This document provides a biography of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin and summaries of some of his most famous musical works. It outlines Chopins early life and education in Poland, his move to Paris where he spent most of his career, and his relationships with Maria Wodzinska and George Sand. The document also discusses Chopins incorporation of Polish musical nationalism in genres like the mazurka and polonaise. It provides overviews of some of Chopins most well known composition categories - etudes, nocturnes, preludes, and mazurkas.

1. The Life of Chopin
Tony Ng (1P320)
Chetwyn Zhou (1P333)
Sheyuan Yeo (1P327)
Lee Wen Jie (1P315)

2. Content Page
1. Objectives
2. Biography
o Basic Introduction
o Early life
o Life in Paris
o Maria Wodzinska
o George Sand
o Final Years
3. Musical Nationalism
4. Music

3. Content Page
5. Romanticism
6. Minute Waltz
7. Nocturne Op.9 No.2
8. Composition
9. Famous Pieces
• Etudes
• Nocturnes
• Preludes
• Marzukas
10. References

4. Objectives
• To get audience to know more about
Chopin's biography
• To get audience to know more about
Chopin's music composition
• To introduce to the audience some famous
music pieces composed by Chopin
• To introduce to the audience some of
Chopin's composition: Etudes, Nocturnes,
Preludes and Marzukas

5. Basic Introduction

6. Basic Introduction
• Frédéric François Chopin
• Was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist.
• Is widely considered one of the greatest Romantic piano
composers.
• Was born in Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of
Warsaw. He grew up in Warsaw and completed his music
education there.
• He composed many of his mature works in Warsaw before
leaving Poland in 1830 at age 20.

7. Basic Introduction
• Chopin settled in Paris. During the remaining 19 years of his
life, he gave only some 30 public performances.
• He supported himself by selling his compositions and
teaching piano.
• From 1837 to 1847 he was in relationship with the French
writer Amandine Dupin, also known as George Sand.
• For most of his life Chopin suffered from poor health. He
died in Paris in 1849 at age 39.

8. Early Life

9. Nicolas Chopin
• Chopin's father
• Was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had migrated to Poland in
1787 at age sixteen
• Hired by Weydlich for his Warsaw tobacco factory
• During the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising Nicolas served in the Warsaw
municipal militia, rising to the rank of lieutenant
• Tutored children of the Polish aristocracy
• Married Justyna Krzyżanowska, Chopin's mother in 2 June 1806
• Chopin was the couple's second child and only son

10. Early Life
• Chopin was baptized on 23 April 1810, Easter Sunday
• When he was seven months old, his family moved to Warsaw
(October 1810)
• Attended the Warsaw Lyceum from 1823 to 1826.
• Received his earliest piano lessons from his older sister Ludwika.
Ludwika, Chopin's older sister

11. Early Life
Chopin's family members were also musically talented:
• Chopin's father played the flute and violin
• Chopin's mother played the piano and gave lessons to boys in the
elite boarding house that the Chopins maintained.
As a result Chopin became conversant with music in its various forms
at an early age.

12. Early Life
• First professionally tutored by Wojciech Zywny, in 1817
• Composed two Polonaise, in G minor and B-Flat minor in the same
year (Seven years old)
• Began giving public concerts that soon prompted comparisons with
child prodigies Mozart and Beethoven
• Performed in the presence of Alexander I, Tsar of Russia when
Chopin was 11
• Was sometimes invited to the Belweder Palace as playmate to the
son of Russian Poland's ruler, Grand Duke Constantine, and
charmed the irascible duke with his piano-playing

13. Early Life
As a child, Chopin displayed an intelligence that was said to
absorb everything and utilize everything for its
development.
He early showed remarkable abilities in observation and
sketching, a keen wit and sense of humor, and an
uncommon talent for mimicry.
A story from his school years recounts a teacher being
pleasantly surprised by a superb portrait that Chopin
had drawn of him in class.

14. Early Life
• In the 1820s, when teenage Chopin was attending the
Warsaw Lyceum and Warsaw Conservatory, he spent every
vacation away from Warsaw: In Szafarnia (1824 – perhaps
his first solo travel away from home – and 1825), Duszniki
(1826), Pomerania (1827) and Sanniki (1828).
• At the village of Szafarnia (where he was a guest of Juliusz
Dziewanowski, father of schoolmate Dominik Dziewanowski)
and at his other vacation venues, Chopin was exposed to folk
melodies that he later transmuted into original compositions.

15. Life in Paris

16. Life in Paris
• Chopin arrived in Paris in late September 1831
• On 26 February 1832 Chopin gave a concert at the Salle
Pleyel that garnered universal admiration.
• In Paris, Chopin found artists and other distinguished
company, as well as opportunities to exercise his talents and
achieve celebrity, and before long he was earning a handsome
income teaching piano to affluent students from all over
Europe.
• The French passport was issued on 1 August 1835, after
Chopin had become a French citizen.

17. Life in Paris
• Chopin seldom performed publicly in Paris.
• In later years he generally gave a single annual concert at the
Salle Pleyel, a venue that seated three hundred.
• He played more frequently at salons – social gatherings of
the aristocracy and artistic and literary elite – but preferred
playing at his own Paris apartment for small groups of
friends.
• In 1835 Chopin went to Carlsbad, where, for the last time in
his life, he met with his parents.

18. Maria Wodzinka

19. Maria Wodzinska
• Chopin had made the acquaintance of Maria, now sixteen, in
Poland five years earlier, and fell in love with the charming,
intelligent, artistically talented young woman.
• The following year, in September 1836, Chopin proposed
marriage to Maria. She accepted, and her mother Countess
Wodzińska approved in principle, but Maria's tender age and
Chopin's tenuous health forced an indefinite postponement of
the wedding. The engagement remained a secret to the world
and never led to the altar. Chopin finally placed the letters from
Maria and her mother in a large envelope, on which he wrote
the Polish words "Moja bieda"("My sorrow").

20. Maria Wodzinska
• Chopin's feelings for Maria left their traces in his Waltz in A-
flat major, "The Farewell Waltz", Op. 69, No. 1, written on
the morning of his September departure from Dresden.
• On his return to Paris, he composed the Étude in F minor,
the second in the Op. 25 cycle, which he referred to as "a
portrait of Maria's soul." Along with this, he sent Maria seven
songs that he had set to the words of Polish Romantic poets
Stefan Witwicki, Józef Zaleskiand Adam Mickiewicz.

21. George Sand

22. George Sand
In 1836, at a party hosted by Countess Marie d'Agoult, mistress of
friend and fellow composer Franz Liszt, Chopin met French author
Amandine Aurore Lucille Dupin, the Baroness Dudevant, better
known by her pseudonym, George Sand.

23. George Sand
Chopin initially felt an aversion to Sand, but admitted strong feelings
for the composer.
In George's letter she debated whether to abandon a current affair in
order to begin a relationship with Chopin and attempted to gauge
the currency of his previous relationship with Maria Wodzińska,
which she did not intend to interfere with should it still exist. By the
summer of 1838, Chopin's and Sand's involvement was an open
secret.

24. Final Years

25. Final Years
• In late October 1848, at the home of Dr. Łyszczyński,] Chopin
wrote out his last will and testament—"a kind of disposition
to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead
somewhere," he wrote to his friend Wojciech Grzymała.
• Chopin made his last public appearance on a concert
platform at London's Guildhall on 16 November 1848, when,
in a final patriotic gesture, he played for the benefit of Polish
refugees.

26. Final Years
• At the end of November, Chopin returned to Paris.
• He no longer had the strength to give lessons, but he was still
keen to compose. He lacked money for the most essential
expenses and for his physicians. He had to sell off his more
valuable furnishings and belongings.
• Chopin died on 17 October 1849, at the age of 39.

27. Musical Nationalism

28. Musical Nationalism
• Refers to the use of musical ideas or motifs that are identified
with a specific country, region, or ethnicity, such as folk tunes
and melodies, rhythms, and harmonies inspired by them.

29. Musical Nationalism
• Frédéric Chopin was one of the first composers to
incorporate nationalistic elements into his compositions .
• Joseph Machlis states, "Poland's struggle for freedom from
tsarist rule aroused the national poet in Poland. … Examples
of musical nationalism abound in the output of the romantic
era. The folk idiom is prominent in the Mazurkas of Chopin."
• Chopin's mazurkas and polonaises are particularly notable
for their use of nationalistic rhythms.
• Moreover, "During World War II the Nazis forbade the
playing of … Chopin's Polonaises in Warsaw because of the
powerful symbolism residing in these works"

30. Music

31. Music
The great majority of Chopin's compositions were written for the
piano as solo instrument; all of his extant works feature the
piano in one way or another. Chopin, according to Arthur
Hedley, "had the rare gift of a very personal melody,
expressive of heart-felt emotion, and his music is penetrated
by a poetic feeling that has an almost universal appeal....
Present-day evaluation places him among the immortals of
music by reason of his insight into the secret places of the
heart and because of his awareness of the magical new
sonorities to be drawn from the piano."

32. Music
Chopin's music for the piano combined a unique rhythmic sense
(particularly his use of rubato), frequent use of chromaticism,
and counterpoint. This mixture produces a particularly fragile
sound in the melody and the harmony, which are nonetheless
underpinned by solid and interesting harmonic techniques.

33. Romanticism

34. Romanticism
• Also known as the Romantic era or the Romantic period
• Was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that
originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and
in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from
1800 to 1850.

35. Romanticism in Poland
• Was a literary, artistic and intellectual period in the
evolution of Polish culture that began around 1820
• The music of Frédéric Chopin inspired the development
of Polish Romantic movement in all fields of creative
expression.

36. Music Appreciation!!

37. Minute Waltz
The Waltz in D-flat major, Op.64, No. 1, popularly known
as the Minute Waltz, is a waltz for solo piano whose
music was composed by Frédéric Chopin.
It is written by Chopin in 1847, and is dedicated to the
Countess Delfina Potocka.

38. Minute Waltz

39. Nocturne Op.9 No.2

40. Composition
& Famous Pieces

41. Composition
Chopin has composed:
• 59 mazurkas
• 27 études (twelve in the Op. 10 cycle, twelve in the Op. 25 cycle, and three in a collection without an opus
number)
• 27 preludes
• 21 nocturnes
• 20 waltzes
• 18 polonaises, including one with orchestral accompaniment and one for cello and piano accompaniment
• 5 rondos
• 4 ballades
• 4 impromptus
• 4 scherzos
• 4 sets of variations, including Souvenir de Paganini
• 3 écossaises
• 3 piano sonatas
• 2 concerti for piano and orchestra, Op. 11 and 21

42. Famous Pieces
1. Nocturnes no.8 and 20
2. Preludes no. 4 and 15
3. Etudes op. 10 no. 3 and 12 and op.25 no.11
4. Funeral March from Sonata no.2
5. Scherzo no.2
6. Ballade no.1
7. Polonaises no. 3 and 6
8. Barcarolle Op. 60, B. 158
and the list goes on ...

43. Etudes
Études

44. Composition
• Three sets of solo studies for the piano
• Twenty-seven overall, comprising two separate collections of
twelve, numbered Opus 10 and 25, and a set of three without opus
number.(Trois nouvelles études)
• Chopin's Études are the foundation of a new system of technical
piano playing that was radical and revolutionary the first time they
appeared
• They are some of the most challenging and evocative pieces of all
the works in concert piano repertoire

45. Impact
Chopin's Études combine musical substance and technical
challenge to form a complete artistic form. They are
often held in high regard as the product of mastery of
combining the two.

46. Etudes
Nocturnes

47. Introduction
The Chopin nocturnes constitute 21 short pieces for solo piano written
by Frédéric Chopin between 1827 and 1846. They are generally
considered among the finest short solo works for the instrument and
hold an important place in contemporary concert
repertoire.Although Chopin did not invent the nocturne, he
popularized and expanded on it, building on the form developed by
Irish composer John Field.
While meters and keys vary, the nocturnes are generally set in
ternary form (A-B-A), featuring a melancholy mood, and a clear
melody floating over a left-hand accompaniment of arpeggios or
broken chords.

48. Influence
When first published, Chopin’s nocturnes were met with mixed
reactions from critics, though many of them were not in his favor.
However, through the process of time, many who had initially been
displeased with the nocturnes found themselves retracting previous
criticisms, holding the short compositions in high respect.

49. Etudes
Preludes

50. Introduction
Chopin's 24 Preludes, Op. 28, are a set of short pieces for the piano, one
in each of the twenty-four keys, originally published in 1839.

51. Criticism
The brevity and apparent lack of formal structure in the Op. 28
preludes caused some consternation among critics at the time of
their publication.No prelude is longer than 90 bars (No. 17), and the
shortest, No. 9, is a mere 12 bars. Robert Schumann said: "They are
sketches, beginnings of études, or, so to speak, ruins, individual
eagle pinions, all disorder and wild confusions."Franz Liszt's
opinion, however, was more positive: "Chopin's Preludes are
compositions of an order entirely apart... they are poetic preludes,
analogous to those of a great contemporary poet, who cradles the
soul in golden dreams..."

52. Etudes
Mazurkas

53. Introduction
Over the years 1825–1849, Chopin wrote at least 69 mazurkas, based
on the traditional Polish dance.
o 58 have been published
o 45 during Chopin's lifetime, of which 41 have opus numbers
o 13 posthumously, of which 8 have posthumous opus numbers
His composition of these mazurkas signaled new ideas of nationalism,
and influenced and inspired other composers—mostly eastern
Europeans—to support their national music.

54. References
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopin
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tudes_(Chopin)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preludes_(Chopin)
• http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/h/q/hql5056/finalProject/music2.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnes_(Chopin)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_nationalism#Fr.C3.A9d.C3.A9ric_Chop
in_.281810-1849.29
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopin%27s_mazurkas
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism_in_Poland
• http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=123