Heart of Frederic Chopin
I’ll be the first to admit: I’m a hopeless romantic. My favorite composer of classical piano music has always been Chopin, and I specify piano music only because of Beethoven, who is, overall, my favorite composer. And it is not because his music moves me the way Chopin’s does but because of his life story. Any mere mortal would have been so depressed to be a professional musician and composer losing their hearing in their twenties and being stone cold deaf in their mid-forties that they’d probably quit and commit suicide. But not LVB. The more impaired he became, the more inspirational and great his music was. His dream, his exhortation in the Ninth Symphony was that hope and brotherhood would develop throughout all mankind, across all borders and conflicts. How wondrous it would be if that dream came true today?
Frederic Chopin was born near Warsaw in 1810. He began playing piano at age four, a child prodigy. He admired Beethoven but they never met. Chopin forever changed the way piano was played. His technique and style were completely new and different than what preceded him. He was driven above all by beautiful melodic lines and filled in new harmonies, styles and chromaticism to create pieces of incomparable beauty. Polish folk tunes were prominent in his compositions. He developed brand new compositional structures, such as ballades, impromptus, mazurkas, etudes, and waltzes. When he was twenty-one, he moved to Paris and played almost exclusively in the salons of beautiful homes and cultured audiences. The intimacy of the salon setting was perfect for his tender and very personal compositions. Sadly, he died young (at 39) like Mendelssohn (38) and Schubert (31). Thank the music Gods that we were blessed by their music, albeit briefly. Chopin had a fear that he would literally be buried alive. His sister promised that his heart would be removed upon his death and indeed, if you visit the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw you will see the memorial with the words: “Here rests the Heart of Frederic Chopin”. The rest of his remains are in a beautiful Paris monument.
