Frédéric Chopin

Overview

Biography

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era who spent most of his adult life in Paris. Born near Warsaw and displaying extraordinary musical gifts from childhood, he left Poland in 1830 — the year of the failed November Uprising against Russian rule — and never returned. Paris became his home, and he became the toast of its aristocratic salons.

Chopin wrote almost exclusively for the solo piano, yet within that single medium he achieved an astonishing variety: nocturnes of profound lyrical beauty; études of ferocious technical difficulty that are also perfect musical forms; ballades of dramatic narrative power; mazurkas and polonaises that evoked the folk rhythms and national spirit of his Polish homeland; and preludes — 24 short pieces that range from a few bars to several minutes and capture a vast emotional spectrum.

His style is immediately recognisable: a singing, flexible right-hand melody floating above richly chromatic harmonies in the left hand, played with a freedom of tempo (rubato) that anticipates the Impressionism of Debussy. He was deeply influenced by the Polish folk tradition and by the vocal ornaments of Italian bel canto opera. His health declined from his late twenties — he almost certainly suffered from tuberculosis — and he died in Paris at 39. Today Chopin remains among the most recorded and beloved composers in the repertoire, and the International Chopin Piano Competition, held every five years in Warsaw, is one of the most prestigious musical events in the world.