Composers › Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
The poet of the piano: he wrote almost only for this instrument and invented a new way of making it sing.
Life
He was born in 1810 near Warsaw, to a French father and a Polish mother. At seven he published his first polonaise and as a teenager he was already famous in Poland as a pianist.
In 1830 he left his homeland and the following year settled in Paris, where he hardly ever played in big halls: he preferred salons and teaching. There he met the great artists of the time and had a long relationship with the writer George Sand.
Ill with tuberculosis, he died in Paris at 39. He is buried in Père-Lachaise cemetery, but his heart, as he had asked, was taken back to Warsaw and lies in the Holy Cross Church.
Portrait: Louis-Auguste Bisson (1849), public domain, from Wikimedia Commons.
Curiosities
- The 24 Preludes Op. 28 were completed in the winter of 1838-39 in Majorca: according to George Sand, Prelude No. 15 “Raindrop” recalls the rain falling on the monastery of Valldemossa.
- The “Minute Waltz” does not last one minute: “minute” here means “small”. In France it is also called the “Little Dog Waltz”.
- He did not want the Fantaisie-Impromptu published: it came out in 1855, after his death, thanks to his friend Julian Fontana.
At the piano
- The melody must sing like a voice: play it alone and listen to where it breathes.
- The rubato (slowing down and catching up) is in the right hand; the left hand stays steadier.
- Change the pedal often, at every harmony: always listen that the sound stays clean.
Pieces to learn 8 pieces
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