Frédéric Chopin

, 1835]] Frédéric François Chopin, in Polish Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (the surname is pronounced in Polish; in French; and usually in English; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer, virtuoso pianist, and music teacher, of French-Polish parentage. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music.

Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw. A renowned child-prodigy pianist and composer, he grew up in Warsaw and completed his musical education there. Following the Russian suppression of the Polish November 1830 Uprising, he settled in Paris as part of the Polish Great Emigration. He supported himself as a composer and piano teacher, giving few public performances. From 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French woman writer George Sand. For most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39.

All of Chopin's works involve the piano. They are technically demanding but emphasize nuance and expressive depth. Chopin invented the musical form known as the instrumental ballade and made major innovations to the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu and prélude.

Life

Childhood

at Żelazowa Wola]] Chopin's father was Nicolas Chopin, a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen and had served in Poland's National Guard during the Kościuszko Uprising. In France he had been baptised Nicolas but later, living in Poland, he used the Polish form of his given name, Mikołaj. He subsequently tutored children of the aristocracy, including the Skarbeks, whose poorer relative, Justyna Krzyżanowska, he married. The wedding took place at the 16th-century parish church in Brochów on 2 June 1806. (Justyna's brother would become the father of American Union General Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski.)

Frédéric Chopin was the couple's second child and only son. (The eldest child, Ludwika, was to become his first piano teacher, and several decades later was to repatriate his heart from Paris.) He was born at Żelazowa Wola, forty-six kilometres west of Warsaw, in what was the Duchy of Warsaw. The parish baptismal record, discovered in 1892, gives his birthday as 22 February 1810, but a date one week later, 1 March, was stated by the composer and his family as his birthday; he was "born 1 March 1810 at the village of Żelazowa Wola in the Province of Mazowsze." He was baptized on Easter Sunday, 23 April 1810, in the same Brochów church where his parents had married. The parish register cites his given names in the Latin form Fridericus Franciscus; which also hosted the newly founded Warsaw University. The family lived in a spacious second-floor apartment in an adjacent building. Chopin attended the Warsaw Lyceum from 1823 to 1826.

The Polish spirit, culture and language pervaded the Chopins' home, and as a result the son would never, even in Paris, perfectly master the French language. Louis Énault, a biographer, borrowed George Sand's phrase to describe Chopin as being "more Polish than Poland".

Others in Chopin's family were musically talented. Chopin's father played the flute and violin; his mother played the piano and gave lessons to boys in the elite boarding house that the Chopins maintained. As a result Fryderyk became conversant with music in its various forms at an early age. He received his earliest piano lessons not from his mother but from his older sister Ludwika (in English, "Louise"). Though the youngster's skills soon surpassed his teacher's, Chopin later spoke highly of Żywny. Seven-year-old "little Chopin" (Szopenek) began giving public concerts that soon prompted comparisons with Mozart as a child and with Beethoven.

manor where Chopin vacationed in 1824 and 1825]] In those years, Chopin was sometimes invited to the Belweder Palace as playmate to the son of Russian Poland's ruler, Grand Duke Constantine, and charmed the irascible duke with his piano-playing.

At the village of Szafarnia (where he was a guest of Juliusz Dziewanowski, father of schoolmate Dominik Dziewanowski) and at his other vacation venues, Chopin was exposed to folk melodies that he later transmuted into original compositions. His missives home from Szafarnia (the famous self-styled "Szafarnia Courier" letters), written in a very modern and lively Polish, amused his family with their spoofing of the Warsaw newspapers and demonstrated the youngster's literary gift.

In 1827 the family moved to lodgings just across the street from Warsaw University, in the south annex of the Krasiński Palace at Krakowskie Przedmieście 5 (what is now the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts). Here the parents continued running their elite boarding house for male students. Young Chopin would live here until he left Warsaw in 1830. (In 1837–39, artist and poet Cyprian Norwid would live there while study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts; later he would pen the famous poem, "Chopin's Piano," about Russian troops' 1863 defenestration of the instrument.) The Chopin family's parlor (salonik Chopinów) is now maintained as a museum open to visitors; it was in this parlor that Chopin first played many of his early compositions.

In 1829, Polish portraitist Ambroży Mieroszewski executed a set of five portraits of Chopin family members (the youngest daughter, Emilia, had died in 1827): Chopin's parents, his elder sister Ludwika, younger sister Izabela, and, in the first known portrait of him, the composer himself. (The originals perished in World War II; only black-and-white photographs remain.) In 1913, historian Édouard Ganche would write that this painting of the precocious composer 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 the age of fourteen, and their father would succumb to the same disease in 1844. His compositions were, however, often inspired by emotional and sensual experiences in his own life. One of his first such inspirations was a beautiful young singing student at the Warsaw Conservatory and later a 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, were influenced by his erotic transports. His artist's soul was also enriched by friendships with such leading lights of Warsaw's artistic and intellectual world as Maurycy Mochnacki, Józef Bohdan Zaleski and Julian Fontana.

Youth

, 1829]] In September 1828, eighteen-year-old Chopin struck out for the wider world in the company of a family friend, the zoologist Feliks Jarocki, who planned to attend a scientific convention in Berlin. There Chopin enjoyed several unfamiliar operas directed by Gaspare Spontini, attended several concerts, and saw Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn and other celebrities. On his return trip, he was a guest of Prince Antoni Radziwiłł, governor of the Grand Duchy of Posen – himself an accomplished composer and aspiring cellist. For the Prince and his piano-playing daughter Wanda, Chopin composed his Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C major for cello and piano, Op. 3.

Back in Warsaw, in 1829, Chopin heard Niccolò Paganini play and met the German pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel. In August the same year, three weeks after completing his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, Chopin made a brilliant debut in Vienna. He gave two piano concerts and received many favorable reviews – in addition to some that criticized the "small tone" that he drew from the piano. improvisation," in his native Polish language into the pages of a little journal that he kept secret to the end of his life. He expressed fear for the safety of his family and other civilians, especially the womenfolk at risk of outrages by the Russian troops; mourned the death of "kindly [General] Sowiński" (to whose wife he had dedicated a composition); damned the French for not having come to the aid of the Poles; and expressed dismay that God had permitted the Russians to crush the Polish insurgents – "or are you [God] yourself a Russian?" These outcries of a tormented heart found musical expression in his Scherzo in B minor, Op. 20, and his "Revolutionary Étude", in C minor, Op. 10, No. 12. With a view to easing his entry into the Parisian musical community, he began taking lessons from the prominent pianist Friedrich Kalkbrenner. In February 1832 Chopin gave a concert that garnered universal admiration. The influential musicologist and critic François-Joseph Fétis wrote 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..." Only three months earlier, in December 1831, Robert Schumann, reviewing Chopin's Variations on "La ci darem la mano", Op. 2 (variations on a theme from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni), had written: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius."

After his Paris concert début in February 1832, Chopin realized that his light-handed keyboard technique was not optimal for large concert spaces. However, later that year he was introduced to the wealthy Rothschild banking family, whose patronage opened doors for him to other private salons. He formed friendships with Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Vincenzo Bellini, Ferdinand Hiller, Felix Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Eugène Delacroix, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Alfred de Vigny, and Charles-Valentin Alkan. in France he used the French versions of his given names and traveled on a French passport, possibly to avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents. The French passport was issued on August 1, 1835, after Chopin had become a French citizen.

In Paris, Chopin seldom performed publicly. In later years he generally gave a single annual concert at the Salle Pleyel, a venue that seated three hundred. He played more frequently at salons – social gatherings of the aristocracy and artistic and literary elite – but preferred playing at his own Paris apartment for small groups of friends. His precarious health prevented his touring extensively as a traveling virtuoso, and beyond playing once in Rouen, he seldom ventured out of the capital.

(self-portrait)]] In 1835 Chopin went to Carlsbad, where, for the last time in his life, he met with his parents. En route through Saxony on his way back to Paris, he met old friends from Warsaw, the Wodzińskis. He had made the acquaintance of their daughter Maria, now sixteen, in Poland five years earlier, and fell in love with the charming, artistically talented, intelligent young woman. The following year, in September 1836, upon returning to Dresden after having vacationed with the Wodzińskis at Marienbad, Chopin proposed marriage to Maria. She accepted, and her mother Countess Wodzińska approved in principle, but Maria's tender age and Chopin's tenuous health (in the winter of 1835–1836 he had been so ill that word had circulated in Warsaw that he had died) forced an indefinite postponement of the wedding. The engagement remained a secret to the world and never led to the altar. Chopin finally placed the letters from Maria and her mother in a large envelope, on which he wrote the Polish words "Moja bieda" ("My sorrow").

After Chopin's matrimonial plans ended, Polish countess Delfina Potocka appeared episodically in Chopin's life as muse and romantic interest. He dedicated to her his Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64, No. 1, the famous "Minute Waltz".

Chopin initially felt an aversion to Sand. Sand, however, in a candid thirty-two page letter to Count Wojciech Grzymała, a friend to both her and Chopin, admitted strong feelings for the composer. In her letter she debated whether to abandon a current affair in order to begin a relationship with Chopin, and attempted to gauge the currency of his previous relationship with Maria Wodzińska, which she did not intend to interfere with should it still exist. By the summer of 1838, Chopin's and Sand's involvement was an open secret. In 1842, they moved to 80 rue Taitbout in the Square d'Orléans, living in adjacent buildings.

It was around this time that we have evidence of Chopin's playing an instrument other than the piano. At the funeral of the tenor Adolphe Nourrit, who had jumped to his death in Naples but whose body was returned to Paris for burial, Chopin played an organ transcription of Franz Schubert's lied Die Gestirne.

During the summers at Nohant, particularly in the years 1839–43, Chopin found quiet but productive days during which he composed many works. They included his 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, only to return to the initial idea.

In 1847, without any dramatics or formalities, Sand and Chopin ended their relations that had lasted ten years, since 1837. The two composers repose four meters apart at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Final years

, 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, with the Revolution of 1848 underway in Paris, he left for London, where he performed at several concerts and at numerous receptions in great houses. in Renfrewshire, near Glasgow) of his former pupil and great admirer Jane Wilhelmina Stirling and her elder sister, the widowed Mrs. Katherine 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.

In late October 1848, at the home of 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.

At the end of November, Chopin returned to Paris.

On 15 October, when his condition took a marked turn for the worse, his numerous visitors were asked to leave, and a handful of his closest friends remained with him. A couple of times during those last two days, they thought that the end had come, but the composer was able to catch his breath again. He asked Delfina Potocka to play sonatas and prayed and called out to God, though only a few days earlier he had refused confession, saying that he did not believe in it. He complained that George Sand had promised that he "would die in her arms." He asked for a piece of paper and wrote: "Comme cette terre m'étouffera, je vous conjure de faire ouvrir mon corps pour [que] je ne sois pas enterré vif." ("As this earth will suffocate me, I implore you to have my body opened so that I will not be buried alive.")

Frédéric Chopin's illness and the cause of his death remained unclear and consequently have become a matter of medical argument. His death certificate stated the cause as tuberculosis. In 2008 an alternative cause of Chopin's death would be proposed: cystic fibrosis. In counterpoint, it can well be argued that survival with cystic fibrosis in the 1800s until the age of 39 was virtually impossible, without modern respiratory therapy and medical support. Given the contextual facts, it is much more likely that Chopin suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis.

Many people who had not been present at Chopin's death would later claim to have been there. "Being present at Chopin's death," writes Tad Szulc, "seemed to grant one historical and social cachet." Those actually around his bed appear to have included his sister Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, Solange and Auguste Clésinger (George Sand's daughter and son-in-law), Chopin's friend and former pupil Adolf Gutmann, his friend Thomas Albrecht, and his confidant, Polish Catholic priest Father Aleksander Jełowicki. Also played were Chopin's Préludes No. 4 in E minor and No. 6 in B minor. The organist was Franz Liszt.

The funeral was attended by nearly three thousand people, but George Sand was not among them.

The funeral procession traversed the considerable distance from the church, in the center of town, adjacent to the Opera, to Père Lachaise Cemetery at the city's eastern edge. It was led by the dean of the Polish Great Emigration, the aged Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski; immediately after the casket, which was borne by shifts of artists (including Eugène Delacroix, cellist Auguste Franchomme and pianist Camille Pleyel), walked Chopin's sister Ludwika.

Chopin's tombstone, featuring the muse of music, Euterpe, weeping over a broken lyre, was designed and sculpted by Auguste Clésinger. The expenses of the funeral and monument, in the amount of five thousand francs, were covered by Jane Stirling, who also paid for Chopin's sister's return to Warsaw.

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

On 31 May 1940, during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, the statue was destroyed by the Nazis. 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 of Hamamatsu, Japan. There are also preliminary plans to erect another replica along Chicago's lakefront in addition to a different sculpture commemorating the artist in Chopin Park for the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth.

A bronze bust memorializing Chopin stands at Symphony Circle outside Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, New York.

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

The world's oldest monographic music competition, the International Chopin Piano Competition, founded in 1927, is held every five years in Warsaw.

Established in 1954, the Fryderyk Chopin Museum is housed in Warsaw's Ostrogski Palace, seat of the Fryderyk Chopin Society. Refurbished for the 200th anniversary (2010) of Chopin's birth, the Fryderyk Chopin Museum is the most modern museum in Poland.

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 are the largest Polish music conservatory, the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw; Warsaw Chopin Airport; and asteroid 3784 Chopin.

Music

The great majority of Chopin's compositions were written for the piano as solo instrument; all of his extant works feature the piano in one way or another. Chopin, according to Arthur Hedley, "had the rare gift of a very personal melody, expressive of heart-felt emotion, and his music is penetrated by a poetic feeling that has an almost universal appeal.... Present-day evaluation places him among the immortals of music by reason of his insight into the secret places of the heart and because of his awareness of the magical new sonorities to be drawn from the piano." of all progones until now." Chopin's works emphasize nuance and expressive depth rather than sheer virtuosity. Vladimir Horowitz referred to Chopin as "the only truly great composer for the piano."

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 published only after his death in 1849, contrary to his wishes. He also endowed popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurek and the Viennese Waltz, with a greater range of melody and expression.

Chopin's mazurkas, while based somewhat on the traditional Polish dance (the mazurek), were different from the traditional variety in that they were suitable for concerts halls as well as dance settings. With his mazurkas, Chopin brought a new sense of nationalism, which was an idea that other composers writing both at the same time as, and after, Chopin would also incorporate into their compositions. Chopin’s nationalism was a great influence and inspiration for many other composers, especially Eastern Europeans, and he was one of the first composers to clearly express nationalism through his music. Furthermore, he was the first composer to take a national genre of music from his home country and transform it into a genre worthy of the general concert-going public, thereby creating an entirely new genre.

Chopin was the first to write ballades and scherzi as individual pieces. He also took the example of Bach's preludes and fugues, transforming the genre in his own Préludes. Chopin reinvented the étude, 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, 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. 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 Vincenzo Bellini. Chopin used the piano to recreate 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 generally reciprocated, although Chopin did dedicate his Ballade No. 2 in F major to Schumann.

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. Though the middle section seems to be modeled on 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. However, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor borrows heavily from the "funeral march" third movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor. This influence can be seen in the first segment of Liszt's piece: this section expands on Chopin's minimalist melody.

Johannes Brahms and the younger Russian composers, too, found inspiration in Chopin's examples.

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 into Russian control. The Polonaise in A major, 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.

Chopin also wrote 24 different preludes as a tribute to J. S. Bach's "The Well Tempered Clavier." Chopin's preludes move up the circle-of-fifths, where as Bach uses the chromatic scale to create a prelude in every major and minor tonality achievable on the clavier.

Rubato

Chopin's music is well known for benefiting from rubato (which was how he himself performed his music), as opposed to a strictly regular playing. Yet there is usually call for caution when the music is performed with wobbly, over-exaggerated, inappropriate "rubato" (e.g. attempting to justify insecure playing, with reference to expressive rubato).

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However, while some can provide restrictive quotes about Chopin such as the above, often to the effect that "the accompanying hand always played in strict tempo", these quotes need to be considered in better context in terms both of the time when they were made and of the situations that may have prompted the original writer to set down the thoughts. Constantin von Sternberg (1852–1924) has written: }}

There are also views of contemporary writers such as Hector Berlioz.

This suggests that Chopin is not to be found at commonly encountered one-sided extremes. The unbalanced views are:

that Chopin requires metronomic rhythm in the left hand;

that insecure performances of Chopin can be justified with reference to rubato;

that performances with particular inflections, that result from technical limits/insecurities rather than a performer's intentions, can be justified with reference to rubato.

Some performers' (and piano-schools') "too-strongly-held one-sided views on Chopin's way of playing rubato" may account for some unsatisfactory interpretations of his music.

Romanticism

Chopin is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music.

Chopin regarded most of his contemporaries with indifference, though he had many acquaintances who were associated with romanticism in music, literature, and the fine arts—many of them via his liaison with George Sand. Chopin's music is, however, considered by many to epitomise the Romantic style. The relative classical purity and discretion in his music, with little extravagant exhibitionism, partly reflects his reverence for Bach and Mozart.

Chopin never indulged in explicit "scene-painting" in his music, or used programmatic titles. He castigated publishers who renamed his compositions in this way.

Nationalism

Chopin's Polish biographer Zdzisław Jachimecki notes that "Chopin at every step demonstrated his Polish spirit – in the hundreds of letters that he wrote in Polish, in his attitude to Paris' [Polish] émigrés, in his negative view of all that bore the official stamp of the powers that occupied Poland." Likewise Chopin composed music to accompany Polish texts but never musically illustrated a single French or German text, even though he numbered among his friends several great French and German poets. He would refer to Chopin as "a Polish artist." Composer Robert Schumann acknowledged the strength of Chopin's personal reaction to Russia's suppression of the November Uprising when he wrote that in Chopin's music one could find "guns buried in flowers."

Some Polish writers have used for Chopin's surname the Polonized spelling Szopen, pronounced .

Works

Over 230 of Chopin's works survive; some manuscripts and pieces from his early childhood have been lost. All of his known compositions involved the piano. Only a few of them ranged beyond solo piano music, as either piano concertos or chamber music works.

Chopin composed:

*58 mazurkas

27 études (twelve in the Op. 10 cycle, twelve in the Op. 25 cycle, and three in a collection without an opus number)

27 preludes

21 nocturnes

20 waltzes

18 polonaises, including one with orchestral accompaniment and one for cello and piano accompaniment

5 rondos

4 ballades

4 impromptus

4 scherzi

4 sets of variations, including Souvenir de Paganini

3 écossaises

3 piano sonatas

2 concerti for piano and orchestra, Opp. 11 and 21

He also composed: a fantaisie, an Allegro de concert (which is possibly the remnant of an incomplete concerto), a barcarole, a berceuse, a bolero, a tarantelle, a contredanse, a fugue, a cantabile, a lento, a Funeral march, and a Feuille d'album.

Chopin's other works include: a krakowiak for piano and orchestra; Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" for piano and orchestra; fantasia on themes from Polish songs with accompanying orchestra; a trio for violin, cello and piano; a sonata for cello and piano; a Grand Duo in E major for cello and piano on themes from Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Robert le diable, co-written with Auguste Franchomme; and 19 Polish songs for voice and piano.

Opus numbers

The last opus number that Chopin himself used was 65, allocated to the Cello Sonata in G minor.

Chopin expressed a deathbed wish that all his unpublished manuscripts be destroyed. However, at the request of the composer's mother and sisters, his pianist friend and musical executor Julian Fontana selected 23 unpublished piano pieces and grouped them into eight opus numbers (Opp. 66–73). These works were published in 1855.

In 1857, 17 Polish songs which Chopin wrote at various stages of his life were collected and published as Op. 74—the order within that opus having little regard to the actual order of composition. Two other songs were published in 1910.

Works that have been published since 1857 have not received opus numbers. Instead, alternate catalog designations have been applied to them.

Publishing

Chopin published much of his music simultaneously in Germany, France, and England. While this certainly earned the composer triple exposure and likely a good sum of revenue, the discrepancies between these three (or more) editions can be quite the conundrum. Ever the romantic, Chopin lived in a constant state of inspiration and improvisation, and was certainly prone to editing and revising his own music even after sending final drafts to his publishers. Especially considering that all published editions of his work during his lifetime were in fact proofed and approved by the composer himself, this is a popular source of anxiety amongst pianists and scholars.

How is one to know what the composer truly meant and wanted when we are presented with autographs and first drafts bearing the composer’s approval that differ in content? Details such as phrase markings, dynamics, fingerings, even the notes themselves are often subject to suspicion. The several editions of the time had different ways of dealing with this problem; the Germans of course believed that their version was infallible, the French called Chopin their own, having spent most of his adult life based in Paris, and the English publisher (a German who largely copied the French editions) annoyed Chopin by insisting on adding flowery titles to his pieces. Nearly 200 years later, the state of affairs in regards to Chopin editions has turned over a new leaf.

Today, several scholarly editions exist that attempt to organize the vast array of sources and compile the information in one presentable volume, notably the Paderewski and Polish National editions which contain lengthy and scholarly explanations and discussions regarding choices and sources. Even so, it is ultimately up to the taste of an editor as to which version of which piece suits them most at the given time, and perhaps Chopin himself faced the same dilemma, resulting in the variations we have today.

TV documentaries

In 2010, the 90-min. BBC TV documentary Chopin – The Women Behind The Music explores Chopin's life, notably his encounters with the singers who enchanted the composer with their voices. The BBC announcement for the premiere refers to Jenny Lind as the "Swedish opera star, who so affected Chopin in the final years of his life".

Fiction

Possibly the first venture into fictional treatments of Chopin's life was a fanciful operatic version of some of its events. This opera, entitled Chopin, was written by Giacomo Orefice and produced in Milan in 1901. Orefice incorporated Chopin's music, arranged as arias; the operatic arrangements have been described as "coarse". Various arias have been recorded by well-known singers, but the opera has long been out of the repertoire. Orefice also applied an operatic treatment to one of George Sand's novels, Consuelo.

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 (2002). The 1975 Ken Russell film Lisztomania outlandishly portrayed Chopin and Sand's relationship as dominant and submissive, with Sand fulfilling the role of dominatrix over Chopin's submissive attitude.

Another reference to Chopin in cinema occurs in Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata. The difference of interpretation of Chopin's Prelude No. 2 in A minor by the pianist Charlotte Andergast and her daughter Eva constitutes a major scene in the film.

The role-playing video game Eternal Sonata (2007) is set in a dream world, created by a fictional Chopin on his deathbed. Its story line refers to Chopin's life and music and his compositions are heard on the soundtrack. Periodically, episodes of Chopin's life are narrated, accompanied with photographs and video footage of relevant locations.

See also

Maria Kalergis

Salon Frédéric Chopin in Paris

Toruń gingerbread (young Chopin's enthusiasm for the Polish confection).

List of Poles

Notes

Bibliography

Tad Szulc, Chopin in Paris: the Life and Times of the Romantic Composer, New York, Scribner, 1998, ISBN 0-684-82458-2.

Zdzisław Jachimecki, "Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek," Polski słownik biograficzny, vol. III, Kraków, Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1937, pp. 420–26.

Arthur Hedley et al., "Chopin, Frédéric (François)," Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th ed., 2005, vol. 3, pp. 263–64.

Gastone Belotti, Chopin, l'uomo (Chopin the Man), 3 vols., Milan, Sapere, 1974.

Gastone Belotti, Chopin, Turin, EDT, 1984, ISBN 88-7063-033-1.

Gerald Abraham, "Chopin Frédéric," Encyclopedia Americana, 1986 ed., vol. 6, pp. 627–28.

Adam Zamoyski, Chopin: a Biography, New York, Doubleday, 1980, ISBN 0-385-13597-1.

Michałowski, Kornel, and Jim Samson, Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek, Grove Music Online, edited by L. Macy (accessed October 31, 2006) (subscription access)

Benita Eisler, Chopin's Funeral, Abacus, 2004.

[The Book of the Second International Musicological Congress, Warsaw, 10–17 October 1999:] Chopin and His Work in the Context of Culture, studies edited by Irena Poniatowska, vols. 1-2, Warsaw, 2003.

Samson, Jim. The Cambridge Companion to Chopin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: Pianist and Teacher, as Seen by His Pupils, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-36709-3.

Samson, Jim. The Music of Chopin. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.

André Maurois, Leila: the Life of George Sand, translated by Gerard Hopkins, Penguin, 1980 (c 1953).

Jan Zygmunt Jakubowski, ed., Literatura polska od średniowiecza to pozytywizmu (Polish Literature from the Middle Ages to Positivism), Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1979, ISBN 83-01-00201-8.

George Richard Marek and Maria Gordon-Smith, Chopin: A Biography, New York, Harper & Row, 1978.

Chopin's Letters, collected by Henryk Opieński, translated by E.L. Voynich, New York, 1973.

The Book of the First International Musicological Congress Devoted [to] the Works of Frederick Chopin, Warsaw, 16–22 February 1960, edited by Zofia Lissa, Warsaw, PWN, 1963.

Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, collected and annotated by B.E. Sydow, translated and edited by Arthur Hedley, London, 1962.

Krystyna Kobylańska, Chopin in His Own Land: Documents and Souvenirs, Kraków, P.W.M., 1955.

David Ewen, Ewen's Musical Masterworks: The Encyclopedia of Musical Masterpieces, 2nd ed., New York, ARCO Publishing Company, 1954.

Artur Szklener, "Fryckowe lato: czyli wakacyjne muzykowanie Chopina" ("Fritz's Summers: Chopin's Musical Vacations"), Magazyn Chopin: Miesięcznik Narodowego Instytutu Fryderyka Chopina (Chopin Magazine: Monthly of the Fryderyk Chopin National Institute), no. 4, 2010, pp. 8–9.

Maria Barcz, "Etiuda paryska" ("Paris Étude"), Gwiazda Polarna (The Pole Star), vol. 101, no. 17 (14 August 2010), pp. 15–16.

Chopin and Other Musical Essays (1889) by Henry T. Finck

Jeffrey Kallberg, “Chopin in the Marketplace: Aspects of the International Music Publishing Industry in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Notes 39, no. 3 (March 1983): 539.

External links

Klasikal.com, Website dedicated to classical music. Includes video performances and sheet music of every composition of Frederic Chopin.

The Chopin Project, A guide to Chopin's solo keyboard music, with individual entries, on-demand audio, essays, quotes, references, biographies, and abundant links.

The Chopin Society, The website of the Chopin Society in London provides information about their monthly concerts, membership of the Society, and offers insights into the life of the composer.

Chopin Music, Website and forum devoted to the life and works of Chopin: biographies, study guides, recordings, sheet music.

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.

Chopin.pl, website under the auspices of Warsaw-based Fryderyk Chopin Society. Contains a biography, an outline of Chopin's works and musical style and pictures of original manuscripts.

Bachtrack.com, Listings of live concerts of Chopin's music at Bachtrack, also see anniversary page at

Frédéric Chopin and Samuel Barber, ArtsEditor.com opinion article 2010: Certain composers are so ubiquitous that to celebrate them seems unnecessary, especially as many others languish in relative obscurity. Still, every few years the public is reminded of the anniversary of a particular composer's birth, prompting a slew…

Biographies

Biography of Chopin at Fryderyk Chopin Society's website

Frédéric Chopin biography

Brief Chopin essay at Classical Music Pages

Biographies (Project Gutenberg e-texts):

*Life of Chopin, book by his friend Franz Liszt

*Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, by Frederick Niecks

*Chopin: The Man and his Music, by James Huneker

Music scores

Chopin scores from Mutopia Project

Chopin Early Editions, a collection of over 400 first and early printed editions of musical compositions by Frédéric Chopin published before 1881.

Chopin's First Editions Online features an interface that allows three navigable scores to be open simultaneously in frames to facilitate comparison.

Recordings

Performances by Angela Lear: 'The Chopin Collection' volumes 1-5, include rarely-heard original variants.

www.200chopin.com, Recordings by all Deutsche Grammophon and Decca artists, full track streaming for free: Argerich, Freire, Pollini, Zimerman, Pires, Wang, Ott etc.

Performances by Daniel Wnukowski: 'Heroic' polonaise, 2 nocturnes, 1 scherzo, 1 prelude

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 No. 3, Ballade No. 1 and Fantasie-Impromptu, Sonata No. 2, Scherzo No. 2, Prelude No. 16

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

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.

Chopin selected works (MP3)

Piano Society - A short biography and some free recordings in MP3 format, performed by Chiara Bertoglio, Roberto Carnevale, Eric Clark, Alexander Djordjevic, Ken Sasaki, Robert Ståhlbrand, Evelina Vorontsova

Miscellaneous

Chopin With A Polish Touch, audio report by National Public Radio

Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, Warsaw, Poland

Memorial Page at FindaGrave

University of Michigan Chopin Project

Chopin Works Review

International Fryderyk 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 small town whose major asset is the remains of The Royal Chartreuse of Jesus Nazareth where Chopin lived for a short period with George Sand (the memories of this period are recorded in her book Winter in Majorca) in 1838/1839.

The International Foundation Can Mossenya – Friends of Jorge Luis Borges, Historic estate, a significant part of The Royal Chartreuse of Jesus of Nazareth

The safekeeping of a large collection of original Chopin manuscripts, including Concerto in F-minor among a total of 49 compositions and other priceless Polish art treasures in Canada during World War II, is documented by new research in 2004–2005 which was published in Chopin in the World.

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