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KARTY PRACY

Chopin ’s biography

1. Please read the following biography and then complete the axis concerning composer’s life.

Frederic Franęois Chopin (1810-1849), Polish-born (in Żelazowa Wola) composer and renowned pianist, was the creator of 55 mazurkas, 16 polonaises, 26 preludes, 27 etudes, 21 nocturnes, 4 ballads, and 4 scherzos. But did you know that Chopin’s teacher was disappointed in him because he never wrote a Polish opera? And what of his national allegiance? Did you know that Chopin's family was of French lineage? Did you know that he was buried in Paris but asked that Polish soil be sprinkled over his grave? These are but a few of the lesser-known facts about the well-known musician.

Chopin was born Frederic (spelled in Polish as Fryderyk) Franęois (Franciszek) Chopin, his very name indicative of the blended impact two countries madę on the precocious musician's life. His father, Nicholas Chopin, was a French tutor to many aristocratic Polish families, later accepting a position as a French teacher at the Warsaw Lyceum.

Although Chopin later attended the Lyceum where his father taught, his early training began at home. This included receiving piano lessons from his mother. By the age of six, Chopin was creating original pieces, showing innate prodigious musical ability. His parents arranged for the young Chopin to take piano instruction from Wojciech Żywny.

Żywny taught the boy the work of classical composers Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, but with an ear open and sympathetic to the individualism infiltrating the musie of a dawning Romantic Period. Artistically, this period represented an era dedicated to the creation of ideas and impressions, beauty, imagination and sentiment. The musie synonymous with this time was intensely personal and emotional. Emphases were placed on color, tonę, and dynamics, a rather impressive outbreak from the “follow the rules” Classical Period with its focus on structure and form. Wojciech Żywny's tutelage influenced the young Chopin perhaps immeasurably, as Chopin's compositions were Romantically expressive and emotional, yet defined by a purity derived from the Classical Period before him.

When Chopin was sixteen, he attended the Warsaw Conservatory of Musie, directed by composer Joseph Elsner. Elsner, like Żywny, insisted on the traditional training associated