Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin, born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin on 1 March 1810 in Żelazowa Wola and raised in Warsaw, was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the early Romantic period who wrote almost exclusively for the piano. A child prodigy, he completed his education and early works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at twenty, weeks ahead of the November 1830 Uprising, and settled in Paris at twenty-one; he gave only thirty public concerts thereafter, preferring salons, and lived by selling compositions and teaching. He befriended Franz Liszt, was admired by Robert Schumann, and after a broken engagement to Maria Wodzińska carried on a difficult relationship with the writer George Sand, with whom an unhappy stay in Mallorca in 1838 and 1839 nonetheless proved highly productive. His works include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, études, preludes, two piano concertos, and the instrumental ballade, a genre he originated. In poor health for most of his life, he died in Paris in 1849 at thirty-nine.