Frédéric Chopin (Polish: Fryderyk [Franciszek] Chopin, sometimes Szopen; French: Frédéric [François] Chopin; family-name pronunciation in English: March 1, 1810 – October 17, 1849) was a Polish 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 subsequent outbreak, and in 1831 the suppression, of the Polish November 1830 Uprising, he never returned to Poland, instead becoming one of the many members of the Polish Great Emigration. In Paris he made a comfortable living as composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances, used the French version of his given name, Frédéric, and became a French citizen like his father. 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.

Fryderyk Chopin

Chopin's extant compositions all include the piano, predominantly as solo instrument. 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, and introduced major innovations into 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.

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. According to the composer's family, Fryderyk (Frederick) Chopin, the couple's third 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.

Fryderyk Chopin

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. 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 keyboard. 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").

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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

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.

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.

Fryderyk Chopin

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).

To this period dates the earliest extant portrait of Chopin, executed by his parents' portraitist, Miroszewski. In 1913 Édouard Ganche wrote that the portrait shows "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 would die of tuberculosis, aged fourteen, in 1827, and his father in 1844.

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.

On completing his composition studies with Elsner, Chopin was a fully-formed artist. According to Jachimecki, it is difficult to compare him with any earlier composer, for the style of his works already from the first half of his life is incomparably original. At his age, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were still epigones of earlier masters, whereas Chopin virtually from the first was no epigone but rather a precursor of the coming age.

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 Titus 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, Bohdan Zaleski, Julian Fontana and others.

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.

Fryderyk Chopin

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."

Later that month the November 1830 Uprising broke out, and his traveling companion Titus 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.

PARIS

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

In Paris, Chopin was welcomed by eminent Polish exiles including Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, residing at the Hôtel Lambert, 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 at the Père Lachaise Cemetery).

Chopin's music was already admired by many of his composer contemporaries, including 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 in the composition of Hexaméron (1837) — the sixth (and last) variation on Bellini's theme is Chopin's.

Chopin Nocturne}

Chopin Piano sonata Funeral March, Op.35, no.2 by Maksim}

Vladimir Horowitz - Chopin Piano Sonata No. 2}

Chopin Etude op.10-12}

Chopin Valse No14: Japanese 8yo play piano}

Yundi Li plays Chopin Piano Concerto No.1 1st mov. [1of 2]}

Yundi Li plays Chopin Piano Concerto No.1 1st mov. [2of 2]}

Yundi Li plays Chopin Piano Concerto No.1 2nd mov.}

Yundi Li - Chopin "Fantasie" Impromptu, Op. 66}