Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin (1810 â October 17, 1849) was an important Franco-Polish composer of the early nineteenth century. Arguably he was the first composer for piano to apply the Romantic ethos to piano technique - his works make physical demands of the performer that surpass the late works of Beethoven, at least in terms of the expression of raw emotion.
Nevertheless, his romanticism concealed a craftsman thoroughly schooled in older contrapuntal and harmonic methods - he was an avid admirer of JS Bach, and his works reveal a masterly combination of textural and harmonic innovation combined with old school discipline.
His works were mostly published as collections of short pieces, with the exception of the Concerti and Sonatas. They are often grouped by category, as follows:
- Etudes - two sets of technical studies for piano that to this day are regarded as a watershed in the progress of any piano player
- Nocturnes - slow, dreamlike pieces. The form was originally pioneered by the Irish composer John Field
- Mazurkas - an adaptation of a native Polish dance form. These miniatures often show Chopin at his most harmonically adventurous
- Waltzes - whilst these did much to contribute much to Chopin's reputation as a 'Salon' composer, the best of them rival his Mazurkas in unusual harmonic adventures
- Scherzi and Ballades - longer works that far extend the Fantasia concept
- Preludes - Chopin's most explicit homage to JS Bach, written during a period of intense emotional pressure on the island of Majorca - the extremely fragmentary nature of some of them puzzled contemporaries (the shortest last seconds rather than minutes), but some commentators have come to observe the set as a whole as one of Chopin's most satisfying works.