60 Fun Facts About Frédéric Chopin

In which village, 46 kilometres west of Warsaw, was Chopin born in 1810?

Żelazowa Wola. His father was a tutor on the estate, but the family left for Warsaw when the baby was only a few months old, so the composer grew up in the capital rather than his famous birthplace.

Which film opens with a live Chopin recital on Polish radio being cut short by German bombs in 1939?

The Pianist. It tells the true story of Władysław Szpilman, who survived the war in hiding and, when Polish Radio returned to the air in 1945, sat down and played the same Chopin again.

Chopin was known for avoiding which staple of a keyboard virtuoso's career?

Public concerts. He told a fellow virtuoso that the crowd intimidated him and its breath stifled him, so he played mostly for small gatherings and earned his living largely by teaching.

Who was Chopin's first professional piano teacher, taking him on when he was six?

Wojciech Żywny. Within a few years the boy played better than his teacher, who had nothing more to show him and bowed out.

Seven-year-old Chopin's first published composition was what kind of dance?

A polonaise, printed in 1817. Early the next year he made his debut at a charity evening, and when his mother asked what people had liked best, he is said to have answered that everybody had been looking at his new collar.

Which ruler rewarded the 15-year-old Chopin with a diamond ring after hearing him play in Warsaw in 1825?

Tsar Alexander I. In Warsaw to open the Polish parliament, he asked to hear a newly invented organ-like keyboard instrument, and the schoolboy was the one chosen to show it off.

Under which Silesian composer did Chopin study composition at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1826?

Józef Elsner. When others complained that his pupil ignored the rules, he told them to leave the boy in peace: an uncommon talent, he said, needs an uncommon way.

Which singer was the 'ideal' who inspired the Adagio of Chopin's concerto?

Konstancja Gładkowska. Chopin told a friend he had adored her for six months without once speaking to her of his feelings, and after he left Warsaw in 1830 the two never met again.

Which violinist's visit to Warsaw in 1829 moved the young Chopin to write a set of variations in tribute?

Niccolò Paganini. The piece is known as Souvenir de Paganini, and the virtuoso's feats may also have spurred him to begin his own études, testing what the piano alone could do.

Chopin's Op. 2 Variations, praised by Schumann, are on a duet from which Mozart opera?

Don Giovanni. The duet is 'Là ci darem la mano', and at the Vienna premiere in 1829 the applause after each variation was so loud that Chopin could not hear the orchestra.

How did Robert Schumann hail Chopin's Op. 2 Variations in 1831?

'Hats off, gentlemen! A genius.' is spoken in the review by Eusebius, an imaginary friend Schumann invented, who lays the unknown composer's score on the piano without showing its title.

What broke out in Warsaw less than a month after Chopin left Poland in late 1830?

The November Uprising. The friend travelling with him turned back to join the fight, while Chopin, left alone in Vienna, wrote: 'I curse the moment of my departure.'

What did Chopin's passport endorsement say when he arrived in the French capital in 1831?

He never did return to Poland, becoming one of the Great Emigration.

Whom did Chopin meet at Carlsbad in 1835, never to see them again?

His parents. He never went back to Poland, so after nearly five years apart they met abroad, at the spa where his father's doctors had sent him for a cure.

Which piano maker's instruments did Chopin favour for life after Kalkbrenner introduced him?

Pleyel. He is quoted as saying that on days he felt unwell an Érard gave him a ready-made tone, but when he was strong enough to find his own sound he had to have a Pleyel.

Which wealthy banking family's patronage opened Paris salons to Chopin from 1832?

The Rothschilds. He is said to have been on the point of leaving Paris when a prince took him to one of their soirées, where his playing won him a rush of wealthy pupils.

To whom did Chopin dedicate his Op. 10 Études?

Franz Liszt. Hearing him play them, Chopin wrote to a friend: 'I should like to steal from him the way to play my own études.'

Chopin played at an 1833 benefit for actress Harriet Smithson, who soon married which composer?

Hector Berlioz. He had poured his obsession with her into the Symphonie fantastique before the two had even met, and they married six months after the benefit.

What did Chopin tell Liszt after hearing him embellish one of his nocturnes?

Play it as written or not at all. As the story is told, Chopin then sat down and played in the dark himself, and Liszt embraced him and admitted he had been right.

To whom was Chopin engaged from 1836 to 1837, until her mother cooled on the match?

Maria Wodzińska. He tied her family's letters into a bundle, wrote 'Moja bieda' ('My sorrow') on it, and kept it in his desk for the rest of his life.

What was the birth name of the novelist George Sand?

Aurore Dupin. She took her pen name from her lover Jules Sandeau, with whom she had co-written a first novel signed 'J. Sand', and kept it for her own books from 1832.

What did Chopin say of George Sand after first meeting her in 1836?

'Is she really a woman?' He found the cigar-smoking novelist repellent at first, yet within two years they were lovers, and they stayed together for nine.

On which island did Chopin and Sand spend the miserable winter of 1838-39?

Mallorca. Their landlord turned them out, fearing that Chopin's cough was catching, and they saw out the wet winter in the bare cells of a former monastery in the hills.

What did Chopin report from the three doctors who examined him in December 1838?

Dead, dying, and going to die: one verdict from each. In the same letter he mocked their methods: one sniffed at what he coughed up, one tapped his chest, and one poked about and listened.

Which set of pieces did Chopin complete during his winter abroad with George Sand in 1838–39?

The 24 Preludes, Op. 28. He finished them on a small piano sent from Paris, which customs officers held for weeks while demanding a steep duty, so it reached him only near the end of his stay.

What was the name of George Sand's country estate, where Chopin spent most summers from 1839 to 1846?

Nohant. There, Sand wrote, he would shut himself in his room for days on end, weeping, pacing and breaking his pens, and alter a single bar a hundred times.

How did George Sand refer to Chopin in letters to friends during their last years together?

Her 'beloved little corpse'. By then she was more his nurse than his lover, and the grim endearment was her comment on how thin and frail his illness had left him.

In the family quarrel that ended his nine years with George Sand, whose side did Chopin take?

Her daughter's. Sand had fallen out with Solange and her new husband, a sculptor, and when Chopin stayed loyal to the young couple she ended things by letter in 1847.

Which painter, a close friend, made a double portrait of Chopin and George Sand that was later cut in two?

Eugène Delacroix. He kept the unfinished canvas in his studio until he died, and it was then cut apart: Chopin's half hangs in the Louvre and Sand's in a museum in Copenhagen.

Which soprano, appearing in Britain in 1848, sent Chopin a prime seat for her own performance after the two met?

Jenny Lind. After hearing her from that seat, Chopin told a friend she was 'a typical Swede', lit not by ordinary light but by 'some sort of Polar dawn'.

Which British piano firm lent Chopin a grand for his lodgings during his 1848 tour?

Broadwood. The firm also told him what to charge: twenty guineas for playing at a private party, which is what a duchess had just paid him.

Where did Chopin make his last public appearance, playing for Polish refugees on 16 November 1848?

London's Guildhall. He played at a charity ball where guests hot from dancing paid him little attention, and, exhausted and gravely ill, he left for Paris within days.

How did Chopin describe his Scottish hostesses in a letter to Grzymała?

'Kind, but such bores' was his verdict on the women who carried him off to meet one relative after another; they would, he wrote, end by killing him with kindness.

Chopin died at 39, but which of these composers died even younger?

Franz Schubert, who died at 31. At a memorial service for the tenor Adolphe Nourrit in Marseille in 1839, Chopin sat down at a badly out-of-tune church organ and played one of Schubert's songs.

To which former Paris neighbour did Chopin leave his unfinished notes on a piano method?

Charles-Valentin Alkan. The two had been friends and neighbours in the same Paris square, and Chopin hoped he would complete the method; Alkan wrote of the death as 'another blow which I felt deeply'.

Which work was sung at Chopin's funeral at the Madeleine on 30 October 1849?

Mozart's Requiem. Chopin had asked for it, but it needs women's voices and the Madeleine had never let women sing, so the funeral waited almost two weeks for special permission.

What did Chopin's sister Ludwika carry back to Poland in 1850, as he had requested?

His heart, preserved in alcohol. Terrified of being buried alive, he had begged for his body to be cut open after death, and Ludwika smuggled the jar past the border guards under her cloak.

Which devoted pupil organised Chopin's 1848 tour of Britain and, after his death, bought up his belongings?

Jane Stirling. She seems to have hoped for marriage, but Chopin told a friend he was 'nearer to a coffin than to a marriage bed'.

What did George Sand do with her letters to Chopin once they were returned to her after his death?

Destroyed them. Almost nothing of her side of their correspondence survives as a result, though a number of his letters to her do.

A 2014 scientific examination pointed to which likely cause of Chopin's death?

Pericarditis from chronic tuberculosis. The scientists were allowed to look but not to take any tissue samples, so the verdict rests on what they could see.

Which Irish composer invented the nocturne, the form Chopin went on to make his own?

John Field. Chopin was proud to be ranked beside him, but the older man was less generous and dismissed his young rival as 'a sickroom talent'.

Which two genres did Chopin create as free-standing concert pieces?

The ballade and the scherzo. A scherzo had been a light movement inside a larger work, but his stand alone and are so stormy that Schumann asked how seriousness should dress if jest went about in dark veils.

Which is the only instrumental work Chopin himself gave a descriptive title?

The Funeral March. He wrote it before the rest of the sonata he then built around it, and a decade later it was played at his own burial; names like 'Raindrop' and 'Minute' were other people's.

What was the last work Chopin published in his lifetime?

A cello sonata. He wrote it for his close friend Auguste Franchomme, and the two of them played most of it at Chopin's last Paris appearance in February 1848.

What did Chopin's teacher keep urging him to write?

An opera. His teacher longed for one on a subject from Polish history, but Chopin, who loved the opera house, answered that composers wait years to see their operas staged, and stayed at the keyboard.

Which two composers did Chopin name as the most important in shaping his musical outlook?

Bach and Mozart. Before he had to play to an audience, he told a pupil, he shut himself away for a fortnight and played Bach, never his own pieces.

Chopin's cycle of short pieces in every key progresses through them in what order?

Up the circle of fifths. Each major key is followed by its relative minor, so every piece starts in a key closely related to the last.

What is strange about the finale of Chopin's Second Sonata, which baffled Schumann?

Both hands play in unison, for barely three pages. Chopin described it as the left and right hands gossiping together, while Schumann wrote that it was no music at all and likened it to a sphinx with a mocking smile.

Which Polish dance did Chopin 'put on the European musical map', writing it for the concert hall?

The mazurka. As a schoolboy on country holidays he danced at peasant weddings and joined in with the village bands, and he drew on what he heard there for the rest of his life.

Which 1965 winner of the Chopin Competition quit its jury in 1980 when Ivo Pogorelić was eliminated?

Martha Argerich. She resigned in protest at the verdict, and the scandal that followed helped to launch the eliminated contestant's international career.

How did Charles Hallé describe the ailing Chopin after visiting his rooms one evening?

'Bent like a half-opened penknife', and plainly unwell; yet when his guests offered to leave he insisted on playing, and once he had begun he soon straightened up.

After whom was Chopin named, his eighteen-year-old godfather and a pupil of his father?

Fryderyk Skarbek. He was away studying in Paris, so a stand-in held the baby at the font, yet both families counted the absent student as the real godfather.

What subject did Chopin's father teach at the Warsaw Lyceum from 1810?

French. He was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had come to Poland at sixteen, yet he grew so devoted to his new country that he insisted on Polish being spoken at home.

Which Polish poet's verses did Chopin set as songs?

Adam Mickiewicz. Chopin published almost none of his songs, so most first appeared when a friend collected seventeen of them after his death.

In 1828 the student Chopin tagged along with a zoologist to Alexander von Humboldt's science congress in which city?

Berlin. While the professors conferred he amused himself by drawing caricatures of them, and at a choral performance he found himself near Mendelssohn but was too shy to introduce himself.

Which ballet, premiered in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1909, is danced entirely to music by Chopin?

Les Sylphides. It had begun life in St Petersburg under the title Chopiniana, and Diaghilev renamed it when he brought it west for his company's season.

Which muse is shown weeping over a broken lyre on Chopin's tombstone in Père Lachaise?

Euterpe. The muse of music was carved by Auguste Clésinger, the sculptor who had taken Chopin's death mask and a cast of his hand on the morning he died.

Which famous piece did Julian Fontana publish after Chopin's death, against the composer's wishes?

The Fantaisie-Impromptu. Chopin never published it himself, but his mother and sisters asked Fontana to save the manuscripts, and he printed it in 1855.

Which edition of Chopin's scores did the 2021 Chopin Competition recommend to its entrants?

The Polish National Edition. Its editor, Jan Ekier, a prize-winner at the 1937 competition, gave it half a century: he began in 1959 and the last of its 37 volumes appeared in 2010.

Which British actor played Chopin opposite Judy Davis's George Sand in the 1991 film Impromptu?

Hugh Grant. The film plays their affair as romantic comedy with the roles reversed: his timid, sickly Chopin is the one being wooed, by a George Sand who dresses as a man.