He composed the B Minor Scherzo and the G Minor Ballade, as well as some songs, while he waited in Vienna. His two concertos (the F Minor is the earlier), which he performed in a public concert in Warsaw in 1830, several fantasies incorporating national themes, and the first set of études stem from this period.Īfter a trip through Breslau, Dresden, and Prague, Chopin arrived in Vienna, but owing to the unsettled political conditions he never reached Italy. 11, 1829, he returned home only to prepare for a concert tour, this time through Germany and Italy. After a successful debut at the Kärntnerthor Theater on Aug. The government rejected his father's request for financial aid to send the boy abroad, so on his own Chopin went to Vienna to try to arrange the publication of several of his works. After visiting Berlin, where he was exposed to the music of George Frederick Handel and Felix Mendelssohn, Chopin heard Nicolò Paganini in Warsaw on his return and recognized that he must leave the city for exposure to other musicians. Italian opera had been the exclusive local musical fare, and Hummel's visit made Chopin aware of happenings in the west. Indeed, Chopin is one of the few composers whose style crystallized in his formative years and remained the same throughout his lifetime.Ĭhopin's first acquaintance with the musical world beyond Warsaw occurred in 1828, when Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a Viennese pianist-composer, visited that city.
Elsner, after recognizing that Chopin's style was too original to force into traditional patterns, granted him the freedom to develop along distinctly personal lines. The earliest work to display Chopinesque figurations as we know them today is the set of variations on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's theme Là ci darem' la mano, from the opera Don Giovanni. In 1826 Chopin became a full-time student at Elsner's conservatory, where he received an excellent foundation in theory, harmony, and counterpoint. In 1817 Chopin's first composition was performed publicly a year later he himself performed in public, playing a concerto by Adalbert Gyrowetz. Young Chopin had a good education and studied music privately with Joseph Elsner, founder and director of the Warsaw Conservatory. 22, 1810, near Warsaw, the second of four children of a French father, Nicholas Chopin, and a Polish mother, who had been a well-educated but impoverished relative in the Skarbek household, where From all reports, his playing was extraordinary: quiet, controlled, exquisitely shaded, varying from pianissimo to mezzo forte with only a very occasional forte.Ĭhopin was born on Feb. Indeed, he represents the curious phenomenon of a legendary pianist who gave approximately 30 public performances in his entire lifetime. Besides his two significant sonatas and two piano concertos, he is best known for his musical miniatures, many of which are within the technical grasp of amateurs.Ĭhopin was not a conductor, or a writer on music, or a great teacher-although he earned substantial amounts from his teaching-nor did he concertize extensively.
He wrote no symphonies, no operas, no string quartets, and only one trio (piano, violin, and cello). Thus, in an era when the piano was becoming the preeminent solo instrument in both the home and the concert hall, Chopin devised new figurations, delicate traceries, and elaborate quasivocal fioriture and fashioned them for use at the keyboard.
The imaginative schemes of Frédéric Chopin for his piano pieces include the following features: concentration on one motive in preludes and études elaboration of dance forms in mazurkas, waltzes, polonaises, the Bolero, and the Tarantella improvisational effects from piano figurations in the nocturnes and episodic, vigorous writing in the larger works such as the scherzos, ballades, impromptus, and the Fantasy.
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