![]() Soon after his arrival in what was then the centre of European culture and in the midst of its own late-flowering Romantic movement, Chopin realized that he had found the milieu in which his genius could flourish. He had gone no farther than Vienna when news reached him of the Polish revolt against Russian rule this event, added to the disturbed state of Europe, caused him to remain profitlessly in Vienna until the following July, when he decided to make his way to Paris. In March and October 1830 he presented his new works to the Warsaw public and then left Poland with the intention of visiting Germany and Italy for further study. This school was directed by the Polish composer Joseph Elsner, with whom Chopin already had been studying musical theory. Other polonaises, mazurkas, variations, ecossaises, and a rondo followed, with the result that, when he was 16, his family enrolled him at the newly formed Warsaw Conservatory of Music. At seven he wrote a Polonaise in G Minor, which was printed, and soon afterward a march of his appealed to the Russian grand duke Constantine, who had it scored for his military band to play on parade. Playing was not alone responsible for his growing reputation as a child prodigy. ![]() Three years later he performed in the presence of the Russian tsar Alexander I, who was in Warsaw to open Parliament. Zywny’s simple instruction in piano playing was soon left behind by his pupil, who discovered for himself an original approach to the piano and was allowed to develop unhindered by academic rules and formal discipline.Ĭhopin found himself invited at an early age to play at private soirées, and at eight he made his first public appearance at a charity concert. The following year he started piano lessons with the 61-year-old Wojciech Zywny, an all-around musician with an astute sense of values. By age six he was already trying to reproduce what he heard or to make up new tunes. Chopin himself attended the lyceum from 1823 to 1826.Īll the family had artistic leanings, and even in infancy Chopin was always strangely moved when listening to his mother or eldest sister playing the piano. When Frédéric was eight months old, Nicholas became a French teacher at the Warsaw lyceum. LifeĬhopin’s father, Nicholas, a French émigré in Poland, was employed as a tutor to various aristocratic families, including the Skarbeks, at Żelazowa Wola, one of whose poorer relations he married. Although he wrote little but piano works, many of them brief, Chopin ranks as one of music’s greatest tone poets by reason of his superfine imagination and fastidious craftsmanship. After he moved to Paris in 1831, his fame grew as a piano teacher and a composer.įrédéric Chopin, French in full Frédéric François Chopin, Polish Fryderyk Franciszek Szopen, (born Ma, Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, Duchy of Warsaw -died October 17, 1849, Paris, France), Polish French composer and pianist of the Romantic period, best known for his solo pieces for piano and his piano concerti. His fame spread with concerts in Vienna in 1829.
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