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Polish musical composer and pianist born at Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw, on the 22nd of February 1810. His father, of French origin, born at Nancy in 1770, had married a Polish lady, Justine Krzyzanowska. Frederic was their third child. His first musical education he received from Adalbert Ziwny, a Czech musician, who is said to have been a passionate admirer of Johann Sebastian Bach. He also received a good general education at one of the first colleges of Warsaw, where he was supported by Prince Antoine Radziwill, a generous protector of artistic talent and himself well known as the composer of music to Goethe`s Faust and other works. His musical genius opened to Chopin the best circles of Polish society, at that time unrivalled in Europe for its ease of intercourse, the beauty and grace of its women, and its liberal appreciation of artistic gifts. These early impressions were of lasting influence on Chopin`s development. While at college he received thorough instruction in the theory of his art from Joseph Elsner, a learned musician and director of the conservatoire at Warsaw. When in 1829 he left his native town for Vienna, where his debut as a pianist took place, he was in all respects a perfectly formed and developed artist. There is in his compositions little of that gradual progress which, for instance, in Beethoven necessitates a classification of his works according to different periods. Chopin`s individuality and his style were distinctly pronounced in that set of variations on La ci darem which excited the wondering enthusiasn of Robert Schumann. In 1831 he left Vienna with the intention of visiting London; but on his way to England he reached Paris and settled there for the rest of his life. Here again he soon became the favorite and musical hero of society. His connection with Madame Dudevant, better known by her literary pseudonym of George Sand, is an important feature of Chopin`s life. When in 1839 his health began to fail, George Sand went with him to Majorca, and it was mainly owing to her tender care that the composer recovered his health for a time. Chopin declared that the destruction of his relations with Madame Dudevant in 1847 broke up his life. The association of these two artists has provoked a whole literature on the nature of their relations, of which the novelists Un Hiver à Majorque was the beginning. The last ten years of Chopin`s life were a continual struggle with the pulmonary disease to which he succumbed in Paris on the 17th of October 1849. The year before his death he visited England, where he was received with enthusiasm by his numerous admirers. Chopin died in the arms of his sister, who hastened from Poland to his death-bed. He was buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise. A small monument was erected to the memory of the composer at Wasswan in 1880. Portraits and medallions of Chopin were executed by Ary Scheffer and Eugène Delacroix, and by the sculptors Bary and Clésinger.

A distinguished English amateur thus records his impressions of Chopin`s style of pianoforte-playing compared with those of other masters. "His technical characteristics may be broadly indicated as negation of bravura, absolute perfection of fingerplay, and of the legatissimo touch, on which no other pianist has ever so entirely leant, to the exclusion of that high relief and point which the modern German school, after the examples of Liszt and Thalberg, has so effectively developed. It is in these feature that we mus