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Frédéric Chopin Synopsis Breviate Frédéric Chopin, Polish composer and pianist of the Romantic School, is regarded as the greatest composer of music for the piano, helping to establish it as a solo instrument. Chopin was born in 1810 in Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, to a French father and Polish mother. He began to study the piano at age four and published his first composition in 1817. From an early age his talents were much in demand in the leading aristocratic households in Warsaw, and he continued to move freely in such circles when he moved to Paris in 1831. Here he became noted as a pianist, teacher, and composer and made a comfortable living, enjoying friendships with some of Europe’s most eminent artists and composers. After the failure in 1837 of his plans to marry Maria Wodzinska, a Polish girl of good family, Chopin found himself increasingly involved with the novelist George Sand; the next ten years of his life were dominated by that relationship. These were productive years for Chopin, and when the relationship ended in 1847 he composed little more, dying two years later. Although an expatriate, Chopin was deeply loyal to war-torn Poland, and his mazurkas reflect the rhythms and melodies of Polish folk music. Chopin's influence was immense. His style was appropriated by many composers of light 'salon' pieces. More crucially, his innovative harmonic language foreshadowed Brahms, Wagner, and other late Romantics, while his approach to thematic working informed several composers outside the Austro-German mainstream. Most influential was his development of a new soundscape of piano textures, distinct from that of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and Mendelssohn.