Chopin

Justyna Chopin.

Nicolas Chopin.

The house at Żelazowa Wola in which Chopin was born.

Ludwika Chopin.

Izabela Chopin.

Emilia Chopin.

The Warsaw Lycée.

The Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw.

Wojciech Żywny.

The drawing room of the Chopin apartment.

Józef Elsner.

Tytus Woyciechowski.

Chopin drawn by Eliza Radziwiłł, 1826.

Chopin at the age of twenty, by Ambroży Mieroszewski.

Konstancja Gładkowska.

Jan Matuszyński.

Chopin, portrait by an unknown artist, early 1830s.

Hector Berlioz.

Franz Liszt.

Felix Mendelssohn.

Hiller and Chopin, a contemporary medal.

Vincenzo Bellini.

Chopin in the mid-1830s.

Delfina Potocka.

Chopin’s apartment on the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin.

Astolphe de Custine.

Wojciech Grzymała.

Julian Fontana.

Maria Wodzińska.

Chopin, watercolour by Maria Wodzińska, 1836.

George Sand.

Marie d’Agoult.

George Sand’s house at Nohant.

Chopin in the early 1840s.

Chopin, drawing by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1847.

Ignaz Moscheles.

Pauline Garcia-Viardot.

Auguste Franchomme.

Adam Mickiewicz, sketch by Delacroix.

Stefan Witwicki.

Bohdan Zaleski.

Eugène Delacroix.

Chopin, caricature by Pauline Viardot, 1844.

Marcelina Czartoryska.

Maria Kalergis.

Chopin, photograph taken during the last months of his life.

Jane Stirling.

Preface (#ulink_36374d76-85ba-5d76-a572-4dd1a6eaaf07)

Two centuries have passed since Chopin came into this world, yet his legacy is all around us today. The quiet revolution he wrought influenced the development of Western music profoundly, and he is still one of the very few most widely studied and revered composers. For many, he is the object of a cult. Yet most people know little of his life, of the man, his thoughts and his feelings; his public image is a sugary blur of sentimentality and melodrama.

The aim of this book is to cut through the myths and legends, to delve into everyday reality in order to tell the story of his life, and to reveal all that can be discovered of Chopin as a person. I had already attempted this in a previous book, published in 1979, and since this has been out of print for many years, I decided to update it, taking into account all the new material that has come to light and the many excellent studies on specific aspects of Chopin’s life that have appeared since then.