79 Facts About Fryderyk Chopin

Fryderyk Chopin has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".

Fryderyk Chopin supported himself by selling his compositions and by giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand.

Fryderyk Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his other musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann.

Fryderyk Chopin died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39, probably of pericarditis aggravated by tuberculosis.

Fryderyk Chopin's piano writing was technically demanding and expanded the limits of the instrument, his own performances noted for their nuance and sensitivity.

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Fryderyk Chopin's works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying historical fidelity.

Fryderyk Chopin was born in Zelazowa Wola, 46 kilometres west of Warsaw, in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw, a Polish state established by Napoleon.

Fryderyk Chopin's father, Nicolas Chopin, was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen.

Fryderyk Chopin married Justyna Krzyzanowska, a poor relative of the Skarbeks, one of the families for whom he worked.

Fryderyk Chopin was baptised in the same church where his parents had married, in Brochow.

Fryderyk Chopin was the second child of Nicholas and Justyna and their only son; he had an elder sister, Ludwika, and two younger sisters, Izabela and Emilia, whose death at the age of 14 was probably from tuberculosis.

Nicolas Fryderyk Chopin was devoted to his adopted homeland, and insisted on the use of the Polish language in the household.

Fryderyk Chopin was of slight build, and even in early childhood was prone to illnesses.

Fryderyk Chopin may have had some piano instruction from his mother, but his first professional music tutor, from 1816 to 1821, was the Czech pianist Wojciech Zywny.

From September 1823 to 1826, Fryderyk Chopin attended the Warsaw Lyceum, where he received organ lessons from the Czech musician Wilhelm Wurfel during his first year.

Fryderyk Chopin was engaged by the inventors of the "aeolomelodicon", and on this instrument in May 1825 he performed his own improvisation and part of a concerto by Moscheles.

From 1824 until 1828 Fryderyk Chopin spent his vacations away from Warsaw, at a number of locations.

Fryderyk Chopin was friendly with members of Warsaw's young artistic and intellectual world, including Fontana, Jozef Bohdan Zaleski, and Stefan Witwicki.

Probably in early 1829 Fryderyk Chopin met the singer Konstancja Gladkowska and developed an intense affection for her, although it is not clear that he ever addressed her directly on the matter.

All of Fryderyk Chopin's biographers, following the lead of Frederick Niecks, agree that this "ideal" was Gladkowska.

Back in Warsaw that year, Fryderyk Chopin heard Niccolo Paganini play the violin, and composed a set of variations,.

Fryderyk Chopin returned to Warsaw in September 1829, where he premiered his Piano Concerto No 2 in F minor, Op.

When he left Warsaw in late 1830, Fryderyk Chopin had intended to go to Italy, but violent unrest there made that a dangerous destination.

Fryderyk Chopin arrived in Paris in late September 1831; he would never return to Poland, thus becoming one of many expatriates of the Polish Great Emigration.

However, Fryderyk Chopin remained close to his fellow Poles in exile as friends and confidants and he never felt fully comfortable speaking French.

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In Paris, Fryderyk Chopin encountered artists and other distinguished figures and found many opportunities to exercise his talents and achieve celebrity.

Fryderyk Chopin was acquainted with the poet Adam Mickiewicz, principal of the Polish Literary Society, some of whose verses he set as songs.

Fryderyk Chopin was more than once guest of Marquis Astolphe de Custine, one of his fervent admirers, playing his works in Custine's salon.

On 7 December 1831, Fryderyk Chopin received the first major endorsement from an outstanding contemporary when Robert Schumann, reviewing the Op.

Fryderyk Chopin played more frequently at salons but preferred playing at his own Paris apartment for small groups of friends.

Fryderyk Chopin was involved in the composition of Liszt's Hexameron; he wrote the sixth variation on Bellini's theme.

In 1835 Fryderyk Chopin went to Carlsbad, where he spent time with his parents; it was the last time he would see them.

Fryderyk Chopin had made the acquaintance of their daughter Maria in Poland five years earlier when she was eleven.

In July 1836 Fryderyk Chopin travelled to Marienbad and Dresden to be with the Wodzinski family, and in September he proposed to Maria, whose mother Countess Wodzinska approved in principle.

Fryderyk Chopin went on to Leipzig, where he presented Schumann with his G minor Ballade.

Fryderyk Chopin placed the letters he had received from Maria and her mother into a large envelope, wrote on it the words "My sorrow", and to the end of his life retained in a desk drawer this keepsake of the second love of his life.

Harold C Schonberg believes that Chopin displayed a "tinge of jealousy and spite" towards Liszt's virtuosity on the piano, and others have argued that he had become enchanted with Liszt's theatricality, showmanship, and success.

Fryderyk Chopin finally placed the letters from Maria and her mother in a package on which he wrote, in Polish, "My Sorrow".

Sand, in a letter to Grzymala of June 1838, admitted strong feelings for the composer and debated whether to abandon a current affair in order to begin a relationship with Fryderyk Chopin; she asked Grzymala to assess Fryderyk Chopin's relationship with Maria Wodzinska, without realising that the affair, at least from Maria's side, was over.

In June 1837 Fryderyk Chopin visited London incognito in the company of the piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel, where he played at a musical soiree at the house of English piano maker James Broadwood.

Fryderyk Chopin frequently visited Sand in the evenings, but both retained some independence.

Late in 1844, Charles Halle visited Fryderyk Chopin and found him "hardly able to move, bent like a half-opened penknife and evidently in great pain", although his spirits returned when he started to play the piano for his visitor.

Fryderyk Chopin's health continued to deteriorate, particularly from this time onwards.

In London, Fryderyk Chopin took lodgings at Dover Street, where the firm of Broadwood provided him with a grand piano.

Fryderyk Chopin was sought after for piano lessons, for which he charged the high fee of one guinea per hour, and for private recitals for which the fee was 20 guineas.

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Fryderyk Chopin clearly had a notion of going beyond mere friendship, and Chopin was obliged to make it clear to her that this could not be so.

Fryderyk Chopin wrote at this time to Grzymala: "My Scottish ladies are kind, but such bores", and responding to a rumour about his involvement, answered that he was "closer to the grave than the nuptial bed".

Fryderyk Chopin made his last public appearance on a concert platform at London's Guildhall on 16 November 1848, when, in a final patriotic gesture, he played for the benefit of Polish refugees.

Fryderyk Chopin passed the winter in unremitting illness, but gave occasional lessons and was visited by friends, including Delacroix and Franchomme.

Fryderyk Chopin died a few minutes before two o'clock in the morning.

Fryderyk Chopin's tombstone, featuring the muse of music, Euterpe, weeping over a broken lyre, was designed and sculpted by Clesinger and installed on the anniversary of his death in 1850.

Fryderyk Chopin took a collection of two hundred letters from Sand to Chopin; after 1851 these were returned to Sand, who destroyed them.

Over 230 works of Fryderyk Chopin survive; some compositions from early childhood have been lost.

Fryderyk Chopin was educated in the tradition of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, and Clementi; he used Clementi's piano method with his students.

Fryderyk Chopin was influenced by Hummel's development of virtuoso, yet Mozartian, piano technique.

Fryderyk Chopin cited Bach and Mozart as the two most important composers in shaping his musical outlook.

Fryderyk Chopin took the new salon genre of the nocturne, invented by the Irish composer John Field, to a deeper level of sophistication.

Fryderyk Chopin was the first to write ballades and scherzi as individual concert pieces.

Fryderyk Chopin endowed popular dance forms with a greater range of melody and expression.

Fryderyk Chopin's waltzes were written specifically for the salon recital rather than the ballroom and are frequently at rather faster tempos than their dance-floor equivalents.

Fryderyk Chopin expressed a deathbed wish that all his unpublished manuscripts be destroyed.

In 1857,17 Polish songs that Fryderyk Chopin wrote at various stages of his life were collected and published as Op.

Fryderyk Chopin published his music in France, England, and the German states due to the copyright laws of the time.

Each edition is different from the other, as Fryderyk Chopin edited them separately and at times he did some revision to the music while editing it.

Furthermore, Fryderyk Chopin provided his publishers with varying sources, including autographs, annotated proofsheets, and scribal copies.

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Rosen suggests that an important aspect of Fryderyk Chopin's individuality is his flexible handling of the four-bar phrase as a structural unit.

Fryderyk Chopin's polonaises show a marked advance on those of his Polish predecessors in the form.

Many of the Fryderyk Chopin nocturnes have middle sections marked by agitated expression, which heightens their dramatic character.

Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, Fryderyk Chopin's preludes move up the circle of fifths to create a prelude in each major and minor tonality.

Fryderyk Chopin's style was based extensively on his use of a very independent finger technique.

Contemporary accounts indicate that in performance, Fryderyk Chopin avoided rigid procedures sometimes incorrectly attributed to him, such as "always crescendo to a high note", but that he was concerned with expressive phrasing, rhythmic consistency and sensitive colouring.

Fryderyk Chopin's music is frequently played with rubato, "the practice in performance of disregarding strict time, 'robbing' some note-values for expressive effect".

Fryderyk Chopin took infinite pains to teach his pupils this legato, cantabile style of playing.

Schumann named a piece for him in his suite Carnaval, and Fryderyk Chopin later dedicated his Ballade No 2 in F major to Schumann.

Fryderyk Chopin's music remains very popular and is regularly performed, recorded and broadcast worldwide.

Fryderyk Chopin has figured extensively in Polish literature, both in serious critical studies of his life and music and in fictional treatments.

French writers on Fryderyk Chopin have included Marcel Proust and Andre Gide, and he has featured in works of Gottfried Benn and Boris Pasternak.

Possibly the first venture into fictional treatments of Fryderyk Chopin's life was a fanciful operatic version of some of its events: Fryderyk Chopin.

Fryderyk Chopin's life was covered in a 1999 BBC Omnibus documentary by Andras Schiff and Mischa Scorer, in a 2010 documentary realised by Angelo Bozzolini and Roberto Prosseda for Italian television, and in a BBC Four documentary Fryderyk Chopin – The Women Behind The Music.