Frédéric-François Chopin (March 1, 1810 – October 17, 1849) is widely seen as the greatest of Polish composers and the very greatest of composers for the piano. He wrote almost exclusively for the piano. He was born as Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, only adopting the French variant “Frédéric-François” when he left Poland for Paris at age 20, never to return. His surname is also sometimes spelt Szopen in Polish texts.

Contents

1 Biography 1.1 Formative Years 1.2 Career in Paris 1.3 Chopin and George Sand 1.4 Death and Funeral 2 Music 2.1 Chopin and Romanticism 3 List of Works 3.1 Piano solos 3.2 2 Pianos 3.3 Piano and Orchestra 3.4 Voice 3.5 Chamber Works 4 Eponyms 5 Listening 6 See also 7 External links

Biography

According to the statements of the artist himself and his family he was born March 1, 1810. But according to his baptismal certificate, which was written several weeks after his birth he was born February 22, in Żelazowa Wola in central Poland near Sochaczew, in the region of Mazovia, which was part of the Duchy of Warsaw. Born to Mikołaj (Nicolas) Chopin , a Polonized Frenchman and to his Polish mother, Tekla Justyna Krzyzanowska .

Formative Years

The musical talent of Fryderyk became apparent extremely early on, and it was compared with the childhood genius of Mozart. Already at the age of 7, Fryderyk was the author of two polonaises (in G minor and B-flat major), the first being published in the engraving workshop of Father Cybulski. The prodigy was featured in the Warsaw newspapers, and “little Chopin” became the attraction and ornament of receptions given in the aristocratic salons of the capital. He also began giving public charity concerts. His first professional piano lessons, given to him by the violinist Wojciech Żywny (b. 1756 in Bohemia), lasted from 1816 to 1822, when the teacher was no longer able to give any more help to the pupil whose skills surpassed his own.

The further development of Fryderyk's talent was supervised by Wilhelm Würfel (b.1791 in Bohemia). The renowned pianist and professor at the Warsaw Conservatory who was to offer valuable, although irregular, advice as regards playing the piano and organ. From 1823 to 1826, Fryderyk attended the Warsaw Lyceum, where his father was one of the professors. In the autumn of 1826, Chopin began studying the theory of music, figured bass and composition at the Warsaw School of Music, which was both part of the Conservatory and at the same time connected with Warsaw University, headed by the composer Jozef Elsner (b. 1769 in Silesia). In 1831 he left Poland for France and Vienna and lived the rest of his life in and near Paris.

Career in Paris

Chopin first visited Vienna in early 1829, where he gave a piano performace and received his first favorable reviews. The following year he returned to Warsaw and performed National Theater, on March 17, the premiere of his Piano Concerto in F Minor. By 1831 Chopin had left Poland for good and settled in Paris. He began work on his first scherzos and ballades as well as the first book of études. It is also at this time that he began his lifelong struggle with tuberculosis.

The early and mid-1830s in Paris were a productive time for the composer. He completed several of his most famous works and also concertized regularly, to rave reviews. By 1838 Chopin had become a famous figure in Parisian circles. Among his friends were Franz Liszt, Vincenzo Bellini (beside whom he is buried in the Père Lachaise), and Eugène Delacroix. He was also friends with composers Hector Berlioz and Robert Schumann, and, although sometimes critical of their music, dedicated some of his compositions to them.

In 1836 Chopin was secretly engaged to a seventeen-year-old Polish girl named Maria Wodzinska. The engagement was later called off. In that same year, at a party hosted by Countess Marie d'Agoult, Chopin met the novelist George Sand.

Chopin and George Sand

Chopin's relationship with Sand, perhaps his most famous companion, began in the late 1830s. Unlike Sand, Chopin was asexual; however, their loving relationship lasted for ten years, until they agreed to part as Chopin's illness advanced.

A notable episode in their time together was a turbulent and miserable winter on Majorca (1838–1839) living in unheated peasant huts and in the then abandoned and equally cold Valldemossa monastery[1]. Chopin would later complain of also having to go to great lengths to obtain a piano from Paris and of the difficulty of moving it uphill to the monastery. Chopin reflected much of the mood of this desperate time in the twenty-four préludes, Op. 28, the majority of which were written in Majorca. The weather had such a serious impact on Chopin's health and his chronic lung disease that he and George Sand were compelled to return to Paris to save his life. He survived but never recovered from this bout.

Death and Funeral

By the 1840s Chopin's health was rapidly deteriorating. He and Sand took several trips to remote locations, such as Nohant-Vic, to no avail. By 1849 most of his major works were completed and Chopin concentrated on mazurkas and nocturnes. His last work was a mazurka in F minor.

Chopin died, officially, of tuberculosis in 1849, although there is some speculation that he may have had another disease such as cystic fibrosis or emphysema due in part to autopsy findings (reported only by his sister) seemingly inconsistent with the initial diagnosis. He had a terror of being buried alive, and asked to be "cut open" to make sure he was dead.

He had requested that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral, held at the Church of the Madeleine. The Requiem has major parts for female singers but the Madeleine had never permitted female singers in its choir. The funeral was delayed for almost 2 weeks while the matter raged, the church finally relenting and granting Chopin's final wish. Although Chopin is buried in the Père Lachaise in Paris, his heart is entombed in a pillar in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw.

Music

Chopin's music for the piano combined a unique rhythmic sense, particularly his use of rubato, chromatic inflections, the style of Bach—as well as a piano technique which was of his own creation. This mixture produces a particularly fragile sound to the melody and the harmony, which is yet underpinned by solid and interesting harmonic ideas. He took the new salon genre of the nocturne to a deeper level of sophistication, and endowed popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurka and the Viennese waltz with a greater range of melody and expression. Chopin also took the example of Bach's préludes and transformed the genre.

Several melodies of Chopin's have entered the public conscience and because of their unique melodic shape are instantly memorable and are commonly recognized. Among these are the Revolutionary Étude, the Minute Waltz and the third movement of his Funeral March sonata, which is still used as an iconic representation of grief. Other melodies have even been used as the basis of popular songs, such as the slow section of the Fantaisie-Impromptu . These pieces often rely on an intense, and personalized, chromaticism as well as a melodic curve that mimics the opera of Chopin's day. Chopin once claimed that he was using the piano to re-create the gradefulness of the singing voice, and often stated that his greatest influences were Donizetti and Bellini.

Chopin's style and gifts became increasingly influential: Schumann took melodies from Chopin and even named a piece of his Carnaval Suite after Chopin, and Franz Liszt, a great admirer of the composer, transcribed several Chopin songs for piano alone. Liszt later dedicated a movement of his "Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses" to Chopin, titling it "Funérailles" and laconically dedicating it "October 1849." The mid-section recalls, powerfully, the famous octave trio section of Chopin's Opus 53 Polonaise.

Chopin himself did not create a school based on his principles and music. He did, however, perform his own works in concert halls and the salons of friends. Only later in life, as his disease progressed, did Chopin give up public performance altogether.

Several of Chopin's piano works carry with them their own technique: his préludes and études rapidly became standard works. They also became influential, inspiring both Liszt's Transcendental Études and Schumann's Symphonic Études .

Chopin and Romanticism

Chopin's music belongs to the Romantic period of classical music. However, Chopin regarded the Romantic movement with indifference, if not distaste, and rarely directly associated himself with it. Even so, today Chopin's music is considered to be the paragon of the Romantic style.

All of his works, without exception, involve the piano. They are predominantly for solo piano but include a small number of works for piano and secondary instruments, including a second piano, violin, cello, voice, and orchestra.

List of Works

Piano solos

• 4 ballades
• 1 barcarolle
• 1 berceuse
• 1 bolero
• 2 bourrées
• 3 écossaises
• 27 études
• 3 fantaisies (1 if you exclude the Fantaisie-Impromptu and the Polonaise-Fantaisie)
• 1 fugue
• 4 impromptus (3 if you exclude the Fantaisie-Impromptu)
• 58 mazurkas
• 21 nocturnes
• 17 polonaises (15 if you exclude the Polonaise-Fantaisie and the curious hybrid piece containing a section for piano solo ('Andante spianato'), and a section for piano and orchestra ('Grande Polonaise brillante'). The piano part of the second section can also be played as a solo, thus fitting into this category. The same piano part can also be played with the Andante spianato preceding it, making it as hard to classify as the 'Polonaise-Fantaisie' and the 'Fantaisie-Impromptu'. If anybody can explain all that in a more concise way, please feel free.)
• 26 préludes
• 4 scherzos
• 3 sonatas
• 19 waltzes (see list of waltzes by Chopin)

2 Pianos

(fill in details - may also include piano duets, 4-h at 1-p)

Piano and Orchestra

• 2 concertos for piano and orchestra
• 4 other works - Variations on Là ci darem la mano; Krakowiak; Grande Fantaisie on Polish Airs; Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante (but see above for categorization comments)

Voice

• 20 songs to Polish words, for voice and piano

Chamber Works

• 1 piano trio for violin, cello and piano
• 1 sonata for cello and piano
• 2 other works for cello and piano

In commemoration of the genius of Frédéric Chopin there is an international piano competition held in Warsaw every five years.

Eponyms

The following have been named after the composer:

• Asteroid 3784 Chopin
• Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport (also known as Frederic Chopin International Airport).

Listening

• Listen to Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66 (20kB MIDI file) or high quality synthesized version (3.5MB Vorbis file). Most of this piano solo features 4:3 polyrhythm.

See also

• Great Emigration

External links

• 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
• Chopin's partitions from Mutopia Project
• Chopin's music collection on Classical Music Archives
• International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition
• Free recordings of Chopin's music performed by Donald Betts (3 ballades, 3 études, 2 nocturnes, 1 mazurka)
• Free recordings of Chopin's music performed by Paul Cantrell