II.

Chopin’s Life

Born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin in Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, of a French father and a Polish mother, he preferred to use the French translation of his name, Frédéric François Chopin. He began to play the piano as a young child and published his first composition, a short polonaise in G minor, at the age of seven. When he was eight years old he played at a private concert in Warsaw. The young prodigy soon became a favorite at the salons of the Warsaw nobility. In their elegant homes he developed a taste for good living and adopted an exaggeratedly refined manner.

In 1823 Chopin entered the Warsaw Lyceum, a high school, and continued his musical training privately under the director of the Warsaw Conservatory. In 1825 he was invited to play before Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and after the performance the emperor presented the young Chopin with a diamond ring. The following year, at the age of 16, Chopin enrolled in the Warsaw Conservatory; his graduation in 1829 marked the end of his formal musical training.

Later in 1829, seeking to impress publishers and the public, the young virtuoso visited Vienna, where he gave two very successful concerts, charming the critics with his music and the women of the city with his manner. In 1830 he returned to Warsaw to play three concerts and then embarked on a tour of western Europe. While at Stuttgart in 1831, he learned of the failure of the Polish rebellion against Russian authority. Chopin never saw Poland again.

After 1831, except for brief absences, Chopin lived in Paris, then the cultural capital of Europe and one of the centers of the growing romantic movement in the arts. His reputation as a composer and performer preceded him, and he began to move almost immediately in the best social and cultural circles in Paris. He was much sought as a piano teacher by princesses and countesses, and his long list of students was a roster of the rich and fashionable.

In 1836 Chopin met the remarkable Baroness Aurore Dudevant, whose affairs were the talk of Paris and who had become a well-known writer under the pseudonym George Sand. Chopin was 28 and Sand was 34 when they formed an intimate relationship that lasted until 1847. In 1838, on a vacation with Sand in Mallorca, bad weather and inadequate housing aggravated the tuberculosis from which Chopin suffered.

Chopin’s relationship with Sand was broken permanently in 1847 as a result of his involvement in quarrels between Sand and her children. By then Chopin was suffering from advanced tuberculosis. Although seriously ill, he gave several concerts in 1848 in France, Scotland, and England. He died of tuberculosis in his apartment in Paris on October 17, 1849.