Frédéric Chopin

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Only known photograph of Chopin (commonly mistaken for a daguerreotype), thought to have been taken by Bisson in 1849.

Frédéric Chopin (Polish: Fryderyk [Franciszek] Chopin, sometimes Szopen; French: Frédéric [François] Chopin; family-name pronunciation in English: IPA: /ʃoʊˈpæn/; 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 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^[4][5][6]. 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 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,^[8] 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.

[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 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.

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 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").^[11]

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]

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 1827-30, Chopin lived with his family at the Krasiński Palace (Krakowskie Przedmieście 5) before departing Warsaw forever. In 1837–39 it was the residence of the poet Cyprian Norwid, author of "Chopin's Piano" about Russian troops' 1863 defenestration of the instrument.

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.^[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]

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.^[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 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.^[21]

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 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.^[24]

[edit] Paris

Chopin plays at fancy-dress ball in Hôtel Lambert. Standing in left foreground: Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski. Painting by Teofil Kwiatkowski.

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.

A distinguished English amateur described seeing Chopin at a salon:

From Paris, Chopin made various visits and tours. In 1834, with Hiller, he visited a Rhenish Music Festival at Aachen organized by Ferdinand Ries. Here Chopin and Hiller met up with Mendelssohn, and the three went on to visit Düsseldorf, Koblenz and Cologne, enjoying each other's company and learning and playing music together.

In 1835 Chopin arranged to meet his family in Karlsbad. There he made the acquaintance of Count Franz von Thun-Hohenstein, whose daughters Chopin had taught in Paris. The Count invited Chopin and his parents to stay at his family castle on the Elbe at Děčín. Afterwards Chopin's parents returned to Warsaw; he never saw them again. He returned to Paris via Dresden, where he stayed for some weeks, and then Leipzig where he met up with Mendelssohn, Schumann and Clara Wieck. On the return journey he had a bronchial attack, so severe that some Polish newspapers reported that he had died.

In 1836 Chopin became engaged to a seventeen-year-old Polish girl, Maria Wodzińska, whose mother insisted that the engagement be kept secret. The following year the engagement was called off by her family.

[edit] George Sand

Chopin, by Eugène Delacroix, 1838.

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

A notable episode in their time together was a turbulent and miserable winter on Mallorca (1838–1839), where they had problems finding habitable accommodation and ended up lodging in the scenic but stark and cold Valldemossa monastery. Chopin also had problems having his Pleyel piano sent to him. It arrived from Paris after a great delay, to be stuck at Spanish customs, which demanded a large import duty. He could use it for little more than three weeks; the rest of the time he had to compose on a rickety rented piano to complete his Preludes (Op. 28).

During the winter, the bad weather had such a serious effect on Chopin's health and his chronic lung disease that—to save his life—he, George Sand and her two children were compelled to return first to the Spanish mainland where they reached Barcelona, and then to Marseille where they stayed for a few months to recover. Although his health improved, he never completely recovered from this bout. He complained about the incompetence of the doctors in Mallorca: "The first said I was going to die; the second said I had breathed my last; and the third said I was already dead."

Chopin spent the summers of 1839 until 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 "Heroic," one of his most famous pieces. On Chopin's return to Paris in 1839, he met the pianist and composer Ignaz Moscheles.

In 1845, even as a further deterioration occurred in Chopin's health, a serious problem emerged in his relations with George Sand, further soured in 1846 by problems involving Sand's daughter Solange and the young sculptor Jean Baptiste Auguste Clesinger. This was the year that Sand published Lucrezia Floriani, whose main characters — a rich actress and a prince in weak health — may be interpreted as Sand and Chopin; the story was uncomplimentary to Chopin. In 1847 the family problems finally brought to an end the relations between Sand and Chopin that had lasted ten years, since 1837.

[edit] Death

Postmortem cast of Chopin's left hand.

In 1848 Chopin gave his last concert in Paris, and visited England and Scotland with his student and admirer Jane Stirling. They reached London in November, and although Chopin managed to give some concerts and salon performances, he was severely ill with tuberculosis. He returned to Paris, where in 1849 he became unable to teach or perform.

His sister Ludwika, who had given him his first piano lessons, nursed him in his apartment at Place Vendôme 12. There in the small hours of October 17 he died. Later that morning, Clesinger made Chopin's death mask and casts of his hands.

Before Chopin's funeral, pursuant to his dying wish, his heart was removed due to his fear of being buried alive. It was taken by his sister in an urn to Warsaw; there it remains 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 had requested that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral. The Requiem has major parts for female singers, 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 the funeral of Beethoven 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.^[26]

Later, some of Chopin's Polish friends journeyed to Paris with a jar of earth from their native land and scattered it over his grave so that Chopin would lie under Polish soil.

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

[edit] Memorials

Chopin statue, Warsaw's Łazienki Park

Before World War II, a statue of Chopin was erected in the upper part of Warsaw's Łazienki Park, adjacent to Aleje Ujazdowskie (Ujazdów Avenue). At the statue's base, on summer Sunday afternoons, are performed free piano recitals of Chopin's compositions. The stylized tree over Chopin's seated figure echoes a pianist's hand and fingers. A 1:1-scale replica of the statue is found in Hamamatsu, Japan.

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

The largest Polish conservatory, the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, is named after him.

[edit] Music

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 his twenty-one nocturnes were only published after his death in 1849, contrary to his wishes.^[27] He also endowed popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurka and the waltz, Viennese Waltz, with a greater range of melody and expression. Chopin was the first to write ballades^[8] and scherzi as individual pieces. Chopin also took the example of Bach's preludes and fugues, transforming the genre in his own preludes.

Chopin reinvented genres, namely the étude^{[citation needed]}. Chopin changed this by expanding on the idea and making them into gorgeous, eloquent and emotional showpieces. 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). Despite their poor reception^{[citation needed]}, the études have become standard repertoire for all serious pianists.

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.^[28] 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.

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.

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 (Opp. 10 and 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, named a list of pianists he believed to have made recordings of works by Chopin generally acknowledged to be among the greatest Chopin performances ever preserved: Vladimir de Pachmann, Raoul Pugno, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Moriz Rosenthal, 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:

[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 wrote the following in her diary about Chopin's playing style:

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, "Military," and the polonaise in A flat major Op. 53, "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.^[30] 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] 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.^[31]

[edit] Works

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, including a second piano, violin, cello, voice or orchestra.

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

• 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 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 1838-39.
• The International Foundation Can Mossenya - Friends of Jorge Luis Borges Historic estate, a significant part of The Royal Chartreuse of Jesus of Nazareth.