Frédéric Chopin

"Chopin" redirects here. For other uses, see Chopin (disambiguation).

Frédéric-François Chopin (IPA: /ʃoˈpæn/) (March 1, 1810 – October 17, 1849) was a Polish composer and pianist of Polish and French parentage who wrote almost exclusively for the piano. He was born as Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, in the village of Żelazowa Wola, Poland. Adopting the French variant "Frédéric-François" when he left for Paris at age 20, he never returned to Poland. His surname is also sometimes spelled Szopen in Polish texts.

His compositions, such as the Funeral March piano sonata and the twenty-four études, are widely considered to be amongst the pinnacles of the piano repertoire. Although some of his music is among the most technically demanding for the instrument, Chopin wrote a new style of piano music which emphasizes poetry, nuance and expressive depth, rather than mere technical display. Hence, he is often thought now as one of the mainstays of Romanticism in nineteenth-century classical music.

File:ChopinDelacroix.jpg

Frédéric-François Chopin, portrayed by Eugène Delacroix.

Biography

According to the artist himself and his family, Chopin was born on March 1, 1810. However, his baptismal certificate, written several weeks after his birth, lists his birthdate as February 22. Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola in central Poland near Sochaczew, in the region of Masovia, which was part of the Duchy of Warsaw. He was born to Mikołaj (Nicolas) Chopin, a Pole of French ancestry, and to his Polish mother, Tekla Justyna Krzyżanowska.

Formative years

The musical talent of young Chopin became apparent early on and can be compared with the childhood genius of Mozart. At the age of 7, he was already 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 at receptions given in the aristocratic salons of the capital. He also began giving public charity concerts. At one concert, he is said to have been asked what he thought the audience liked best. 7-year-old Chopin replied, "My [shirt] collar." His first professional piano lessons, given to him by the violinist Wojciech Żywny (born 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.

File:Frederic Chopin photo2.jpeg

The only known daguerreotype photograph of Frédéric Chopin taken by Louis-Auguste Bisson in 1849.

The further development of Chopin's talent was supervised by Wilhelm Würfel (born 1791 in Bohemia). This renowned pianist and professor at the Warsaw Conservatory gave Chopin valuable (although irregular) lessons in playing organ, and possibly piano. From 1823 to 1826, Chopin attended the Warsaw Lyceum, where his father was a professor. In the autumn of 1826, Chopin began studying music theory, figured bass, and composition with the composer Józef Elsner (born 1769 in Silesia) at the Warsaw Conservatory. In 1831 he left Poland for Vienna before settling in Paris where he spent much of his life.

Career in Paris

Chopin first visited Vienna in early 1829, where he gave a piano performance and received his first favourable reviews. The following year he returned to Warsaw and performed the premiere of his Piano Concerto in F minor at the National Theatre on March 17. By 1831 Chopin had left Poland for good and settled in Paris. He began work on his first scherzi 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 performed regular concerts, to rave reviews. By 1838 Chopin had become a famous figure in Paris. Among his closest friends were opera composer Vincenzo Bellini (beside whom he is buried in the Père Lachaise), and painter Eugène Delacroix. He was also friends with composers Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann, and although he was at times critical of their music, Chopin dedicated some of his own compositions to them.

Chopin and George Sand

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, mistress of fellow composer Franz Liszt, Chopin met Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, better known by her pseudonym as George Sand. She was a French Romantic writer, noted for her numerous love affairs with such prominent figures as Prosper Merimée, Alfred de Musset (1833–34), Alexandre Manceau (1849–65), and others.

The composer did not first consider her attractive. "Something about her repels me," he said to his family. Their relationship ended in 1847 when Sand began to suspect that he had fallen in love with her daughter, Solange. It is also possible that behind the breakup was Sand's treatment of her daughter.

Sand's correspondence suggests that Chopin was asexual; that is, that he had no inclination to have sexual relations with anyone, male or female. Even so, his relationship with Sand lasted for ten years until they parted after arguments over Sand's children Maurice and Solange.

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 also later complain of 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.

Chopin and Sand's illustrious relationship is explored in the movie Impromptu which stars Hugh Grant as Chopin and Judy Davis as George Sand. Like the movie, Amadeus, however, it does not focus on fact as much as fiction.

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, the year in which Chopin died, most of his major works were completed and Chopin concentrated on mazurkas and nocturnes. His last work was a mazurka, in F minor.

Officially the cause of Chopin's death was tuberculosis, 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", writing a few days before his death: "As this earth will suffocate me, I implore you to have my body open so that I may not be buried alive".

Chopin's grave in Paris

He had requested that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral, which was held at the Church of the Madeleine and was attended by nearly three thousand people. 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, until the church finally relented and granted Chopin's final wish. Although Chopin is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, his heart is entombed in a pillar in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw. The Pere Lachaise site 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, chromatic inflections, and counterpoint), as well as a piano technique which was of his own creation. 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, and endowed popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurka and the Viennese waltz with a greater range of melody and expression. Chopin was the first to write Ballades (a genre he invented) and the Scherzi as individual pieces. Chopin also took the example of Bach's préludes and transformed the genre.

Several melodies of Chopin's have become well known; because of their unique melodic shape they are instantly memorable and easily recognized. Among these are 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 used as an iconic representation of grief. Interestingly, 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 for funerals, but it was not inspired by any recent personal loss of Chopin's. Other melodies have even been used as the basis of popular songs, such as the slow section of the Fantaisie-Impromptu (Op. 66). These pieces often rely on an intense and personalized chromaticism, as well as a melodic curve that resembles the operas of Chopin's day - the operas of Rossini, 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: Schumann was a huge admirer of Chopin's music — although the feeling was not mutual — and he took melodies from Chopin and even named a piece of his Carnaval Suite after Chopin; Franz Liszt, another great admirer of the composer, transcribed several Chopin songs for unaccompanied piano. 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 Polonaise, op. 53.

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.

Several of Chopin's piano works carry with them their own technique: his préludes (Op. 28) and études (Op. 10 and 25) rapidly became standard works. They also became influential, inspiring both Liszt's Transcendental Études and Schumann's Symphonic Études.

Notable interpreters of Chopin's music, apart from Chopin himself, have included Alfred Cortot, Ignaz Friedman, Arthur Rubinstein, Raoul Koczalski, Nikita Magaloff, Adam Harasiewicz, Samson François, Byron Janis, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Krystian Zimerman among many others. 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!

Style

Often Chopin is played in the late Romantic style, with an excess of rubatos and exaggerated dynamics. 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. One of his students, Friederike Muller, 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.

Many people still play Chopin in a romantic style, and often with a pleasing result. However, it is good to be aware of what Chopin had in mind when he was composing.

Chopin and Romanticism

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

However, his music has less of the expected trappings of Romanticism: There is a classical purity and discretion in his music, with little Romantic exhibitionism, personified by his reverence of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Chopin based the structure of his preludes on the Well-tempered Clavier of Bach). Chopin also never indulged in 'scene painting' in his music or affixing to his works fanciful or descriptive titles, unlike his contemporary Robert Schumann. Also, unlike his flamboyant contemporary Franz Liszt, Chopin was withdrawn from public life.

All of his works, without exception, involve the piano, whether solo or accompanied. 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.

Works

Chopin's compositional output consists mainly of music for solo piano. His larger scale works such as the four ballades, the four scherzos, the barcarolle, and sonatas have cemented a solid place within the repertoire, as well as shorter works like his impromptus, mazurkas, nocturnes, waltzes and polonaises. Two important collections are the 24 Preludes Op. 28, based loosely on Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and the études, which are a staple of that genre for pianists.

Chopin composed two of the romantic piano concerto repertoire's most often-performed examples, his opp. 11 and 21. In addition, he wrote several song settings of Polish texts, and chamber pieces including a piano trio and a sonata for cello and piano.

For a complete list of Chopin's works by opus number, see List of compositions by Frédéric Chopin.

Bibliography

• Chopinian Bibliography The largest electronic database containing bibliographical records (currently 11.000+)

Other

In commemoration of the genius of Frédéric Chopin, the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition is held in Warsaw, Poland 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).

Media

Template:Multi-listen start Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66, Most of this piano solo features 4:3 polyrhythm: Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item

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See also

• Compositions by Frédéric Chopin
• Piano competitions named after Chopin
• Great Emigration
• Hôtel Lambert
• Carl Mikuli, student, teaching assistant and editor of Chopin.
• Chopin: Desire for Love, movie
• Wlodzimierz Krzyzanowski, cousin of Chopin
• A Song to Remember, movie

External links

• The Frederick Chopin Society in Warsaw. Contains a biography, an outline of Chopin's works and musical style and pictures of original handwritten manuscripts.
• Internet Chopin Information Centre - Chopin portal with calendary, catalogues, and other information about Chopin, also pianists' biographical notes, Chopin in th Web and more.
• ChopinMusic - Chopin website with recordings, sheet music, photo galleries, a forum and more.
• Fryderyk Chopin: Poet of the Piano
• Chopin biographical resources - A concise biography of the famous composer Chopin, with recordings and sheet music.
• 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
• Recordings, sheet music, and information on Chopin
• Frédéric Chopin discography at MusicBrainz
• Piano Society — Chopin. Biography and free Chopin recordings.

Recordings

• Free recordings of Chopin's music performed by Donald Betts (3 ballades, 3 études, 2 nocturnes, 1 mazurka).
• PianoParadise — Chopin — Free mp3 files of pieces composed by Chopin.
• Free recordings of Chopin's music performed by Paul Cantrell.
• The Chopin MIDI Archive — Chopin's works in MIDI format.
• Chopin A drawing off an early painting
• Free recordings of Chopin's music.