Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin was a Polish composer of classical music and a piano virtuoso of the Romantic period, who became famous as the “poet of the piano” . He was born on February 22 or March 1, 1810 in Żelazowa Wola in Poland and died on October 17, 1849 in Paris, France.
His father was a French emigrant and his mother came from an impoverished noble family from Poland. Fryderyk Chopin spent his childhood in Warsaw, where he began learning to play the piano with Czech Vojtěch Živný in 1816. At the age of seven, he was already trying his hand at his first compositions.
In 1831 he moved to Paris, where he also worked as a music teacher. There he established a relationship with the writer George Sand, with whom he never married, and after breaking up with her he never established another relationship.
He wrote his works mainly for solo piano and all his other compositions contain a piano part. Among his most important works are mainly small-scale works, nocturnes, waltzes or a cycle of preludes. He also composed dance pieces, with the Polish national element being most prominent in 60 mazurkas and in festive polonaises.