Chopin was a Polish composer and pianist who combined his French and Polish heritage. He was deeply patriotic to his native Poland and expressed the soul and despair of the Polish people through his music. He developed new melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic techniques for the piano that spiritualized it. Chopin enriched piano music with warmth of tone and effects that brought out sympathy with the orchestra. His music uplifts the soul through even the most melancholy strains with its underlying ideal.

1. Chopin, the Man and His Music
The piano bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano mind, the piano soul is
Chopin," said Rubinstein. "Tragic, romantic, lyric, heroic, dramatic,
fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy, brilliant, grand, simple, all
possible expressions are found in his compositions and all are sung by
him on his instrument."
Born and bred on Poland's soil, son of a French father and a Polish
mother, Frédéric Chopin (1809-1849) combined within himself two natures,
each complementing the other, both uniting to form a personality not
understood by every casual observer. He is described as kind, courteous,
possessed of the most captivating grace and ease of manner, now inclined
to languorous melancholy, now scintillating with a joyous vivacity that
was contagious. His sensitive nature, like the most exquisitely
constructed sounding-board, vibrated with the despairing sadness, the
suppressed wrath, and the sublime fortitude of the brave, haughty,
unhappy people he loved, and with his own homesickness when afar from
his cherished native land.
Patriot and tone-poet in every fibre of his being, his genius inevitably
claimed as its own the soul's divinest language, pure music, unfettered
by words. He evolved from its more intimate domain effects in sympathy with
those of the orchestra, yet purely individual.
He enriched it with new melodic, harmonic and rhythmic devices adapted to
itself alone, and endowed it with a warmth of tone-coloring that spiritualized
it for all time.
So in the most melancholy strains of his music one who heeds well may detect
the presence of a lofty ideal that uplifts and strengthens the travailing soul. It
has been said of him that he had a sad heart but a joyful mind.

2. His musical heroes were Bach and Mozart, for they represented to him
nature, strong individuality and poetry in music.
Whoever plays Chopin with sledge-hammer fingers will deaden all sense of
his poetry, charm and grace. Whoever approaches him with weak
sentimentalism will miss altogether his dignity and strength. It has
been said of him that he was Woman in his tenderness and realization of
the beautiful; and Man in his energy and force of mind. The highest type
of artist and human being is thus represented. To interpret him requires
simplicity, purity of style, refined technique, poetic imagination and
genuine sentiment,not fitful, fictitious sentimentality.
In playing he emphasized the saying of Mozart: "Let your left hand be the
orchestra conductor," while his right hand balanced and swayed the melody
and its arabesques according to the natural pulsation of the emotions.
Chopin was at his best when interpreting music in private, for a choice circle
of friends or pupils, or when absorbed in composition.
He is the boldest, proudest poetic spirit of the
time." "His greatness is his aristocracy," says Oscar Bie. "He stands
among musicians in his faultless vesture, a noble from head to foot."
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