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Frederic Chopin: Music
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Chopin was one of the most original harmonists in history, creating an exquisite chromatic garden. "Chopin's chromaticism," wrote Gerald Abraham, "marks a stage of the greatest importance in the evolution of the harmonic language. . . . ". He was the first composer seriously to undermine the solid system of diatonic tonalism created by the Viennese classical masters and the contemporaries in other countries." As a creator of ornamental fioritura, he is without equal in the nineteenth century. Chopin displayed an almost inexhaustible resource in discovering pianistic formations that are uniquely suited to the instrument. To transcribe Chopin or to change the medium in any way destroys the music's evocative power, more than with any other composer.
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Chopin took his piano teaching very seriously. In the early 1840s, he even sketched the beginnings of a method for playing the instrument, but this project was never completed. Chopin taught music written by a variety of composers, of whom Johann Sebastian Bach was particularly prominent, but his students cherished most the opportunity to study the master's own works with him. During lessons, he and his students frequently wrote instructions concerning performance in the students' printed copies of his music. Most of these were fingerings, with occasional details of dynamics, articulation, and phrasing. The markings were primarily didactic and tailored to the needs of individual students.
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Chopin had been studying with Elsner for some time when his father thought it would be good for him to have a little tour before settling down to the active practice of his profession. Warsaw was a small place after all, and could never afford Frederic the opportunity of becoming acquainted with celebrated artists or of hearing the best performances of the classics. Thus a tour was arranged. Berlin was the first place visited. There the young artist heard a lot of music including Handel’s Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day, which he said most nearly approached his idea of the sublime. Remember he was a very young man then.
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Despite his premature death in 1849, Chopin's music touched the hearts of many throughout the years of his life and continues, even today, to be admired by musicians and music lovers alike. Chopin is most noted for his unique approach to the piano, creating sounds unheard before his time. Fryderyk Chopin remains one of the most original composers in music history. His style of composition shows little influence from other composers of his time. In fact, much of his music defines new genres and categories all its own. However, it is evident that Chopin's music owes a considerable debt to the music of the Irish composer, John Field, as a source of inspiration.
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After this, little Frederic became more than ever the pet of the aristocracy of Warsaw; his charming manners, his unspoiled nature, his musical gifts made him welcome in princely homes. He had ... begun to compose; indeed these efforts started soon after he began piano lessons, and before he could handle a pen. His teacher had to write down what the little composer played. Among those early pieces were mazurkas, polonaises, valses and the like. At the age of ten he dedicated a march to Grand Duke Constantine, who had it scored for band and played on parade. He started lessons in composition with Joseph Eisner, a celebrated teacher, who became a life-long adviser and friend.
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Chopin first achieved fame as a child prodigy in his native Poland, and a few of his works were published in Warsaw as early as 1817, when he was only eight years old. He continued to compose throughout his student years, but only a handful of these works were printed, in Polish editions that were not widely distributed and are now quite rare. When Chopin attained prominence in Paris during the early 1830s, he allowed a few of his early works (the Rondos, opp. 1 and 5) to be reissued by French, German, and English publishers, but he made no further effort to revive the other music he had composed before 1828. These works languished in manuscript until after his death and have been trickling into print from widely scattered sources ever since.
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