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Frédéric Chopin (1810—1849)

1. Frédéric Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, 46 kilometers (29 miles) west of Warsaw. Frédéric’s father, Nicolas Chopin, was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had immigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen.

Chopin was composing and writing poetry at age six, and gave his first public concerto performance at the age of eight. It is not really surprising – his mother was a piano teacher, and his father played the flute and violin.

2. Chopin was very fond of Bach. He urged his piano pupils to practice Bach every day in order to strengthen their fingers and exercise their minds with the mathematical music.

3. His Piano Concerto No. 2 was written before his Piano Concerto No. 1, in 1830. But the former was published after the latter, leading to the confusion.

4. Despite only arriving in Paris in September 1831, Chopin never returned to his homeland of Poland. While he was in The City of Light, he forged friendships with great composers including Mendelssohn, Berlioz, and Liszt.

5. As way of making money while living in Paris, Chopin built up a book of rich contacts to whom he would give piano lessons. Unfortunately, he felt too embarrassed to ask his pupils for money, so he looked away while they left the fee on the mantelpiece.

6. Chopin’s Minute Waltz is not minute as in small, it is minute in that it lasts 60 seconds. Well, nearly; the 138 bars of music take between a minute and a half to two minutes to play. Chopin’s publishers coined the nickname.

7. Chopin was forced to postpone his engagements due to his health, an ongoing problem. Word spread among the people in Warsaw believing the composer had died because he was so ill in 1835.

8. When Chopin visited Majorca, he had trouble bringing his precious piano along with him. The piano, made by the famous Pleyel et Cie company, was held up by customs from December 20, 1838 until January 4, 1839. Eventually George Sand agreed to pay 300 francs to have the instrument released.

9. Chopin had an long and stormy affair with a novelist called George Sand after meeting her in 1836. At least, that is what she said her name was in order to get noticed in a society which did not look favorably on female authors. Her real name was Aurore Dudevant.

10. Chopin died in 1849, most likely from tuberculosis, at the age of 39. He is buried near his friend, composer Cerubini, at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Mozart’s Requiem was performed at his funeral. The composer’s sister, Ludwika, took Chopin’s heart in an urn, preserved in alcohol, back to Poland in 1850.