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Frederic Chopin: Works
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Chopin's polonaises brought the musical form to a higher level than anyone had envisioned the musical style to be capable of. The series of seven, beginning with the Op. 26 pair, set a whole new standard for composing and playing the music and were rooted in a passion by Chopin to write something to celebrate the Polish culture -- after the country fell into Russian hands. The Op. 40 No. 1, dubbed Military Polonaise, and the Op. 53 in A-flat major, are among Chopin's most beloved and played works.
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Beginning in 1840, Wessel began to issue Chopin's works, both new ones and reprints of earlier ones, with collective title pages that advertised a "complete edition" of the piano music. Since Wessel had been the English publisher for nearly all of Chopin's music, this collection was in fact the most complete edition available for many years. In 1851 and 1852, respectively, Brandus (Schlesinger's successor) and Breitkopf und Härtel began to reissue the Chopin works from their catalogues in collected editions, although neither of these was as comprehensive as Wessel's.
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The piano music of Frédéric Chopin is among the most original and influential work of the nineteenth century. With Chopin we leave the world of the eighteenth century piano completely and enter a new realm of idiomatic writing that grows directly out of the technique of the instrument and its development that brought it close to our modern instrument in sonority.
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All of Chopin's extant work includes the piano in some role (predominantly as a solo instrument), and his compositions are widely considered to be among the pinnacles of the piano's repertoire. Although his music is among the most technically demanding for the instrument, Chopin's style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than mere technical virtuosity.
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The rhapsodic nature of Chopin's works has led some commentators to search for the music's literary inspirations. But, unlike some of his contemporaries and successors, particularly Liszt, Chopin did not try to translate specific poems, stories or characters into music.
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It is curious that Chopin did not dedicate published works to either of the two known loves of his life, Maria Wodzinska (1819-1896) and George Sand (1804-1876). Chopin had known the Wodzinski family since childhood and fell in love with Maria in 1835, when she was sixteen. He proposed, but her family did not approve, probably because of his chronic ill health. He inscribed a manuscript of the Waltz, op. 69, no. 1 to Maria during their courtship, but the work was not published during his lifetime; in later years he did not hesitate to dedicate copies of it to other ladies. Chopin lived with novelist George Sand for nine years (1838-1847) and their relationship was common knowledge among members of Paris society, but Chopin may have felt that a public dedication to her stretched the bounds of propriety.
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