Chopin's Biography

Frederic Chopin was born on March 1^st, 1810 in Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, of a French father and a Polish mother. His father taught at an elite secondary school for the sons of Polish nobility in Warsaw, and it was there that Frederic not only gained an excellent education but acquired aristocratic friends and tastes as well. He displayed his musical gift early in childhood and before the age of six was known in academic circles as a child prodigy. His first teacher, Wojciech Zywny, was his father’s old friend. Although not a great pianist himself, he recognized musical ability of the young Chopin and introduced him to the music of great composers: Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Zywny left Frederic a lot of freedom for developing his individuality by not giving him overly strict instructions. Chopin started to write music very early and his first composition, Polonaise in g minor, was printed in 1817.

At school Frederic was popular and made many friends. Some of these early friendships lasted all his life. During summers young Frederic was sent to Szaflarnia, a village near Warsaw, for ‘fresh air’. It was there that he heard Polish folk music in vocal and instrumental form, and watched for hours the peasants’ dancing. This kind of music was totally new to Frederic and made a large impression on him.

Chopin started more traditional musical education in 1826, at the newly founded Warsaw Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition with the well-known Polish composer, Josef Elsner, until 1829. It was during this period that he composed his first major work, a brilliant set of variations for the piano and orchestra on Mozart’s duet “La ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni. His student years were marked by an infatuation with a young singer, Constantia Gladkowska, who inspired him with sighs and tears in the best nineteenth-century manner; “It was with thoughts of this beautiful creature that I composed the Adagio of my new concerto.” Frederic was nineteen, and the concerto was the one in f minor.

Warsaw was then thought to be too small for a young man of his musical talents.

So in 1830 he departed to seek his fortune in Vienna and Paris. The next year Poland’s fight for freedom was crushed by Russian troops, and Chopin never returned to his homeland. When he learned that the Polish capital had been captured by Russians, his torrent of grief found expression in the Revolutionary Etude.

In September 1831, the young man reached Paris. He thought of continuing to London but his countryman, Prince Radziwill, introduced him to the aristocratic salons, and there he created a sensation. Chopin’s decision was made, and the rest of his career was linked to the artistic life of his adopted city. His inaugural concerts caught Parisians’ fancy, and his imaginative playing soon became the stuff of legends. But Chopin was not cut out for the life of the public virtuoso. He was introverted, physically slight, and somewhat sickly. Consequently, he chose to play at private homes of the aristocracy and to give lessons for a fee only the very rich could afford. In October 1838 Chopin’s friend, Franz Liszt, introduced him to Baroness Aurore Dudevant, a writer who was known under the pen name of George Sand. She was thirty-four, Chopin was twenty-eight when the famous friendship began. George Sand was brilliant and domineering; her need to dominate found its counterpart in Chopin’s need to be ruled. She left a memorable account of Chopin at work: “His creative power was spontaneous, miraculous. It came to him without effort or warning… But then began the most heartrending labor I have ever witnessed. It was a series of attempts, of fits of irresolution and impatience to recover certain details. He would shut himself in his room for days, pacing up and down, breaking his pens, repeating and modifying one bar a thousand times… He would spend six weeks over a page, only to end by writing it out finally just as he had sketched it in the original draft.”

In November of 1838, Chopin and George Sand traveled to Spain to aid his fragile health. There, at the monastery of Valdemosa on the island of Majorca, Chopin composed his Preludes op.28, which are considered by many to be Chopin’s most masterful pieces. He wrote that he was working at “an old untouchable square writing desk I can scarcely use. On it is a leaden candlestick (a great luxury here) with a candle. Music of Bach, my own scribbling, old papers (not mine) and a silence. One can shout – still silence”. Unfortunately, the winter brought pouring rains and bitter cold to Majorca and Chopin became very ill. In March of 1839, he and George Sand returned to France. For the next eight years, Chopin spent his summers at George Sand’s chateau at Nohant, where he entertained the cream of France’s intelligentsia. These were productive years for him, although his health grew progressively worse and his relationship with George Sand ran its course from love to conflict, from jealousy to hostility. They parted in bitterness.

According to his friend Liszt, “Chopin felt and often repeated that in breaking this long affection, this powerful bond, he had broken his life.” Chopin’s creative energy, which had lost its momentum in his middle thirties, came to an end. The “illness of the century,” the lonely despair of the Romantic artist pervades his last letters. “What has become of my art?” he writes during a visit to Scotland. “And my heart, where have I wasted it? I scarcely remember any more how they sing at home. That world slips away from me somehow. I forget. I have no strength. If I rise a little I fall again, lower than ever.”

He returned to Paris suffering from tuberculosis and died on October 17^th, 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, surrounded by family and friends. George Sand’s daughter Solange held his hand at his last moments. His funeral was his greatest triumph. Over 3000 people attended, aristocracy and artists joined to pay him homage. His heart was returned at his request to Poland and on his grave a friendly hand scattered a handful of Polish earth.

Chopin was one of the most talented artists of the nineteenth century and arguably composed the most pianistic music in the entire piano repertoire. His music touches the souls of people all over the world. In his letter to Delphine Potocka, Chopin wrote: “Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars… Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit… I do not climb so high. A long time ago I decided that my universe would be the soul and heart of man.”

Here is an interesting story about Chopin’s music and how he came to be called “the poet of the piano”: One evening, when they were all assembled in the salon, Liszt played one of Chopin’s nocturnes, to which he took the liberty of adding some embellishments. Chopin’s delicate, intellectual face, which still bore the traces of recent illness, looked disturbed. At last he could not control himself any longer, and in that tone of sang-froid which he sometimes assumed, he said, “I beg you, my dear friend, when you do me the honor of playing my compositions, to play them as they are written or else not at all.” “Play it yourself then,” said Liszt, rising from the piano, rather piqued. “With pleasure,” answered Chopin. At that moment a moth flew into the lamp and extinguished it. They were going to light it again when Chopin cried, “No, put out all the lights, the moonlight is quite enough.” Then he began to improvise and played for nearly an hour. And what an improvisation it was! Description would be impossible, for the feelings awakened by Chopin’s magic fingers are not transferable into words. When he left the piano his audience was in tears; Liszt was deeply affected, and said to Chopin, as he embraced him, “Yes, my friend, you were right: works like yours ought not to be meddled with, other people’s alterations only spoil them. You are a true poet.” “Oh, this is nothing,” returned Chopin gaily, “We have each our own style.” (Charles Rollinat, friend of George Sand, in Le Temps, 1 September 1874)

Major references used:  

Chopin:pianist and teacher by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Cambridge University Press, 1970 Listening to Music by Craig Wright, Yale University,2004 The Book of Musical Anecdotes by Norman Lebrecht, The Free Press, NY,1985

By Anna Domanska