Frederic Chopin
Uploaded by dancingpanther06 on Mar 14, 2004
Frederic Francois Chopin was born in Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw, Poland. No one is exactly sure about his birth date; he was born on February 22 or March 1, 1810. He was very gifted when it came to music and was playing the piano in public by the time he was eight years old. Soon after that he was composing music! When he was about sixteen, he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory and went to school there from 1826 to 1829. He left Poland in 1830 and settled in Paris in 1831. He lived in Paris for the rest of his life, except for some traveling. There he became well known in the fashionable salons, even though he barely ever performed in public.
The first person that Chopin fell in love with was Maria Wodzinski. He had known her family since his childhood and fell in love with Maria in 1835 when she was sixteen. He proposed to Maria, but her family did not want them to get married, probably because of his chronic illness.
In 1836, the composer Franz Liszt introduced Chopin to Mrs. Aurore Dudevant, a French novelist whose writing name was George Sand. After meeting her, he said, "I have met a great celebrity, Madame Dudevant, known as George Sand... Her appearance is not to my liking. Indeed there is something about her which positively repels me... What an unattractive person La Sand is... Is she really a woman? I am inclined to doubt it." His first impression of her must not have lasted, because he had a famous love affair with her, starting in 1837. Their relationship was very tragic and was the most influential and devastating development in his life. They went to the Mediterranean Island of Majorca for the winter of 1838 to 1839. The bad weather he experienced at Majorca weakened his already failing health. The most intense of his piano pieces were composed during the nine years that he lived with George Sand. During this time he was seriously ill with tuberculosis so she nursed him and for a short time he regained his health. Their affair ended in 1846 when they had a big disagreement, one of the last of the many quarrels they had over the years.
It is strange that Chopin did not dedicate any of his...