Born in 1810 in Zekazowa Wola (Warsaw) and deceased in Paris in 1849. Frédéric François Chopin started composing in 1817 and gave his first public concert in 1818. From 1830, when his secondary studies were completed, he set off to conquer the stages of Europe as a pianist-composer: Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, Munich, Stuttgart.
In 1831, at the age of twenty-one, Chopin settled permanently in Paris. He spent time with Gérard de Nerval, Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Vigny, Jules Janin and Théophile Gautier. He was applauded at the public concerts organised in piano-makers’ lounges. Chopin thus became acquainted with Camille Pleyel, giving his first concert in 1832, the Concerto Op.11 in E minor. A composer and teacher above all, he was absorbed in salon life and teaching. It was in 1838 that his relationship with George Sand began, with the famous note, ‘You are adored’; it ended in 1847. In the meantime, there were trips to Mallorca, summers in Nohant, Chopin’s illness, and a platonic friendship with Eugène Delacroix. An innovative pianist-composer, Chopin is the only artist to have composed exclusively for the piano. Under his fingers, the art of improvisation was pushed to excellence.
‘Schmucke sat down at the piano. Here he was in his element; and in a few moments, musical inspiration, quickened by the pain with which he was quivering and the consequent irritation that followed came upon the kindly German, and, after his wont, he was caught up and borne above the world. On one sublime theme after another he executed variations, putting into them sometimes Chopin’s sorrow, Chopin’s Raphael-like perfection; sometimes the stormy Dante’s grandeur of Liszt—the two musicians who most nearly approach Paganini’s temperament. When execution reaches this supreme degree, the executant stands beside the poet, as it were; he is to the composer as the actor is to the writer of plays, a divinely inspired interpreter of things divine.’
Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Pons, 1847 (Translation Ellen Marriage)
