Frédéric Chopin

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Chopin, by Eugène Delacroix, 1838

Chopin's autograph

Fryderyk Chopin (Polish: Fryderyk [Franciszek] Chopin, sometimes Szopen; French: Frédéric [François] Chopin; family-name pronunciation in English: IPA: /ˈʃoʊpæn/; March 1, 1810^[1] – October 17, 1849) was a Polish^[2][3] virtuoso pianist and piano composer of the Romantic period. He is widely regarded as the greatest Polish composer, and one of the most influential composers for piano in the 19th century.

Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French-expatriate father and came to be regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. In November 1830, at the age of twenty, Chopin went abroad. After the suppression of the Polish 1830–31 Uprising, he became one of the many expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration. In Paris he made a comfortable living as composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. A great Polish patriot, in France he used the French version of his given name and, to avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents, eventually became a French citizen.^[4][5][6] After some ill-fated romantic involvements with Polish ladies, from 1837 to 1847 he conducted a turbulent relationship with the French writer George Sand (Aurore Dudevant). Always in frail health, at 39 in Paris he succumbed to pulmonary tuberculosis.^[7]

Chopin's extant compositions all include the piano, predominantly alone or as a solo instrument among others. Though his music is technically demanding, its style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than technical virtuosity. Chopin invented new musical forms such as the ballade,^[8] and made major innovations to existing forms such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu, and prelude. His works are mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century classical music. His mazurkas and polonaises remain the cornerstone of Polish national classical music.

[edit] Life

[edit] Early years

Chopin's birthplace at Żelazowa Wola, now venue to piano recitals.

Fryderyk Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, some fifty kilometers west of Warsaw in Sochaczew County in what was then part of the Duchy of Warsaw. His father was Nicolas (in Polish, Mikołaj) Chopin, originally a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland in 1787 at age 16 and served during the Kościuszko Uprising in Poland's National Guard. Mikołaj subsequently worked in Żelazowa Wola as a tutor to some aristocratic families, including the Skarbeks, one of whose poorer relations, Tekla Justyna Krzyżanowska, he married.^[9]

According to the composer's family, Fryderyk (Frederick) Chopin, the couple's second child, was born on March 1, 1810. There is no known birth certificate. His baptismal certificate gives the birthdate as February 22, 1810.

In October 1810, when Fryderyk was seven months old, the family moved to Warsaw, where his father took a position as teacher of French language at a school housed in the Saxon Palace. The family lived on the palace grounds.

In 1817-27, Chopin's family lived in this Warsaw University building, now adorned (center) with Fryderyk's profile, adjacent to the Kazimierz Palace.

In 1817 Mikołaj Chopin became a teacher of French at the Warsaw Lyceum, housed in Warsaw University's Kazimierz Palace. The family lived in a spacious second-floor apartment in an adjacent building. In 1823-26 Fryderyk himself would attend the Warsaw Lyceum.

A Polish spirit, and the Polish language, pervaded Mikołaj Chopin's home, and as a result Fryderyk would never, even in Paris, perfectly master the French language.^[10] The boy inherited his blond hair and blue eyes from his mother; his frail health, rather from his father. The father played the flute and violin, and the mother—the piano, and gave lessons to the boys who lived in their boarding house. Thus Fryderyk early became conversant with music in its various forms. He was drawn to the piano powerfully and exclusively from as early as his hands could reach the keys. On it he began picking out melodies on his own. He received his earliest "piano lessons" not from his mother but from his three-years-older sister Ludwika (in English, "Louise").^[11]

Mikołaj Chopin. Portrait by Ambroży Mieroszewski, 1829

Chopin received his first professional piano lessons, in 1816–22, from the respected, elderly Wojciech Żywny. Chopin later spoke highly of him, though the youngster's skills soon surpassed those of his teacher. Seven-year-old "little Chopin" gave public concerts, prompting comparisons with the earlier little Mozart and with the still living Beethoven. That same year, he composed two polonaises, G minor and B flat major. The first was published in the engraving workshop of Father Cybulski, director of a School of Organists and one of the few music publishers in Poland; the second survives in a manuscript prepared by Mikołaj Chopin. These small works could withstand comparison with the popular polonaises of the leading Warsaw composers, and even with the famous polonaises of Michał Kleofas Ogiński. A very substantial development of melodic and harmonic invention and of piano technique was shown in Chopin's next surviving polonaise, which the young artist offered in 1821 as a name-day present to Żywny.^[12]

In these years, Chopin would be invited to the Belweder Palace as a playmate for the son of Russian Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, and charmed the irascible Grand Duke with his piano playing. "Little Chopin's" popularity is attested by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz's "dramatic eclogue," "Nasze verkehry" ("Our Intercourse," 1818), in which one of the main motifs in the dialogs was the then-eight-year-old musician.^[13]

Justyna Chopin. Portrait by Ambroży Mieroszewski, 1829

As a child, Chopin showed a remarkable "open intelligence" that easily absorbed everything and made use of everything for its development. He retained as well in his mature age a certain ability in sketching, a gift for observation, a keen wit and sense of humor, and an uncommon talent for mimicry.^[14] A famous anecdote from his school years recounts that a teacher was pleasantly surprised to find that Chopin had drawn a superb portrait of him in class.^[15] During vacations in the countryside when Chopin acquainted himself with the folk melodies that he would later refine into his musical compositions, he wrote home famous letters that parodied the Warsaw newspapers. Another anecdote, from Maurycy Karasowski's family traditions, describes how Chopin helped quiet down the rowdy children by improvising a story, then putting everyone to sleep with a berceuse; after he had shown the charming picture to the mother, he woke everyone with an ear-piercing chord.^[16]

To the age of thirteen, Chopin studied at home. In 1823 he enrolled in the Warsaw Lyceum. He continued working on piano under Żywny's direction, and when in 1825 he performed a concert of Moscheles and entranced the audience with his free improvisation, he was acclaimed the best pianist in Warsaw.^[17]

In 1827 the family moved to lodgings in the Krasiński Palace just across the street at Krakowskie Przedmieście 5, now the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie). Chopin would live there until he departed Warsaw in 1830.

Thus, from the age of seven months until his final departure from Warsaw and Poland at the age of twenty, Chopin always dwelt with his family either in a palace or in palace precincts.

In the autumn of 1826, Chopin began a three-year course of studies with the composer Józef Elsner at the Warsaw Conservatory, which was affiliated with Warsaw University (hence Chopin is counted among the University's alumni).

Fryderyk Chopin. Portrait by Ambroży Mieroszewski, 1829

It was in 1829, during the latter part of Fryderyk's studies or soon thereafter, that the painter Ambroży Mieroszewski executed a set of five portraits of the surviving members of the Chopin family: the 19-year-old composer (it was his first known portrait), his parents, and his elder sister Ludwika and younger sister Izabela. In 1913 Édouard Ganche would write that the precocious composer's portrait showed "a youth threatened by tuberculosis. His skin is very white, he has a prominent Adam's apple and sunken cheeks, even his ears show a form characteristic of consumptives." Chopin's younger sister Emilia had already died of tuberculosis at age fourteen in 1827, and his father would succumb to the same disease in 1844.^[18]

Chopin's contact with Józef Elsner may have dated from as early as 1822, and it is certain that Elsner was giving Chopin informal guidance by 1823. Chopin now studied music theory, figured bass and composition with him. In year-end evaluations, Elsner noted Chopin's "remarkable talent" and "musical genius." Like Żywny, Elsner observed the development of Chopin's talent more than he influenced its blossoming or gave it direction. He did not constrain him with narrow, academic, outdated rules but let him mature according to the laws of his own nature.^[19]

According to Jachimecki, it is difficult to compare him at this age with any earlier composer, for the style of his works already from the first half of his life is outstandingly original. At the same age, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were still epigones of earlier masters, whereas Chopin virtually from the first was rather a precursor of the coming age.^[20]

The beauty of Chopin's works is a purely musical one, requiring no reference to literature or painting. Chopin never gave programmatic titles to his works. His compositions did, however, take their origin in his emotional life. The first inspiration for his emotions and imagination was a beautiful young singer at the Warsaw Opera, Konstancja Gładkowska. In letters to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski, Chopin indicated which of his works and even which of their passages had arisen under the influence of his erotic transports. His artistic soul was also enriched through friendships with leading lights of Warsaw's artistic and intellectual world—with Maurycy Mochnacki, Jan Matuszewski, Józef Bohdan Zaleski, Julian Fontana and others.^[21]

In 1827–30, Chopin lived with his family at the Krasiński Palace (Krakowskie Przedmieście 5) before leaving Poland forever. In 1837–39 it would be home to poet Cyprian Norwid, author of "Chopin's Piano" about Russians' 1863 defenestration of the instrument.

In September 1828 Chopin struck out for the wider world in the company of a Dr. Jarocki, who was going to a scientific congress in Berlin. There Chopin saw several unfamiliar operas directed by Gaspare Spontini, heard several concerts, and saw Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn and other famous people. On the way back from Berlin, he was a guest at Antonin of Prince Antoni Radziwiłł, governor of the Grand Duchy of Poznań, himself an accomplished composer and cellist. For his host Chopin composed his Polonaise for Cello and Piano Op. 3.^[22]

In 1829, in Warsaw, Chopin heard Niccolò Paganini play and met the German pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel.

In August 1829, three weeks after completing his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, Chopin made a brilliant début in Vienna. He gave two piano performances and received very favorable reviews (along with some that criticized the small tone that he produced from the piano). This success opened the road for him to western Europe, if he wished to take it.

In December 1829, at Warsaw's Merchants' Club, he performed the première of his Piano Concerto in F minor. On March 17, 1830, at the National Theater, he gave the first performance of his other piano concerto, in E minor.

But Warsaw now seemed too small for Chopin. On November 2, 1830, seen off by friends and admirers, with a ring from his beloved on his finger and carrying with him a silver cup containing soil of his native land, Chopin set out, writes Jachimecki, "into the wide world, with no very clearly defined aim, forever."^[23]

Later that month the November 1830 Uprising broke out, and his traveling companion Tytus Woyciechowski returned home to take part. Now alone by himself in Vienna, Chopin, afflicted by nostalgia, disappointed in his hopes of giving concerts and publishing, matured and acquired spiritual depth. From a romantic poet he grew into an inspired bard who intuited the past, present and future of his country. Only now, at this distance, did he see all of Poland from the proper perspective, and understand what was great and truly beautiful in her, the tragedy and heroism of her vicissitudes. When, on the way from Vienna to Paris, in September 1831 he learned in Stuttgart that the November Uprising had been crushed, he poured profanities and blasphemies into the pages of a little journal that he would keep hidden to the end of his life. These outcries of a tormented heart found musical expression in his Scherzo in B Minor, Op. 20, and his Revolutionary Etude.^[24]

[edit] Paris

Chopin's Polonaise, by Teofil Kwiatkowski. National Museum, Poznań.

Chopin arrived in Paris in late September 1831, still uncertain whether he would settle there for good.^[25]

With a view to easing his entrance into the local musical milieu, he began taking lessons from the prominent pianist Friedrich Kalkbrenner, but already in February 1832 he gave a concert of his own which garnered universal admiration. The influential musicologist and critic François-Joseph Fétis wrote of him in Revue musicale: "here is a young man who, taking nothing as a model, has found, if not a complete renewal of piano music, then in any case part of what has long been sought in vain, namely, an extravagance of original ideas that are unexampled anywhere..."^[26]

Robert Schumann, in reviewing Chopin's Variations on "La ci darem la mano" (from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni), Op. 2, had written in December 1831: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius."^[27]

Indeed, piano style had been fundamentally reshaped by the innovations and techniques that had been introduced by Chopin's works. Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann began drawing on these innovations for their own compositions. Chopin's innovations involved poetic forms such as the ballade, taken from vocal music, and the scherzo, prelude and étude, and they elevated to full-fledged artistic forms, dances: the mazurek, waltz, polonaise, even the tarantella and bolero. Chopin transformed nocturnes from John Field's sentimental genre into what Schumann described as "ideals of the kind, the tenderest and most soulful things that may be conceived of in music."^[28]

In Paris, Chopin found all that he needed as an artist: the stimulation of art and distinguished company, opportunities to exercise his talents and achieve celebrity, and before long a handsome income from teaching piano to affluent students from all over Europe. The most famous artists became faithful friends to the young Polish musician: Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Vincenzo Bellini, Ferdinand Hiller, Felix Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Eugène Delacroix.^[29] Chopin also formed friendships with Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, residing at the Hôtel Lambert, Alfred de Vigny and Charles-Valentin Alkan.

Chopin seldom performed publicly in Paris. In later years he would generally give only a single concert a year at the Salle Pleyel that seated three hundred. He played more frequently for social gatherings at great aristocratic salons, but preferentially at his own home for a circle of friends. His frail physique did not allow him to become a traveling virtuoso. Outside of Paris he only once played at Rouen, otherwise seldom venturing out of the capital.

In 1834, with Hiller, he visited a Rhenish Music Festival at Aachen organized by Ferdinand Ries. There Chopin and Hiller met with Mendelssohn, and the three went on to Düsseldorf, Koblenz and Cologne, enjoying each other's company and playing music together.

Maria Wodzińska, self-portrait, ca. 1830s

In 1835 Chopin went to Carlsbad, where for the last time in his life he met with his parents. En route back to Paris through Saxony, he met at Dresden with old Warsaw friends, the Wodzińskis. Chopin had by then gotten over the loss of Konstancja Gładkowska, who had married shortly after his departure from Warsaw. Seeing the sixteen-year-old Maria Wodzińska, whom he had met in Poland five years earlier, he fell in love with the charming, intelligent, artistically talented young lady. (She painted a remarkable water-color portrait of him that must be one of the best renderings of the young Chopin.) He proposed to her in September 1836, while in Dresden again after vacationing with the Wodziński family at Marienbad. Maria accepted, and her mother approved in principle. But Maria's tender age and his own tenuous health (in the winter of 1835–36 he had been so ill that word had circulated in Warsaw that he had died) forced him to postpone the wedding indefinitely. The engagement remained a secret to the world and never led to the altar. Chopin long suffered in secret, then placed the letters from Maria and her mother into a large envelope, wrote on it the words "My sorrow" ("Moja bieda"), and to the end of his life retained in a desk drawer this keepsake of the second love of his life.^[30]

Chopin's feelings for Maria Wodzińska left their traces in his music. He expressed those feelings in his enchanting Waltz in A flat major, Op. 69, no. 1, written on the morning of the September day before his departure from Dresden in his cramped room in the modest Hotel Stadt Berlin near the Frauenkirche, whence he heard the sound of the clock in the tower, reminding him of the hour of his stage coach's departure. On his return to Paris, he composed the Étude in F minor, the second in the Op. 25 cycle, light as a breath of floral fragrances, which Chopin called "a portrait of Maria's soul." In addition, the composer sent her an album with copies of seven of his songs to words by Witwicki, Zaleski and Mickiewicz, mainly from his Warsaw days, and a copy of his earlier Nocturne in C sharp minor, which would be easy enough for her to play.^[31]

After Chopin's matrimonial plans had been shattered, there appeared on his erotic horizon, but only episodically, a great lady, the beautiful and talented Delfina Potocka.^[32] She would be a muse to him (he composed for her his Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64) but even more so to the Polish Romantic poet Zygmunt Krasiński.

Before long, Aurora Dudevant—the French novelist George Sand—would become the mistress of Chopin's heart.^[33]

During his years in Paris, Chopin participated in a small number of public 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, Chopin's pupil Adolphe Gutman, Alkan, and Alkan's teacher Pierre Joseph Zimmerman played Alkan's 8-hand arrangement of Beethoven's 7th symphony.

Chopin was also involved in the composition of Hexaméron (1837) — Chopin's was the sixth (last) variation on Bellini's theme.

A distinguished English amateur described seeing Chopin at a salon:

Imagine a delicate man of extreme refinement of mien and manner, sitting at the piano and playing with no sway of the body and scarcely any movement of the arms, depending entirely upon his narrow feminine hand and slender fingers. The wide arpeggios in the left hand, maintained in a continuous stream of tone by the strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper pedal, formed a harmonious substructure for a wonderfully poetic cantabile. His delicate pianissimo, the ever-changing modifications of tone and time (tempo rubato) were of indescribable effect. Even in energetic passages he scarcely ever exceeded an ordinary mezzoforte.^[34]

[edit] George Sand

In 1836, at a party hosted by Countess Marie d'Agoult, mistress of fellow-composer Franz Liszt, Chopin met Amandine-Aurore-Lucille 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 wrote 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.

Chopin's piano at Valldemossa

A notable episode in their time together was a turbulent and miserable winter on Majorca (8 November 1838 to 13 February 1839), where the four (including her two children) had gone in the hope of improving Chopin's deteriorating health. They had difficulty finding accommodations and ended up lodging in a scenic but stark and cold former Carthusian monastery in Valldemossa.

Chopin also had problems having his Pleyel piano sent to him. It arrived from Paris on 20 December but was held up by customs. (Chopin wrote on 28 December: "My piano has been stuck at customs for 8 days... They demand such a huge sum of money to release it that I can't believe it.") In the meantime Chopin had a rickety rented piano on which he practiced and may have composed some pieces.

On 3 December he complained about his bad health and the incompetence of the doctors in Majorca: "I have been sick as a dog during these past two weeks. Three doctors have visited me. The first said I was going to die; the second said I was breathing my last; and the third said I was already dead."

On 4 January 1839 George Sand agreed to pay 300 francs (half the demanded amount) to have the Pleyel piano released from customs. It was finally delivered on 5 January. From then on Chopin was able to use the long-awaited instrument for almost five weeks, time enough to complete some works: Preludes (Op. 28); a revision of Ballade No. 2, Op. 38; two polonaises, Op. 40; Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39; a mazurka (Op. 41); and he probably revisited his Sonata No. 2, Op. 35. This is why the winter in Majorca is still considered one of the most productive periods in Chopin's life.

Stylized rendition of joint portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand by Eugène Delacroix

During that winter, the bad weather had such a serious effect on Chopin's health and chronic lung disease that, in order to save his life, the entire party were compelled to leave the island. The beloved French piano became an obstacle to a hasty escape. Nevertheless George Sand managed to sell it to a French couple (the Canuts), whose heirs are the custodians of Chopin's legacy on Majorca and of the Chopin cell-room museum in Valldemossa.

The party of four went first to Barcelona, then to Marseille, where they stayed for a few months to recover.

As the composer's illness progressed, Sand gradually became less of a lover and more of a nurse to Chopin, whom she called her "third child." But the nursing began to pall on her. In the years to come she would keep up her friendship with Chopin, but she often gave vent to her impatience, at least in letters to third parties, in which she referred to Chopin as a "child," a "little angel," a "sufferer" and a "beloved little corpse." Concern for her own health and her children's prompted her to keep a certain distance from him. After their return from Majorca to Paris, they lived, as before, separately. Chopin took up residence on the rue Tronchet, Sand on the rue Pigalle. Later, in 1842, they would exchange these residences for others in the Cité and the Square d'Orléans, in adjacent buildings.^[35]

Chopin spent the summers of 1839 through 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, the "Heroic," one of his most famous pieces. It is to Sand that we owe the most compelling description of Chopin's creative processes, of the rise of his inspirations and of their painstaking working-out, sometimes amid real torments, amid weeping and complaints, with hundreds of changes in the initial concept and finally a return to the first idea.^[36]

In 1845, even as a further deterioration occurred in Chopin's health, a serious problem emerged in his relations with Sand. Those relations were further soured in 1846 by problems involving her daughter Solange and the young sculptor Jean Baptiste Auguste Clésinger. In 1847 Sand published her novel Lucrezia Floriani, whose main characters — a rich actress and a prince in weak health — could be interpreted as Sand and Chopin; the story was uncomplimentary to Chopin, who could not have missed the allusions as he helped Sand correct the printer's galleys. In 1847 he did not visit Nohant. Mutual friends attempted to reconcile them, but the composer was unyielding. That year, 1847, brought to an end, without any dramatics or formalities, the relations between Sand and Chopin that had lasted ten years, from 1837.^[37]

[edit] Final two years

Only known photograph of Chopin, by Bisson, ca. 1849

Chopin's public popularity as a virtuoso waned, as did the number of his pupils. In February 1848 he gave his last Paris concert. In April he left for London, where he performed at several concerts and at numerous receptions in great houses. Toward the end of the summer he went to Scotland, staying at the castle of his great admirer Jane Stirling and her sister, Mrs. Erskine. Miss Stirling proposed marriage to him; but Chopin, sensing that he was not long for this world, set greater store by his freedom than by the prospect of living on the generosity of a wife.^[38]

In late October 1848 in Edinburgh, at the home of a Pole, a Dr. Łyszczyński, Chopin wrote out his last will and testament — "a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere," he wrote his friend Wojciech Grzymała. In his thoughts he was now constantly with his mother and sisters, and conjured up for himself scenes of his native land by playing his adaptations of its folk music on cool Scottish evenings at Miss Stirling's castle.^[39]

On November 16, 1848, in London, Chopin gave the last concert of his life, for the benefit of Polish emigrés. Then at the end of the month he returned to Paris.^[40]

Chopin passed the winter in unremitting illness, but in spite of it he continued seeing friends and visited the ailing Adam Mickiewicz, soothing the Polish poet's nerves with his playing. He no longer had the strength to give lessons, but he was still keen to compose. He lacked money for the most essential expenses and for his physicians. He had to sell off his more valuable furnishings and belongings.^[41]

Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, née Chopin. Portrait by Ambroży Mieroszewski, 1829.

Feeling ever more poorly, Chopin desired to have one of his family with him. In June 1849 his sister Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, who had given him his first piano lessons, agreed to come to Paris. He had lately taken up residence in a very beautiful, sunny apartment at Place Vendôme 12. It was there, in the small hours of October 17, 1849, that Chopin died.^[42]

Postmortem cast of Chopin's left hand

Later that morning, Auguste Clésinger made Chopin's death mask and casts of his hands. Before the funeral, pursuant to Chopin's dying wish (which stemmed from a fear of being buried alive), his heart was removed. His sister later took it in an urn to Warsaw, where it was sealed within a pillar of the Holy Cross Church (Kościół Świętego Krzyża) on Krakowskie Przedmieście, beneath an inscription from Matthew VI:21: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Chopin's heart remains there, within the church that was rebuilt after its virtual destruction in World War II.

Chopin had requested that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral. The Requiem has major parts for female voices, but the Church of the Madeleine had never permitted female singers in its choir. The funeral was delayed almost two weeks until the church relented, provided the female singers remained behind a black velvet curtain.

The funeral was held on October 30, 1849, attended by nearly three thousand people. The soloists in the Requiem included the bass Luigi Lablache, who had sung the same work at Beethoven's funeral and had also sung at the funeral of Vincenzo Bellini. Also played were Chopin's preludes no. 4 in E minor and no. 6 in B minor.

Chopin was buried, in accordance with his wishes, at Père Lachaise Cemetery. At the graveside, the Funeral March from Sonata Op. 35 was played, in Napoléon Henri Reber's instrumentation.^[43]

Chopin's grave, with its monument carved by Clésinger, attracts numerous visitors and is invariably festooned with flowers, even in the dead of winter.

[edit] Memorials

Chopin statue, Warsaw's Łazienki Park

In 1926, a bronze statue of Chopin designed by sculptor Wacław Szymanowski in 1907, was erected in the upper part of Warsaw's Łazienki Park, adjacent to Aleje Ujazdowskie (Ujazdów Avenue). The statue was originally to have been erected in 1910, on the centennial of Chopin's birth, but its execution was delayed by controversy about the design, then by the outbreak of World War I.

During World War II, the statue was destroyed by the Germans, on May 31, 1940. It was reconstructed after the war, in 1958. Since 1959, free piano recitals of Chopin's compositions have been performed at the statue's base on summer Sunday afternoons. The stylized willow over Chopin's seated figure echoes a pianist's hand and fingers. Until 2007, the statue was the world's tallest monument to Chopin.

A 1:1-scale replica of Szymanowski's Art Nouveau statue is found in Warsaw's sister city, Hamamatsu, Japan. There are preliminary plans to erect another replica of Szymanowski's statue, in Chicago's Chopin Park for the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth.

There are numerous other monuments to Chopin around the world. The most recent, and by a small margin taller than the Warsaw statue, is a modernistic bronze sculpture by Lu Pin in Shanghai, China, that was unveiled on March 3, 2007.

Every five years, the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition is held in Warsaw. Periodically the Grand prix du disque de F. Chopin is awarded for notable Chopin recordings, both remastered and newly-recorded work.

Named for the composer is the largest Polish conservatory, the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.

[edit] Music

Chopin, unlike such composers as Mozart and Schubert, did not compose in a facile manner. He created barely 80 opuses, only a few of which ranged beyond pure piano music, as chamber music or concertos for piano and orchestra. He composed two concertos for piano and orchestra, Op. 11 and 21; three piano sonatas, Op. 4, 35 and 58; a sonata for cello and piano, Op. 65 (Chopin's last composition published in his lifetime); 17 polonaises (one with orchestral accompaniment, and one for cello with accompanying piano); 19 nocturnes; 27 etudes (12 in the Op. 10 cycle, 12 in the Op. 25 cycle, and three in a collection without an opus number); 58 mazureks (several treated sketchily, as occasional pieces); 17 waltzes, 26 preludes, 4 ballades, 4 scherzos, 5 rondos, 4 variations, 4 impromptus, one fantaisie on themes from Polish songs with accompanying orchestra, one fantaisie for piano, three Scottish dances, a barcarolle, a bolero, a tarantella, an allegro de concert, a berceuse, a contredanse, a Grand Duo on themes from Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Robert le diable for cello and piano; a cantabile, a lento, a Funeral March, a Souvenir de Paganini, an Andante spianato before the polonaise in E-flat major, Op. 22; a Feuille d'album, 19 songs for solo voice with accompanying piano.^[44]

It is very difficult to briefly characterize Chopin's oeuvre. Robert Schumann, speaking of Chopin's Sonata in b-flat minor, wrote that "he alone begins and ends a work like this: with dissonances, through dissonances, and in dissonances," and in Chopin's music he discerned "cannon concealed amid blossoms." Franz Liszt, in the opening of his beautiful book about Chopin, termed him a "gentle, harmonious genius." Thus disparate have been the views on Chopin's music. The first systematic, if imperfect, study of Chopin's style came in F.P. Laurencin's 1861 Die Harmonik der Neuzeit. Laurencin concluded that "Chopin is one of the most brilliant exceptional natures that have ever stridden onto the stage of history and life, he is one who can never be exhausted nor stand before a void. Chopin is the musical progone of all progones until now."^[45]

Chopin's grave, with monument by Clésinger, at Paris' Père Lachaise Cemetery

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 Chopin's twenty-one nocturnes were only published after his death in 1849, contrary to his wishes.^[46] He also endowed popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurek and the Viennese waltz, with a greater range of melody and expression. Chopin was the first to write ballades^[8] and scherzi as individual pieces. He also took the example of Bach's preludes and fugues, transforming the genre in his own preludes.

Chopin reinvented the étude,^{[citation needed]} expanding on the idea and making it into a gorgeous, eloquent and emotional showpiece. He also used his études to teach his own revolutionary style, for instance playing with the weak fingers (3, 4, and 5) in fast figures (Op. 10, no. 2) and playing black keys with the thumb (Op. 10, no. 5).

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. Chopin himself never named an instrumental work beyond genre and number, leaving all potential extra-musical associations to the listener; the names by which we know many of the pieces were 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.^[47] Other melodies have been used as the basis of popular songs, such as the slow section of the Fantaisie-Impromptu (Op. posth. 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, and he used melodies from Chopin and even named a piece from his suite Carnaval after Chopin. This admiration was not reciprocated.

Pillar in Warsaw's Holy Cross Church, containing Chopin's heart (at the bouquet near bottom)

Franz Liszt was another admirer and personal friend of the composer, and he transcribed for piano six of Chopin's Polish songs. However Liszt denied that he wrote Funérailles (subtitled "October 1849", the seventh movement of his piano suite Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses of 1853) in memory of Chopin. Although the middle section seems to be modelled upon the famous octave trio section of Chopin's Polonaise in A flat major, Op. 53, Liszt said the piece had been inspired by the deaths of three of his Hungarian compatriots in the same month.

Brahms and the younger Russian composers, too, found inspiration in Chopin's examples.^[48]

Chopin performed his own works in concert halls, but more often in his salon for friends. Later in life, as his disease progressed, Chopin gave up public performance altogether.

Chopin's technical innovations also became influential. His Préludes (Op. 28) and Études (Op. 10 and Op. 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, lists pianists whose recordings of Chopin are generally acknowledged to be among the greatest Chopin performances ever preserved: Vladimir de Pachmann, Raoul Pugno, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Moriz Rosenthal, Jozef Hofmann, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alfred Cortot, Ignaz Friedman, Raoul Koczalski, Arthur Rubinstein, Mieczysław Horszowski, Claudio Arrau, Vlado Perlemuter, Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Horowitz, Dinu Lipatti, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, Murray Perahia, Krystian Zimerman, Evgeny Kissin.

Arthur Rubinstein said the following about Chopin's music and its universality:

Chopin was a genius of universal appeal. His music conquers the most diverse audiences. When the first notes of Chopin sound through the concert hall there is a happy sigh of recognition. All over the world men and women know his music. They love it. They are moved by it. Yet it is not "Romantic music" in the Byronic sense. It does not tell stories or paint pictures. It is expressive and personal, but still a pure art. Even in this abstract atomic age, where emotion is not fashionable, Chopin endures. His music is the universal language of human communication. When I play Chopin I know I speak directly to the hearts of people!

[edit] Style

Although Chopin lived in the 1800s, he was educated in the tradition of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Clementi; he 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 Müller of Vienna, wrote the following in her diary about Chopin's playing style:

His playing was always noble and beautiful; his tones sang, whether in full forte or softest piano. He took infinite pains to teach his pupils this legato, cantabile style of playing. His most severe criticism was "He—or she—does not know how to join two notes together." He also demanded the strictest adherence to rhythm. He hated all lingering and dragging, misplaced rubatos, as well as exaggerated ritardandos ... and it is precisely in this respect that people make such terrible errors in playing his works.

—Friederike Müller, From the diary of Viennese Chopin pupil^[49]

The series of seven polonaises published in his lifetime (another nine were published posthumously), beginning with the Op. 26 pair, set a new standard for music in the form, and were rooted in Chopin's desire to write something to celebrate Polish culture after the country had fallen back into Russian control. The A major polonaise Op. 40 No. 1, the "Military," and the polonaise in A flat major Op. 53, the "Heroic," are among Chopin's best-loved and most-often-played works.

[edit] Romanticism

Chopin regarded most of his contemporaries with some indifference, although he had many acquaintances 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.^[50] The relative classical purity and discretion in his music, with little extravagant exhibitionism, partly reflects his reverence for Bach and Mozart. Chopin also never indulged in explicit "scene-painting" in his music, or used programmatic titles, castigating publishers who renamed his pieces in this way.

[edit] Polishness

Zdzisław Jachimecki notes that Chopin at every step demonstrated a Polish spirit — in the hundreds of letters that he wrote in Polish, in his relations with Paris' Polish emigrés, in his attitude toward the three empires that had dismembered Poland. Likewise he spontaneously improvised music to accompany Polish texts; but never once did he set a song to a French or German text, even though he numbered among his friends several great French and German poets.^[51]

Chopin's composition style, despite its universal features of musical art, despite its undeniable connections with general European musical culture, has come to be regarded the world over as quintessentially Polish, not only in his polonaises and mazureks but in all the other genres that he cultivated — in the ballades, nocturnes, scherzos, sonatas.^[52]

In asserting his own Polishness, Chopin, according to Jachimecki, exerted "a prepotent influence [toward] the nationalization of the work of numerous later composers, who have often personally — like [the Czech] Smetana and [the Norwegian] Grieg — confirmed this opinion..."^[53]

[edit] In popular culture

Chopin's life and his relations with George Sand have been fictionalized in film. The 1945 biopic A Song to Remember earned Cornel Wilde an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor for his portrayal of the composer. Other film treatments have included Impromptu (1991) starring Hugh Grant as Chopin; La note bleue (1991); and Chopin: Desire for Love (2002).

Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport is named for Chopin, as is asteroid 3784 Chopin.

The role-playing video game Eternal Sonata is based on the fictional proposition of a world based on Chopin's music and life, as dreamt by Chopin while on his deathbed. Chopin is a playable character in the game, and much of the music within the game is based on his compositions. The game includes brief descriptions of major events in Chopin's life that reflect on the events and characters in the game.^[54]

[edit] Works

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Frederic Chopin

Main article: List of compositions by Frédéric Chopin

All Chopin's works involve the piano, either solo or accompanied. Predominantly for solo piano, his oeuvre includes a small number of works for various ensembles, notably a piano trio and a cello sonata.

Over 230 of Chopin's works survive. Some manuscripts and pieces from his early childhood have been lost.

[edit] See also

• Chopin's death mask

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Frédéric Chopin

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Frédéric Chopin

• Chopin Music - Website and forum dedicated to the music of Chopin, including recordings, sheet music and image galleries.
• Chopin: the poet of the piano - A favourite Chopin place since 1999 with biography, images, complete music and score, discussion forum, work list and analysis, quizzes and contests, noted interpreters/great pianists...
• Internet Chopin Information Centre, Chopin portal including calendar, catalogues, other information about Chopin, Chopin on the Web, and pianists' biographical notes.

Biographies

• Online biography of Chopin
• 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.
• Biography with Image Gallery and Citations from Chopin Music
• Fryderyk Chopin: Poet of the Piano
• 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
• Frédéric Chopin discography at MusicBrainz

Music scores

• Chopin Piano Sheet Music (out of copyright)
• Free Sheet Music from Chopin Music
• www.kreusch-sheet-music.net Chopin's complete piano works
• Frédéric Chopin was listed in the International Music Score Library Project
• Chopin scores from Mutopia Project
• Free scores by Frédéric Chopin in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Chopin Early Editions, a collection of over 400 first and early printed editions of musical compositions by Frédéric Chopin published before 1881.

Recordings

• Performances by Michael Sayers: Preludes Op. 28 Nos. 1 and 20
• 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
• Free MIDI Downloads from Chopin Music
• 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
• Artanhime - Chopin's mp3 Collection.
• Free Chopin Downloads (MP3 and WMA)
• the original Chopin Chopin as played by Angela Lear from autograph manuscripts. "Hear what Chopin really intended" BBC Music Magazine; "...Her Chopin recitals were altogether exceptional for perfect interpretation and maximum faithfulness to Chopin's intentions " Le Matin.

Miscellaneous

• Memorial Page at FindaGrave
• The Chopin Project
• University of Michigan Chopin Project
• International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition
• Chopin2010 a/k/a "The Chopin Currency" - a daily compendium of Chopiniana: news, reviews, videos, blogs, and more leading up to the Chopin Bicentennial in 2010
• Valldemossa, Majorca sma