If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in Chopin's works in the simple tunes of his mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers. Robert Schumann. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music. A renowned child-prodigy pianist and composer, he grew up in Warsaw and completed his musical education there. He supported himself as a composer and piano teacher, giving few public performances. From to he carried on a relationship with the French woman writer George Sand.
For most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris at the age of All of Chopin's works involve the piano. They are technically demanding but emphasize nuance and expressive depth. Chopin invented the musical form known as the instrumental ballade, and made major innovations to the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu and prélude.
Chopin's father was Nicolas Chopin, a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland in at the age of sixteen and had served in Poland's National Guard during the Kościuszko Uprising.
In France he had been baptised Nicolas but later, living in Poland, he used the Polish form of his given name, Mikołaj. He subsequently tutored children of the aristocracy, including the Skarbeks, whose poorer relative, Justyna Krzyżanowska, he married. Frédéric Chopin was the couple's second child and only son. The parish record of the baptism discovered in gives 22 February as his date of birth, [ 5 ] but 1 March was the date on which the composer and his close family celebrated his birthday; [ 6 ] and, according to Chopin himself in a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Polish Literary Society in Paris [ 7 ] on 16 January , he was "born 1 March at the village of Żelazowa Wola in the Province of Mazovia.
The parish register cites his given names in the Latin form Fridericus Franciscus ; [ 5 ] in Polish he was called Fryderyk Franciszek. In October , when Chopin was seven months old, the family moved to Warsaw, as his father had accepted an offer from the celebrated lexicographer Samuel Linde to teach French at the Warsaw Lyceum. The school was housed in the Saxon Palace, and the Chopin family lived on the palace grounds.
