Fryderyk Chopin, also known as the poet of piano, was an amazing composer and virtuoso pianist. He played in various genres and his compositions were music to the ears in both meanings. Even the shortest compositions have people listening to them over and over again.
Fryderyk Chopin was born on the 1st of March in 1810 in Warsaw. He mostly wrote for the solo piano and gained popularity throughout the whole world as a leading musician of the Romantic era. Chopin was born and raised in a family of four children, his mother was Polish and his father was an immigrant from France and a French school teacher. Fryderyk also had 3 sisters, Ludwika, Izabela, and Emelia. His whole family was known to be very artistic and when his mother and sisters would play the piano, Fryderyk seemed to have been delighting in it. He started studying piano at a very young age, he was about six years old when he began to study with his sixty-one-year-old teacher, Wojciech Zywny. Even though his teacher was amazing, Chopin found his own way of studying the piano, a way he understood best. When he turned eight, he gave his first performance at a charity concert. He attended the Warsaw Lyceum from 1823 to 1826 where he was taught to play the organ by Wilhelm Wurfel Fryderyk, a famous Czech musician. He continued with his love of music and at age sixteen and in the year of 1826 Fryderyk joined the Warsaw Music Conservatory. He studied such subjects as composition and theory for the next three years. During the time of studying, he did not waste a minute, while still learning many things he had already started composing his own pieces of music. Chopin even got a chance to perform for the Russian Emperor, Konstantin Pavlovich, after which he was gifted a diamond ring for. In 1829, Fryderyk received his final report card with a note that he was a thirty-year student and a musical genius. In addition to all of these facts, Chopin also traveled to various places in Europe to perform. In the year of 1828, he traveled to Vienna, where he performed. In 1829, after gaining much success, he composed wonderful pieces of music, the Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor and the Piano Concerto No.1 in E Minor in 1830. In the same year, on the tenth of October, Chopin performed at a ceremonial concert in the National Theatre in Warsaw where he played these concertos and was accompanied by Konstancja Gladkowska, a singer from the conservatory.
“Here is a young man, abandoning himself to his natural impressions and without taking a model, has found, if not a complete renewal of pianoforte music, at least a part of what has been sought in vain for a long time – namely an abundance of original ideas of which the type is to be found nowhere.” (Fetis, Revue Et Gazette Musicale).
Chopin was also, a well-known and very popular at that time, teacher to the Polish and the French aristocracy. He was known to be part of the French musical elite by the end of 1832 with others like Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt, who were also famous for their beautiful compositions at that time. Franz Liszt was known to be one of Fryderyk Chopin’s best friends, like all, they had their good and bad times. Chopin was characterized as a person of deep sensitivity, he was a very calm, shy and quiet person unlike the people he was friends with. Despite his sensitivity and calm personality he was also a person who had a great sense of humor but at some points of his life was not the nicest person one may have known. Even though he might have been friends with somebody, in reality, he had much rough and unfriendly comments about that person, a great example of that kind of behavior was shown by Chopin’s “love” to his friend Liszt. There came a time when Chopin became jealous about how successful Liszt was and adding up to that anger, Fryderyk became furious when he heard Franz adding his own things to the compositions that Chopin wrote. After such a situation, their friendship no longer stayed as strong as before. In 1836, Fryderyk Chopin met George Sand at a party. She was a female French writer which after becoming friends with, he would be in a relationship for the next nine years. With such a masculine name, she would act in very weird ways the society could not understand. She would wear men’s clothes considering them to be more comfortable than women’s clothes, she would also smoke cigars which was considered to be very unladylike. In 1838, Fryderyk and George decided to go to the island of Majorca located in Spain. Their trip did not end to be a very pleasant one since the people there were catholic and did not approve of being in a relationship without being married. His health was also getting worse while staying there. Soon, Fryderyk had a couple of doctors visit him which him that he was not healthy and might not live long. George was very worried about Fryderyk and told him to go home to Paris and away from this island. When they returned to Paris, he was diagnosed with a sickness he knew he could not carry through with for a long time. He wrote to one of his friends that he had to lay in bed for the whole day because he was so sick. At 1846, the relationship of George and Fryderyk began to fall very noticeably. One of the reasons was that George was a mother to a girl and a boy. Her son did not like Fryderyk and George had fights with her daughter. All of the conflicts led to the end of George and Fryderyk’s love life. Their relationship changed into just caring for each other, specifically, George caring for Fryderyk. After a bit of time passed by, they ended up completely splitting after Chopin saw that he was being much mistreated by George. In 1848, doctors told Fryderyk that he was very ill and did not give him much hope for living any longer. He had friends that would still visit him and despite his sickness, he would continue to give piano lessons. When he felt that he was not going to live much longer, he asked his family and sister Ludwig to come and visit him. He always feared of being buried alive so he requested his sister to put his heart in a jar of alcohol and take it back to Poland after his death which she did.
Fryderyk Chopin spent his last twenty years of life in Paris, France but always considered himself to be Polish. Throughout his whole life, Fryderyk Chopin struggled with different health issues. He was not considered to be a healthy person. In the summer of 1849, Fryderyk’s eldest sister Ludwika came to take care him. Chopin died on October 17th in 1849 at the age of 39 because of tuberculosis. Mozart’s famous requiem was played at his funeral in addition to Chopin’s own compositions. Thousands of people came to the funeral as well as George Sand herself. Despite their problematic relationship, George admired Fryderyk’s work.
“Chopin has written two wonderful mazurkas which are worth more than forty novels and are more eloquent than the entire century’s literature” (George Sand, “What Makes It Great, Enhanced Edition: Short Masterpieces, Great Composers”, Chapter 8).
Altogether Chopin composed 169 solo piano works which included nocturnes, polonaises, etudes, mazurkas, waltzes, scherzos, sonatas and preludes. Polish folk music and great composers such as Mozart, Schubert, and Johann Sebastian Bach significantly influenced the style of Fryderyk Chopin. Even though most of his works were written for the solo piano, he also wrote two piano concertos, compositions for some Polish lyrics and a couple of chamber pieces. He did not like to perform at concerts but preferred to play for his friends at his apartment or at salons since his compositions were more at the romantic side. Some of his famous compositions known to this day are Prelude Op. 28 No. 7, Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1, Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, Polonaise Opus 53 Heroic, and the famous Waltz No. 6 in D Flat Major, Op 64, No. 1, “Minute”. Even though it might sound strange at a point, he is actually the composer that gave a head start to modern piano music by making the style and technique so outstanding. To this day, composers all around the world find his work very influential. If not for the works and achievements of Fryderyk Chopin, musicians nowadays would not have the whole new range of colors, harmonies and means of expression in which he exploited every facet of the new developments in the piano construction (“Fryderyk Chopin”, Gramophone.co.uk). Fryderyk Chopin both as a person and a composer was a genius. His personality was vivid but at the same time, he had some pretty disturbing habits. His compositions were very striking and would sink deep into the listener’s soul and mind. Each note had something to say about Fryderyk’s life, whether it was about his happy days and memories or when illness hit following by hard depressing times, it was all clearly shown in the amazing works of the composer. To this day, the whole world is filled with Chopin’s admirers that cherish and delight in the compositions of this famous romantic composer. He is a great influence to new composers. His compositions are used throughout the film industry and are hard to reproduce when playing but despite the difficulty, they are played by many pianists even today.
Works Cited
Schumann, Robert. “Hats Off, Gentlemen, a Genius” Rev. of An Opus II. 7 Dec. 1831. Print.
Fetis, Francois Joseph. Review. Revue Et Gazette Musicale 1832. Print.
Kapilow, Rob. What Makes It Great, Enhanced Edition: Short Masterpieces, Great Composers. Print.
“Fryderyk Chopin.” Gramophone.co.uk. Web. 03 May 2016.
