Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin was born on 1 March 1810 (some documents give 22 February) at Żelazowa Wola, a village near Warsaw in Poland. His father, Nicolas Chopin, was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had settled in Poland and become a French teacher; his mother, Justyna Krzyżanowska, was Polish. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Warsaw, where his father taught at the lyceum. Frédéric grew up in a cultured home with three sisters, the youngest of whom, Emilia, died of tuberculosis at fourteen.

A child prodigy, he took his first piano lessons from Wojciech Żywny, a Czech musician devoted to Bach and Mozart. At seven he published his first polonaise, and at eight he gave his first public concert. He was compared to Mozart. Warsaw’s aristocratic salons fought over him. During country holidays he discovered Polish folk music and dances such as the mazurka, which he remembered all his life.

From 1826 to 1829 he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory with the composer Józef Elsner, who wrote in his final report: “exceptional talent, musical genius”. In 1829 he gave two triumphant concerts in Vienna. He composed his two piano concertos and premiered them in Warsaw. On 2 November 1830 he left Poland; his friends reportedly gave him a cup filled with Polish soil. A few weeks later the Warsaw uprising against Russian rule broke out. Its crushing in 1831 devastated him: he never saw his country again.

In September 1831 Chopin arrived in Paris, where he settled for good. He mixed with the greatest artists of his time: Liszt, Berlioz, Delacroix, who painted his portrait, Heine and Balzac. He gave few public concerts, preferring the intimacy of salons, where his delicate, nuanced, dreamy playing fascinated listeners. He earned his living by teaching piano to the aristocracy and publishing his works. He wrote almost exclusively for the piano: nocturnes, études, preludes, waltzes, mazurkas, polonaises, ballades and scherzos.

In 1836 he met the novelist George Sand, a free-spirited woman who dressed as a man and smoked cigars. They became lovers in 1838 and spent the winter in Majorca, in a former monastery at Valldemossa. The stay was an ordeal: it rained, the monastery was damp, and Chopin, suffering from tuberculosis, fell seriously ill. Yet there he completed his 24 Preludes Op. 28, one in each key, like Bach in The Well-Tempered Clavier.

From 1839 to 1846 he spent his summers at Nohant, George Sand’s country house in the Berry. These were his most productive years: there he composed the “Heroic” Polonaise Op. 53, the “Funeral March” Sonata, the Fantaisie Op. 49, the Berceuse and many mazurkas. His Études Op. 10 and Op. 25, which turn technical exercises into true poems, are among the summits of piano literature. In 1847, after family conflicts, Chopin and Sand separated.

Weakened by illness, he gave his last Paris concert in February 1848, just before the revolution. He went to England and Scotland at the invitation of his pupil Jane Stirling, but the climate and fatigue exhausted him. Back in Paris he died on 17 October 1849, aged thirty-nine. Mozart’s Requiem was performed at his funeral, as he had wished. He was buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery, but his heart, according to his last wish, was taken back to Warsaw by his sister Ludwika and kept in the Holy Cross Church.