were rooted in a passion by Chopin to write something to celebrate Polish culture — after the country had fallen back into the Russian grip. The A major polonaise Op. 40 No. 1, "Military," and the polonaise in A flat major Op. 53, "Heroic," are among Chopin's most beloved and played works.
===Romanticism===
Chopin regarded most of his contemporaries with some indifference, although he had many acquaintances with those associated with romanticism in music, literature and the arts (many of them via his liaison with George Sand). Chopin's music is, however, considered by many to be a peak of the Romantic style. See e.g. Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation, chapters 5-7, Harvard University Press 1995. ISBN 9780674779334 The relative classical purity and discretion in his music, with little extravagant exhibitionism, partly reflects his reverence for Bach and Mozart. (Chopin based the sequence of his Preludes on Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier). Chopin also never indulged in explicit "scene painting" in his music, or used programmatic titles, castigating publishers who renamed his pieces in this way.
==Works==
All Chopin's works involve the piano, solo or accompanied. They are predominantly for solo piano, but include a small number of piano ensembles with instruments, including a second piano, violin, cello, voice or orchestra.
Over 230 of Chopin's works survive. Various manuscripts and pieces from early childhood have been lost.
==Media==
== Chopin posthumously ==
Chopin's popularity, and the esteem in which he is held, have prompted many commemorations. For example, a statue of Chopin was erected before World War II in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. At its base, on summer Sundays, free piano recitals of Chopin's compositions are performed. The stylized tree over Chopin's figure echoes a pianist's hand and fingers. A tribute of a different type is the naming of the asteroid 3784 Chopin after the composer.
The International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition is held every five years in Warsaw, and the Grand prix du disque de F.Chopin is awarded periodically for notable Chopin recordings, both remastered and newly-recorded work.
Warsaw has a Frederic Chopin International Airport.
Chopin's life and his relationship with George Sand has been fictionalised in film, notably in the 1945 biopic, A Song to Remember, which earned Cornel Wilde an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor for his portrayal of the composer. Other film treatments include Impromptu (1991), which starred Hugh Grant as Chopin, La note bleue (1991), and Chopin: Desire for Love (2002).
==See also==
*List of compositions by Frédéric Chopin
*Hôtel Lambert
==Notes==
==References==
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*Eigeldinger, Jean-Jacques, "Chopin vu par ses élèves" (Chopin as seen by his pupils), ed. A LA BACONNIERE
*Michałowski, Kornel/Samson, Jim: "Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed October 31 2006), (subscription access)
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==External links==
*Chopin: the poet of the piano - A favorite Chopin place since 1999 with biography, images, music files, work list and analysis, quizzes and contests, noted interpreters...
*Artanhime - Chopin's mp3 Collection.
*Online biography of Chopin
*University of Michigan Chopin Project
*Internet Chopin Information Centre, Chopin portal including calendar, catalogues, other information about Chopin, Chopin on the Web, and pianists' biographical notes.
*Chopin Music - Website and forum dedicated to the music of Chopin, including recordings, sheet music and image galleries.
*Brief Chopin essay at Classical Music Pages
*The Frederick Chopin Society in Warsaw. Contains a biography, an outline of Chopin's works and musical style and pictures of original manuscripts.
*Fryderyk Chopin: Poet of the Piano
*Valldemossa, Majorca where Chopin lived with George Sand in 1838-39.
*Biographies (Project Gutenberg e-texts):
**Life of Chopin, by Franz Liszt
**Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, by Frederick Niecks
**Chopin: The Man and his Music, by James Huneker
*International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition
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*The International Foundation Can Mossenya - Friends of Jorge Luis Borges
*Free Chopin Downloads (MP3 and WMV)
=== Music scores ===
*Chopin Piano Sheet Music (out of copyright)
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*Chopin scores from Mutopia Project
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*Chopin Early Editions, a collection of over 400 first and early printed editions of musical compositions by Frédéric Chopin published before 1881.
===Free recordings===
*Performances by Donald Betts: 3 ballades, 3 études, 2 nocturnes, 1 mazurka
*Performances by Paul Cantrell from In the Hands
*Performances by Alberto Cobo: Sonata #3, Ballade #1 & Fantasie-Impromptu, Sonata #2, Scherzo #2, Prelude #16
*Performances by Stephen Kopp, Roberto Carnevale, Graziella, Concas, Chris Breemer, Robert Stahlbrand and others from Piano Society
*Various performers from PianoParadise (some links are broken)
*MIDI files from Kunst der Fuge
*Preludes No. 4 and No. 6 arranged for voices, guitar, and bass by the John Link Project
*Performances of works by Frédéric Chopin in MP3 and MIDI formats at Logos Virtual Library
Category:Polish classical pianists
Category:Polish composers
Category:Romantic composers
Category:Warsaw University alumni
Category:Deaths by tuberculosis
Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Category:1810 births
Category:1849 deaths
Category:Music educators
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