Frederic Chopin
Frederic Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin, born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era who wrote primarily for the solo piano. He gained and has maintained renown worldwide as a leading musician of his era, whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation." Chopin was born in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth1 March 1810
CountryPoland
The crowd intimidates me, its breath suffocates me. I feel paralyzed by its curious look, and the unknown faces make me dumb.
I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
I shall create a new world for myself.
I don't know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi.
As something has involuntarily crept into my head through my eyes,I love to indulge it, even though it may be all wrong.
My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country.
Play Mozart in memory of me.
England is a country of pianos, they are everywhere.
Vienna is a handsome, lively city, and pleases me exceedingly.
I feel like a novice, just as I felt before I knew anything of the keyboard. It is far too original, and I shall end up not being able to learn it myself.
A strange adventure befell me while I was playing my Sonata in B flat minor before some English friends. I had played the Allegro and the Scherzo more or less correctly. I was about to attack the March when suddenly I saw arising from the body of my piano those cursed creatures which had appeared to me one lugubrious night at the Chartreuse. I had to leave for one instant to pull myself together after which I continued without saying anything.
All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here.
Here, waltzes are called works! And Strauss and Lanner, who play them for dancing, are called Kapellmeistern. This does not mean that everyone thinks like that; indeed, nearly everyone laughs about it; but only waltzes get printed.
Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in ones birthplace.