Frédéric Chopin: Master Composer
Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of French-Polish parentage. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music. He was born in 1810
In the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw to a French-expatriate father and Polish mother, and was a child-prodigy pianist and composer.
Following the Russian suppression of the Polish November 1830 Uprising, Chopin settled in France as part of the Polish Great Emigration.
In Paris he supported himself as a composer and piano teacher, giving few public performances. After romantic involvements with several Polish women, from 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French novelist George Sand.
The great majority of Chopin’s compositions were written for the piano as solo instrument all his works feature the piano. They are technically demanding but emphasize nuance and expressive depth.
Chopin invented musical forms: instrumental ballade and made major innovations to the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu and prélude.
For the greater part of his life Chopin suffered from poor health – he died in Paris, aged 39, of pulmonary tuberculosis and is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Banned by Nazi occupiers only to return as a socialist hero, in his bicentenary year Chopin is now being identified with the trendy rebranding of modern Warsaw including building projects at the composer’s Zelazowa Wola birthplace and on a new, state-of-the-art Chopin Museum
