born Zelazowa Wola, ?1 March 1810; died Paris, 17 October 1849).
The son of French �migr� father (a schoolteacher working in Poland) and a
cultured Polish mother, he grew up in Warsaw, taking childhood music lessons
(in Bach and the Viennese Classics) from Wojciech Zywny and J�sef Elsner
before entering the Conservatory (1826-9). By this time he had performed in
local salons and composed several rondos, polonaises and mazurkas. Public
and critical acclaim increased during the years 1829-30 when he gave
concerts in Vienna and Warsaw, but his despair over the political repression
in Poland, coupled with his musical ambitions, led him to move to Paris in
1831. There, with practical help from Kalkbrenner and Pleyel, praise from
Liszt, F�tis and Schumann and introductions into the highest society, he
quickly established himself as a private teacher and salon performer, his
legendary artist's image being enhanced by frail health (he had
tuberculosis), attractive looks, sensitive playing, a courteous manner and
the piquancy attaching to self-exile. Of his several romantic affairs, the
most talked about was that with the novelist George Sand (Aurore Dudevant)
though whether he was truly drawn to women must remain in doubt. Between
1838 and 1847 their relationship, with a strong element of the maternal on
her side, coincided with one of his most productive creative periods. He
gave few public concerts, though his playing was much praised, and he
published much of his best music simultaneously in Paris, London and
Leipzig. The breach with Sand was followed by a rapid deterioration in his
health and a long visit to Britain (1848). His funeral at the Madeleine was
attended by nearly 3000 people.

No great composer has devoted himself as exclusively to the piano as Chopin.
By all accounts an inspired improviser, he composed while playing, writing
down his thoughts only with difficulty. But he was no mere dreamer - his
development can be seen as an ever more sophisticated improvisation on the
classical principle of departure and return. For the concert-giving years
1828-32 he wrote brilliant virtuoso pieces (e.g. rondos) and music for piano
and orchestra; the teaching side of his career is represented by the
studies, preludes, nocturnes, waltzes, impromptus and mazurkas, polished
pieces of moderate difficulty. The large-scale works - the later polonaises,
scherzos, ballades, sonatas, the Barcarolle and the dramatic
Polonaise-fantaisie - he wrote for himself and a small circle of admirers.
Apart from the national feeling in the Polish dances, and possibly some
narrative background to the ballades, he intended notably few references to
literary, pictorial or autobiographical ideas.

Chopin is admired above all for his great originality in exploiting the
piano. While his own playing style was famous for its subtlety and
restraint, its exquisite delicacy in contrast with the spectacular feats of
pianism then reigning in Paris, most of his works have a simple texture of
accompanied melody. From this he derived endless variety, using wide-compass
broken chords, the sustaining pedal and a combination of highly expressive
melodies, some in inner voices. Similarly, though most of his works are
basically ternary in form, they show great resource in the way the return is
varied, delayed, foreshortened or extended, often with a brilliant coda
added.

Chopin's harmony however was conspicuously innovatory. Through melodic
clashes, ambiguous chords, delayed or surprising cadences, remote or sliding
modulations (sometimes many in quick succession), unresolved dominant 7ths
and occasionally excursions into pure chromaticism or modality, he pushed
the accepted procedures of dissonance and key info previously unexplored
territory. This profound influence can be traced alike in the music of
Liszt, Wagner, Faur�, Debussy, Grieg, Alb�niz, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and
many others.

Extracted with permission from
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music
edited by Stanley Sadie
� Macmillan Press Ltd., London.


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