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Frederick Chopin Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era. Chopin was born at Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw, then under Russian rule, to a French father and a Polish mother. A child prodigy, he grew up in Warsaw and completed his musical education there, composing many of his works before leaving Poland at the age of 20, shortly before the November 1830 Uprising. Settling in Paris, during the remaining 19 years of his life Chopin gave only some 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon; he supported himself by selling his compositions and as a sought-after piano teacher. He formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann. After a failed engagement with a Polish girl, from 1837 to 1847 he maintained a relationship, often troubled, with the French writer George Sand. A brief and unhappy visit with Sand to Majorca in 1838–39 was also one of his most productive periods of composition. In his last years he was financially supported by his admirer Jane Stirling, who also arranged for him to visit Scotland in 1848. For most of his life Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849, probably from tuberculosis. All of Chopin's compositions include the piano; most are for solo piano, although he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some songs to Polish lyrics. His keyboard style is often technically demanding; his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin invented the concept of instrumental ballade; his major piano works also include sonatas, mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, études, impromptus, scherzos, and preludes. Many of these works were published only after Chopin's death. Stylistically, they contain elements of both Polish folk music and of the classical tradition of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Schubert, whom Chopin particularly admired. Chopin's innovations in keyboard style, musical form, and harmony were influential throughout the late Romantic period and since.
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Frederick ChopinFrédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era. Chopin was born at Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw, then under Russian rule, to a French father and a Polish mother. A child prodigy, he grew up in Warsaw and completed his musical education there, composing many of his works before leaving Poland at the age of 20, shortly before the November 1830 Uprising.

Settling in Paris, during the remaining 19 years of his life Chopin gave only some 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon; he supported himself by selling his compositions and as a sought-after piano teacher. He formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann. After a failed engagement with a Polish girl, from 1837 to 1847 he maintained a relationship, often troubled, with the French writer George Sand. A brief and unhappy visit with Sand to Majorca in 1838–39 was also one of his most productive periods of composition. In his last years he was financially supported by his admirer Jane Stirling, who also arranged for him to visit Scotland in 1848. For most of his life Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849, probably from tuberculosis.

All of Chopin's compositions include the piano; most are for solo piano, although he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some songs to Polish lyrics. His keyboard style is often technically demanding; his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin invented the concept of instrumental ballade; his major piano works also include sonatas, mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, études, impromptus, scherzos, and preludes. Many of these works were published only after Chopin's death. Stylistically, they contain elements of both Polish folk music and of the classical tradition of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Schubert, whom Chopin particularly admired. Chopin's innovations in keyboard style, musical form, and harmony were influential throughout the late Romantic period and since.

Both in his native Poland and beyond, Chopin's music, his association (if only indirect) with political insurrection, his amours and his early death have made him a leading symbol of the Romantic era in the public consciousness. His works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying degrees of historical accuracy.

ChildhoodChopin was born at Żelazowa Wola, forty-six kilometers west of Warsaw, in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw. The parish baptismal record, discovered in 1892, gives his birthday as 22 February 1810, and cites his given names in the Latin form Fridericus Franciscus; in Polish, he was Fryderyk Franciszek. The composer and his

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family used the birthdate 1 March; according to Chopin's letter of 16 January 1833 to the chairman of the Polish Literary Society in Paris, he was "born 1 March 1810 at the village of Żelazowa Wola in the Province of Mazowsze." 1 March is now generally accepted as his birthday.

Chopin's father, Nicolas Chopin, was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen. In Poland he used the Polish form of his name, Mikołaj. Nicolas tutored children of the Polish aristocracy, and in 1806 married Justyna Krzyżanowska, a poor relation of the Skarbeks, one of the families for whom he worked. The wedding took place at the 16th-century parish church in Brochów.

Fryderyk Chopin was baptized on Easter Sunday, 23 April 1810, in the same church where his parents had married. His eighteen-year-old godfather, for whom he was named, was Fryderyk Skarbek (1792–1866), a pupil of Nicolas Chopin. Fryderyk Chopin was the couple's second child and only son; he had an elder sister, Ludwika (1807–1855), and two younger sisters, Izabela (1811–1881) and Emilia (1812–1827).

In October 1810, when Chopin was seven months old, the family moved to Warsaw, where his father had accepted a post teaching French at the Warsaw Lyceum, then housed in the Saxon Palace. Chopin's father played the flute and violin; his mother played the piano and gave lessons to boys in the boarding house that the Chopins kept. Even in early childhood, Chopin was slight of build and prone to illnesses.[9]

Chopin may have had some piano instruction from his mother, but his first professional music tutor, from 1816 to 1821, was the Czech Wojciech Żywny. Chopin's elder sister Ludwika also took lessons from Żywny, and occasionally played duets with her brother. The seven-year-old Chopin began giving public concerts; in 1817 he composed two Polonaises, in G minor and B-flat major. The first was published to the Warsaw press' praise. Chopin's next work, a Polonaise in A-flat major, dedicated to Żywny, is his earliest surviving musical manuscript.

During this period, Chopin was sometimes invited to the Belweder Palace as playmate to the son of Russian Poland's ruler, Grand Duke Constantine; he played the piano for the Duke and composed a march for him. Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, in his dramatic eclogue, "Nasze Przebiegi" ("Our Discourses", 1818), attested to "little Chopin's" popularity.

In 1827, soon after the death of Chopin's youngest sister Emilia, the family moved from their home in a Warsaw University building near the Kazimierz Palace to lodgings just across the street from the university, in the south annex of the Krasiński Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście. (The palace is now the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.) Here the parents continued running a boarding house for male students; Chopin lived here until he left Warsaw in 1830. The Chopin Family Parlor (Salonik Chopinów) is now a small museum open to the public; there Chopin premiered many of his early works. Four boarders at his parents' apartments

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became Chopin's intimates: Tytus Woyciechowski, Jan Białobłocki, Jan Matuszyński and Julian Fontana; the last two would later be part of Chopin's Paris milieu. In 1829, the artist Ambroży Mieroszewski executed a set of portraits of Chopin family members, including the first known portrait of the composer. (The originals perished in World War II; only black-and-white photographs remain.)

In the autumn of 1826, Chopin had begun a three-year course of studies with the Silesian composer Józef Elsner at the Warsaw Conservatory. Chopin's first contact with Elsner may have been as early as 1822; it is certain that Elsner was giving him informal guidance by 1823, and in 1826 Chopin officially began studying music theory, figured bass, and composition with Elsner. In his final report from the Conservatory (July 1829), Chopin is recorded as showing "exceptional talent, musical genius."

Throughout this period Chopin continued to compose and to give recitals in concerts and salons in Warsaw. He was engaged by the inventors of a mechanical organ, the "eolomelodicon", and in May 1825 performed on this instrument part of a Moscheles concerto and his own improvisation. The success of this concert resulted in him being asked to give a similar recital on the instrument before Tsar Alexander I, who was visiting Warsaw; the Tsar presented Chopin with a diamond ring. At a subsequent eolomelodicon concert (10 June 1825) Chopin performed his Rondo Op.1 (the first of his works to be commercially published); this earned him his first mention in the foreign press, when the Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung praised his "wealth of musical ideas."While Chopin himself never gave thematic or "programmatic" titles to his instrumental works – instead, he identified them simply by genre and number– his compositions were often inspired by emotional experiences in his life. One of these was his passion for a young singing student at the Warsaw Conservatory (later a singer at the Warsaw Opera), Konstancja Gładkowska. In letters to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski, Chopin indicated which of his works, and even which of their passages, were influenced by his fascination with her. In this period he was also friendly with members of Warsaw's young artistic and intellectual world, including Mauryry Mochnacki, Jan Matuszewski, Józef Bohdan Zaleski, Julian Fontana and Stefan Witwicki.

TravelIn September 1828, Chopin visited Berlin with a family friend, the zoologist Feliks Jarocki. There he enjoyed operas directed by Gaspare Spontini, attended several concerts, and saw Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn and other celebrities. On a return trip to Berlin, he was a guest of PrinceAntoni Radziwiłł, governor of the Grand Duchy of Posen—himself an accomplished composer and aspiring cellist. For the Prince and his pianist daughter Wanda, Chopin composed his Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C major for cello and piano, Op. 3. Back in Warsaw, in 1829, Chopin heard Niccolò Paganini play and met the German pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel. On 11 August of the same year, three weeks after

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completing his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, Chopin made his debut in Vienna. He gave two piano concerts and received many favorable reviews—in addition to some that criticized the "small tone" that he drew from the piano. In one of these concerts on 11 August, he premiered his Variations on "Là ci darem la mano", Op. 2 (variations on a theme from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni) for piano and orchestra. On his return to Poland he premiered, in December 1829, at the Warsaw Merchants' Club, his Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21. In this period he also began writing his first Études (1829–32). Chopin's successes as a composer and performer opened the door for him to western Europe, and on 2 November 1830, seen off by friends and admirers, with a ring from Konstancja Gładkowskaon his finger, and carrying with him a silver cup containing soil from his native land, Chopin set out, writes Chopin's interwar Polish biographer Zdzisław Jachimecki, "into the wide world, with no very clearly defined aim, forever." With Tytus Woyciechowski he headed for Austria, intending to go on to Italy.Later that month, in Warsaw, the November 1830 Uprising broke out, and Woyciechowski returned to Poland to enlist. Chopin, now alone in Vienna, was nostalgic for his homeland, and wrote to a friend, "I curse the moment of my departure." When in September 1831 he learned, while traveling from Vienna to Paris, that the uprising had been crushed, he expressed his anguish in the pages of his private journal, (which is now in the National Library of Poland): "O God!... You are there, and yet you do not take vengeance!"[

Jachimecki ascribes to these events the composer's maturing "into an inspired national bard who intuited the past, present and future of his native Poland." However, shortly after this outburst, Chopin was already comfortable in Paris, which was sympathetic to the Polish cause and had already become the home of many Polish émigrés. George SandIn 1836, at a party hosted by Liszt's mistress Marie d'Agoult, Chopin met the French author George Sand (real name: Aurore Dupin). Chopin initially felt an aversion to Sand, and wrote, "What an unattractive person la Sand is. Is she really a woman?" However, by early 1837 Maria's mother had made it clear to Chopin in correspondence that the marriage was unlikely to proceed. It is thought that she was influenced by his poor health and possibly also by rumours about his associations with women such as d'Agoult and Sand. Chopin finally placed the letters from Maria and her mother in a package on which he wrote, in Polish, "My tragedy". Sand, in a letter to Grzymała of June 1838, admitted strong feelings for the composer and debated whether to abandon a current affair in order to begin a relationship with Chopin; she asked Grzymała to assess Chopin's relationship with Maria Wodzińska, without realising that the affair, at least from Maria's side, was over.By the end of June 1838, Chopin and Sand had become lovers. Sand, who was six years older than Chopin, and who had had a series of lovers, wrote at this time: "I must say I was confused and amazed at the effect this little creature had on me... I have still not recovered from my astonishment, and if I were a proud person I should be feeling humiliated at having been carried away..."[  The two spent a miserable winter on Majorca (8 November 1838 to 13 February 1839), where, together with Sand's two children, they had journeyed in the hope of improving the healths of Chopin and Sand's 15-year-old son Maurice, and also to escape the

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threats of Sand's former lover Félicien Mallefille.1 However, after discovering that the couple were not married, the deeply religious people of Majorca became inhospitable, making accommodation difficult to find; this compelled the group to take lodgings in a former Carthusian monastery inValldemossa which gave little shelter from the cold winter weather.On 3 December, Chopin complained about his bad health and the incompetence of the doctors in Majorca: "Three doctors have visited me... The first said I was dead; the second said I was dying; and the third said I was about to die." Chopin also had problems having his Pleyel piano sent to him. It finally arrived from Paris in December. Chopin wrote to Pleyel in January 1839: "I am sending you myPreludes [(Op. 28)]. I finished them on your little piano, which arrived in the best possible condition in spite of the sea, the bad weather and the Palma customs." Chopin was also able to undertake work on his Ballade No. 2, Op. 38; two Polonaises, Op. 40; Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39; the Mazurka in E minor from Op. 41; and probably revisited his Sonata No. 2, Op. 35.Although this period had been productive, the bad weather had such a detrimental effect on Chopin's health that Sand determined to leave the island. To avoid further customs duties, Sand sold the piano to a local French couple, the Canuts.The group traveled first to Barcelona, then to Marseilles, where they stayed for a few months while Chopin convalesced.[61] In May 1839 they headed to Sand's estate at Nohant for the summer (where they spent most summers until 1846). In autumn they returned to Paris, where Chopin's apartment, at 5 rue Tronchet, was close to Sand's rented accommodation at the rue Pigalle. Chopin frequently visited Sand in the evenings, but both retained some independence.[62] At the funeral of the tenor Adolphe Nourrit in Paris 1839, Chopin made a rare appearance at the organ, playing a transcription of Franz Schubert's lied Die Gestirne.[63]In 1842 Chopin and Sand moved to the Square d'Orléans, living in adjacent buildings. During the summers at Nohant, particularly in the years 1839–43, Chopin found quiet but productive days during which he composed many works. They included his Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53. Sand gives a "novelistic" description of Chopin's creative process in an account of an evening in Nohant with their friend Delacroix:Deteriorating healthFrom 1845 Chopin's health continued to deteriorate. A series of his letters dated from 1845 to 1848, now at the Warsaw Chopin Museum, describe his daily life during this period and his Cello Sonata in G minor. Chopin's relations with Sand also soured, worsened in 1846 by problems involving her daughter Solange and her fiancé, the young fortune-hunting sculptor Auguste Clésinger. Chopin frequently took Solange's side in quarrels with her mother; he also faced jealousy from Sand's son Maurice. As the composer's illness progressed, Sand had become less of a lover and more of a nurse to Chopin, whom she called her "third child." In letters to third parties, she vented her impatience, referring to him as a "child," a "little angel," a "sufferer" and a "beloved little corpse." In 1847 Sand published her novel Lucrezia Floriani, whose main characters—a rich actress and a prince in weak health—could be interpreted as Sand and Chopin; the story was

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uncomplimentary to Chopin, who could not have missed the allusions as he helped Sand correct the printer's galleys. In 1847 he did not visit Nohant. Mutual friends attempted to reconcile them, but the composer was unyielding. Amongst them was the mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot. Sand had based her 1843 novel Consuelo on Viardot, and the three had spent many hours together at Nohant. Chopin and Viardot had often played together; he had advised her on piano technique and had assisted her in writing a series of songs based on the melodies of his mazurkas. He in turn had gained from Viardot some first-hand knowledge of Spanish music.[70]

In 1847 Sand and Chopin quietly ended their ten-year relationship following an angry correspondence which, in Sand's words, made "a strange conclusion to nine years of exclusive friendship."[71]Grzymała later commented, "If [Chopin] had not had the misfortune of meeting G.S. [George Sand], who poisoned his whole being, he would have lived to be Cherubini's age." – i.e., 81, as against his death at the age of 39. Final yearsChopin's public popularity as a virtuoso began to wane, as did the number of his pupils. In February 1848 he gave his last Paris concert, with Franchomme, which included three movements of the Cello Sonata Op. 65. In April, with the Revolution of 1848underway in Paris, he left for London, where he performed at several concerts and at numerous receptions in great houses. This tour was suggested to Chopin by his Scottish pupil Jane Stirling and her elder sister. Stirling also made all the necessary arrangements and provided much of the necessary funding. In late summer he was invited by Jane Stirling to visit Scotland, staying at Calder House near Edinburgh and at Johnstone Castle inRenfrewshire, both owned by members of Jane Stirling's family.[74] Stirling proposed to him, but Chopin was already sensing his approaching end and in any case cherished his freedom more than the prospect of living at a wife's expense. He gave a single concert in Edinburgh, at the Hopetoun Rooms on Queen Street (now Erskine House). In late October 1848, while staying in Edinburgh, at 10 Warriston Crescent, with the Polish physician Adam Łyszczyński, Chopin wrote out his last will and testament—"a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere," he wrote to Grzymała. Chopin made his last public appearance on a concert platform at London's Guildhall on 16 November 1848, when, in a final patriotic gesture, he played for the benefit of Polish refugees. He was at this time clearly seriously ill (weighing less than 45 kg) and his doctors were aware that his sickness was in a terminal stage. At the end of November, Chopin returned to Paris. He passed the winter in unremitting illness, but in spite of it he continued seeing friends and visited and played for the ailing Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, whose poems he had once set to music. Chopin no longer had the strength to give lessons, but he continued to compose. He lacked money for the most essential expenses and for his physicians, and had to sell off his more valuable furnishings and belongings.

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In his increasing illness, Chopin desired to have a family member with him. In June 1849 his sister Ludwika came to Paris with her husband and daughter. In September 1849, supported by the financial assistance of Jane Stirling, Chopin took an apartment at Place Vendôme 12. After 15 October, when Chopin's condition took a marked turn for the worse, only a handful of his closest friends remained with him, although Viardot sardonically remarked that "all the grand Parisian ladies considered it de rigueur to faint in his room." Some of his friends provided music at his request; amongst them, Delfina Potocka (who had arrived in Paris on 15 October) sang and Auguste Franchomme played the cello. He requested that his body be opened after death (for fear of being buried alive) and his heart returned to Warsaw. He also bequeathed his unfinished piano method to the composer and pianistCharles-Valentin Alkan for completion. On 17 October, after midnight, the physician leaned over him and asked whether he was suffering greatly. "No longer", Chopin replied. He died a few minutes before two o'clock in the morning. Those present at the deathbed appear to have included his sister Ludwika, Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, Solange (George Sand's daughter), and Thomas Albrecht. Later that morning, Solange's husband Clésinger made Chopin's death mask and a cast of his left hand. Before the funeral, Chopin's heart was removed, as he had requested.Chopin's disease and the cause of his death have since been a matter of debate. His death certificate gave the cause astuberculosis, and his physician, Jean Cruveilhier, was then the leading French authority on this disease. The terminal symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis resemble those of cystic fibrosis, which would be described and named only a century later; but in the 19th century, in the absence of modern respiratory therapy and medical support, survival with cystic fibrosis to age 39 was virtually impossible. Given Chopin's history and symptoms, it seems likely that he suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis. Funeral and afterThe funeral, to be held at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, was delayed almost two weeks, until 30 October, by the extensiveness of the elaborate organisation. The delay before the funeral enabled a number of people to travel from London, Berlin and Vienna who would not normally have been able to attend. George Sand did not attend.Mozart's Requiem was sung at the funeral, though it is unclear whether this was, as alleged, at Chopin's request. The Madeleine Church had never previously permitted female singers in its choir, but finally consented (the female singers had to perform behind a curtain). The soloists in the Requiem were: soprano Jeanne-Anais Castellan; mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot; tenor Alexis Dupont; and bass Luigi Lablache. Also played were Chopin's Preludes No. 4 in E minor and No. 6 in B minor. The organist was Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély. The funeral procession to Père Lachaise Cemetery was led by the aged PrinceAdam Jerzy Czartoryski; immediately after the casket, whose pallbearers included Delacroix, Franchomme, and the pianist Camille Pleyel, walked Chopin's sister, Ludwika. At the graveside, Chopin's Funeral March from his Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35, was played, in Reber's instrumentation.

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Chopin's tombstone, featuring the muse of music, Euterpe, weeping over a broken lyre, was designed and sculpted by Clésinger. The expenses of the funeral and monument, in the amount of five thousand francs, were covered by Jane Stirling, who also paid for the return of Chopin's sister Ludwika to Warsaw. Ludwika took with her, in an urn, Chopin's heart, preserved in alcohol. She also took to Poland a collection of 200 letters from Sand to Chopin; after 1851 these were returned to Sand, who seems to have destroyed them.

Franz LisztEarly lifeThe earliest known ancestor of Liszt is his great-grandfather, Sebastian List who was one of the thousands of German migrant serfs locally migrating within the Austrian Empire's territories (around the area now constituting Lower Austria and Hungary) in the first half of the 18th century. Sebastian was a cotter ("Söllner"), said to be born in Rajka (Ragendorf), Moson County, Kingdom of Hungary, around 1703,[6] where he died on January 7, 1793. Liszt's grandfather was an overseer on several Esterházy estates; he could play the piano, violin and organ.[9] The Liszt clan dispersed throughout Austria and Hungary and gradually lost touch with one another.Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt (née Maria Anna Lager)[6] and Adam Liszt on October 22, 1811, in the village of Doborján (German: Raiding) inSopron County, in the Kingdom of Hungary.[n 3] Liszt's father played the piano, violin, cello and guitar. He had been in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven personally. At age six, Franz began listening attentively to his father's piano playing and showed an

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interest in both sacred and Romani music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight. He appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg (Hungarian: Pozsony; present-day Bratislava, Slovakia) in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franz's musical education abroad.In Vienna, Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, who was then music director of the Viennese court. His public debut in Vienna on December 1, 1822, at a concert at the "Landständischer Saal," was a great success. He was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven andSchubert.[n 4] In spring 1823, when the one-year leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt asked Prince Esterházy in vain for two more years. Adam Liszt therefore took his leave of the Prince's services. At the end of April 1823, the family returned to Hungary for the last time. At the end of May 1823, the family went to Vienna again.Towards the end of 1823 or early 1824, Liszt's first composition to be published, his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli (now S. 147), appeared as Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. This anthology, commissioned by Anton Diabelli, includes 50 variations on his waltz by 50 different composers (Part II), Part I being taken up by Beethoven's 33 variations on the same theme, which are now separately better known simply as his Diabelli Variations, Op. 120. Liszt's inclusion in the Diabelli project—he was described in it as "an 11 year old boy, born in Hungary"—was almost certainly at the instigation of Czerny, his teacher and also a participant. Liszt was the only child composer in the anthology.Adolescence in ParisAfter his father's death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris; for the next five years he was to live with his mother in a small apartment. He gave up touring. To earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to cover long distances. Because of this, he kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking and drinking—all habits he would continue throughout his life. The following year he fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles X's minister of commerce. However, her father insisted that the affair be broken off. Liszt fell very ill, to the extent that an obituary notice was printed in a Paris newspaper, and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother. He had many discussions with the Abbé de Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists.[11] Urhan also wrote music that was anti-classical and highly subjective, with titles such as Elle et moi, La Salvation angélique and Les Regrets, and may have whetted the young Liszt's taste for musical romanticism. Equally important for Liszt was Urhan's earnest championship of Schubert, which may have stimulated his own lifelong devotion to that composer's music.

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During this period, Liszt read widely to overcome his lack of a general education, and he soon came into contact with many of the leading authors and artists of his day, including Victor Hugo,Alphonse de Lamartine and Heinrich Heine. He composed practically nothing in these years. Nevertheless, the July Revolution of 1830 inspired him to sketch a Revolutionary Symphony based on the events of the "three glorious days," and he took a greater interest in events surrounding him. He met Hector Berlioz on December 4, 1830, the day before the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique. Berlioz's music made a strong impression on Liszt, especially later when he was writing for orchestra. He also inherited from Berlioz the diabolic quality of many of his works. PaganiniAfter attending an April 20, 1832, charity concert, for the victims of a Parisian cholera epidemic, by Niccolò Paganini, Liszt became determined to become as great a virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin. Paris in the 1830s had become the nexus for pianistic activities, with dozens of pianists dedicated to perfection at the keyboard. Some, such as Sigismond Thalberg and Alexander Dreyschock, focused on specific aspects of technique (e.g. the "three-hand effect" and octaves, respectively). While it was called the "flying trapeze" school of piano playing, this generation also solved some of the most intractable problems of piano technique, raising the general level of performance to previously unimagined heights. Liszt's strength and ability to stand out in this company was in mastering all the aspects of piano technique cultivated singly and assiduously by his rivals. In 1833 he made transcriptions of several works by Berlioz, including the Symphonie fantastique. His chief motive in doing so, especially with theSymphonie, was to help the poverty-stricken Berlioz, whose symphony remained unknown and unpublished. Liszt bore the expense of publishing the transcription himself and played it many times to help popularise the original score. He was also forming a friendship with a third composer who influenced him, Frédéric Chopin; under his influence Liszt's poetic and romantic side began to develop. With Countess Marie d'AgoultIn 1833, Liszt began his relationship with the Countess Marie d'Agoult. In addition to this, at the end of April 1834 he made the acquaintance of Felicité de Lamennais. Under the influence of both, Liszt's creative output exploded. In 1834 Liszt debuted as a mature and original composer with his piano compositions Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and the set of three Apparitions. These were all poetic works which contrasted strongly with the fantasies he had written earlier. In 1835 the countess left her husband and family to join Liszt in Geneva; their daughter Blandine was born there on December 18. Liszt taught at the newly founded Geneva Conservatory, wrote a manual of piano technique (later lost) and contributed essays for the Paris Revue et gazette musicale. In these essays, he argued for the raising of the artist from the status of a servant to a respected member of the community. For the next four years, Liszt and the countess lived together, mainly in Switzerland and Italy, where their daughter, Cosima, was born in Como, with occasional visits to Paris. On

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May 9, 1839, Liszt's and the countess's only son, Daniel, was born, but that autumn relations between them became strained. Liszt heard that plans for a Beethoven monument in Bonn were in danger of collapse for lack of funds, and pledged his support. Doing so meant returning to the life of a touring virtuoso. The countess returned to Paris with the children, while Liszt gave six concerts in Vienna, then toured Hungary. Touring EuropeFor the next eight years Liszt continued to tour Europe, spending holidays with the countess and their children on the island of Nonnenwerth on the Rhine in summers 1841 and 1843. In spring 1844 the couple finally separated. This was Liszt's most brilliant period as a concert pianist. Honours were showered on him and he was adulated everywhere he went.[11] Since Liszt often appeared three or four times a week in concert, it could be safe to assume that he appeared in public well over a thousand times during this eight-year period. Moreover, his great fame as a pianist, which he would continue to enjoy long after he had officially retired from the concert stage, was based mainly on his accomplishments during this time. After 1842, "Lisztomania" swept across Europe. The reception Liszt enjoyed as a result can be described only as hysterical. Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, which they ripped to shreds as souvenirs. Helping fuel this atmosphere was the artist's mesmeric personality and stage presence. Many witnesses later testified that Liszt's playing raised the mood of audiences to a level of mystical ecstasy. Adding to his reputation was the fact that Liszt gave away much of his proceeds to charity and humanitarian causes. In fact, Liszt had made so much money by his mid-forties that virtually all his performing fees after 1857 went to charity. While his work for the Beethoven monument and the Hungarian National School of Music are well known, he also gave generously to the building fund of Cologne Cathedral, the establishment of a Gymnasium atDortmund, and the construction of the Leopold Church in Pest. There were also private donations to hospitals, schools and charitable organizations such as the Leipzig Musicians Pension Fund. When he found out about the Great Fire of Hamburg, which raged for three weeks during May 1842 and destroyed much of the city, he gave concerts in aid of the thousands of homeless there. Liszt in WeimarThe following year, Liszt took up a long-standing invitation of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia to settle at Weimar, where he had been appointed Kapellmeister Extraordinaire in 1842, remaining there until 1861. During this period he acted as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theatre. He gave lessons to a number of pianists, including the great virtuoso Hans von Bülow, who married Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857 (years later, she would marry Richard Wagner). He also wrote articles championing Berlioz and Wagner. Finally, Liszt had ample time to compose and during the next 12 years revised or produced those orchestral and choral pieces upon which his reputation as a composer mainly rested. His efforts on behalf of Wagner, who was then an exile in Switzerland, culminated in the first performance ofLohengrin in 1850.Princess Carolyne lived with Liszt during his years in Weimar. She eventually wished to marry Liszt, but since she had been previously married and her husband, Russian military

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officer Prince Nikolaus zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Ludwigsburg (1812–1864), was still alive, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid. After huge efforts and a monstrously intricate process, she was temporarily successful (September 1860). It was planned that the couple would marry in Rome, on October 22, 1861, Liszt's 50th birthday. Liszt having arrived in Rome on October 21, 1861, the Princess nevertheless declined, by the late evening, to marry him. It appears that both her husband and the Tsar of Russia had managed to quash permission for the marriage at the Vatican. The Russian government also impounded her several estates in the Polish Ukraine, which made her later marriage to anybody unfeasible. Liszt in RomeThe 1860s were a period of great sadness in Liszt's private life. On December 13, 1859, he lost his son Daniel, and on September 11, 1862, his daughter Blandine also died. In letters to friends, Liszt afterwards announced that he would retreat to a solitary living. He found it at the monastery Madonna del Rosario, just outside Rome, where on June 20, 1863, he took up quarters in a small, Spartan apartment. He had on June 23, 1857, already joined the Third Order of St. Francis.[n 5]

On April 25, 1865, he received the tonsure at the hands of Cardinal Hohenlohe. On July 31, 1865, he received the four minor orders of porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte. After this ordination he was often called Abbé Liszt. On August 14, 1879, he was made an honorary canon of Albano. On some occasions, Liszt took part in Rome's musical life. On March 26, 1863, at a concert at the Palazzo Altieri, he directed a programme of sacred music. The "Seligkeiten" of his "Christus-Oratorio" and his "Cantico del Sol di Francesco d'Assisi", as well as Haydn's "Die Schöpfung" and works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Jommelli, Mendelssohn and Palestrina were performed. On January 4, 1866, Liszt directed the "Stabat mater" of his "Christus-Oratorio", and on February 26, 1866, his "Dante Symphony". There were several further occasions of similar kind, but in comparison with the duration of Liszt's stay in Rome, they were exceptions. Bódog Pichler, who visited Liszt in 1864 and asked him for his future plans, had the impression that Rome's musical life was not satisfying for Liszt.Buda, Hungarian Coronation (1867)In February 1847, Liszt played in Kiev. There he met the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who was to become one of the most significant people in the rest of his life. She persuaded him to concentrate on composition, which meant giving up his career as a travelling virtuoso. After a tour of the Balkans, Turkey and Russia that summer, Liszt gave his final concert for pay at Elisavetgrad in September. He spent the winter with the princess at her estate in Woronince.[22] By retiring from the concert platform at 35, while still at the height of his powers, Liszt succeeded in keeping the legend of his playing untarnished.

Last yearsLiszt fell down the stairs of a Hotel in Weimar on July 2, 1881. Though friends and colleagues had noted swelling in his feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month (an indication of possible congestive heart failure), he had been in good health up to that

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point and was still fit and active. He was left immobilized for eight weeks after the accident and never fully recovered from it. A number of ailments manifested—dropsy, asthma,insomnia, a cataract of the left eye and heart disease. The last-mentioned eventually contributed to Liszt's death. He became increasingly plagued by feelings of desolation, despair and preoccupation with death—feelings which he expressed in his works from this period. As he told Lina Ramann, "I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound." He died in Bayreuth, Germany, on July 31, 1886, at age 74, officially as a result of pneumonia, which he may have contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter Cosima. Questions have been posed as to whether medical malpractice played a part in his death.[28] He was buried on August 3, 1886, in the municipal cemetery of Bayreuth in accordance with his wishes. Composer Camille Saint-Saëns, an old friend, whom Liszt had once called "the greatest organist in the world", dedicated his Symphony No. 3 "Organ Symphony" to Liszt; it had premiered in London only a few weeks before his death.Liszt as pianistLiszt was viewed by his contemporaries as the greatest virtuoso of his time (although Liszt stated that Charles-Valentin Alkan undoubtedly had a technical facility superior to his own[30]), and in the 1840s he was considered by some to be perhaps the greatest pianist of all time.

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Frederick ChopinFrédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era. Chopin was born at Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw, then under Russian rule, to a French father and a Polish mother. A child prodigy, he grew up in Warsaw and completed his musical education there, composing many of his works before leaving Poland at the age of 20, shortly before the November 1830 Uprising.

Settling in Paris, during the remaining 19 years of his life Chopin gave only some 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon; he supported himself by selling his compositions and as a sought-after piano teacher. He formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann. After a failed engagement with a Polish girl, from 1837 to 1847 he maintained a relationship, often troubled, with the French writer George Sand. A brief and unhappy visit with Sand to Majorca in 1838–39 was also one of his most productive periods of composition. In his last years he was financially supported by his admirer Jane Stirling, who also arranged for him to visit Scotland in 1848. For most of his life Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849, probably from tuberculosis.

All of Chopin's compositions include the piano; most are for solo piano, although he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some songs to Polish lyrics. His keyboard style is often technically demanding; his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin invented the concept of instrumental ballade; his major piano works also include sonatas, mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, études, impromptus, scherzos, and preludes. Many of these works were published only after Chopin's death. Stylistically, they contain elements of both Polish folk music and of the classical tradition of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Schubert, whom Chopin particularly admired. Chopin's innovations in keyboard style, musical form, and harmony were influential throughout the late Romantic period and since.

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Both in his native Poland and beyond, Chopin's music, his association (if only indirect) with political insurrection, his amours and his early death have made him a leading symbol of the Romantic era in the public consciousness. His works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying degrees of historical accuracy.

ChildhoodChopin was born at Żelazowa Wola, forty-six kilometers west of Warsaw, in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw. The parish baptismal record, discovered in 1892, gives his birthday as 22 February 1810, and cites his given names in the Latin form Fridericus Franciscus; in Polish, he was Fryderyk Franciszek. The composer and his family used the birthdate 1 March; according to Chopin's letter of 16 January 1833 to the chairman of the Polish Literary Society in Paris, he was "born 1 March 1810 at the village of Żelazowa Wola in the Province of Mazowsze." 1 March is now generally accepted as his birthday.

Chopin's father, Nicolas Chopin, was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen. In Poland he used the Polish form of his name, Mikołaj. Nicolas tutored children of the Polish aristocracy, and in 1806 married Justyna Krzyżanowska, a poor relation of the Skarbeks, one of the families for whom he worked. The wedding took place at the 16th-century parish church in Brochów.

Fryderyk Chopin was baptized on Easter Sunday, 23 April 1810, in the same church where his parents had married. His eighteen-year-old godfather, for whom he was named, was Fryderyk Skarbek (1792–1866), a pupil of Nicolas Chopin. Fryderyk Chopin was the couple's second child and only son; he had an elder sister, Ludwika (1807–1855), and two younger sisters, Izabela (1811–1881) and Emilia (1812–1827).

In October 1810, when Chopin was seven months old, the family moved to Warsaw, where his father had accepted a post teaching French at the Warsaw Lyceum, then housed in the Saxon Palace. Chopin's father played the flute and violin; his mother played the piano and gave lessons to boys in the boarding house that the Chopins kept. Even in early childhood, Chopin was slight of build and prone to illnesses.[9]

Chopin may have had some piano instruction from his mother, but his first professional music tutor, from 1816 to 1821, was the Czech Wojciech Żywny. Chopin's elder sister Ludwika also took lessons from Żywny, and occasionally played duets with her brother. The seven-year-old Chopin began giving public concerts; in 1817 he composed two Polonaises, in G minor and B-flat major. The first was published to the Warsaw press' praise. Chopin's next work, a Polonaise in A-flat major, dedicated to Żywny, is his earliest surviving musical manuscript.

During this period, Chopin was sometimes invited to the Belweder Palace as playmate to the son of Russian Poland's ruler, Grand Duke Constantine; he played

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the piano for the Duke and composed a march for him. Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, in his dramatic eclogue, "Nasze Przebiegi" ("Our Discourses", 1818), attested to "little Chopin's" popularity.

In 1827, soon after the death of Chopin's youngest sister Emilia, the family moved from their home in a Warsaw University building near the Kazimierz Palace to lodgings just across the street from the university, in the south annex of the Krasiński Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście. (The palace is now the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.) Here the parents continued running a boarding house for male students; Chopin lived here until he left Warsaw in 1830. The Chopin Family Parlor (Salonik Chopinów) is now a small museum open to the public; there Chopin premiered many of his early works. Four boarders at his parents' apartments became Chopin's intimates: Tytus Woyciechowski, Jan Białobłocki, Jan Matuszyński and Julian Fontana; the last two would later be part of Chopin's Paris milieu. In 1829, the artist Ambroży Mieroszewski executed a set of portraits of Chopin family members, including the first known portrait of the composer. (The originals perished in World War II; only black-and-white photographs remain.)

In the autumn of 1826, Chopin had begun a three-year course of studies with the Silesian composer Józef Elsner at the Warsaw Conservatory. Chopin's first contact with Elsner may have been as early as 1822; it is certain that Elsner was giving him informal guidance by 1823, and in 1826 Chopin officially began studying music theory, figured bass, and composition with Elsner. In his final report from the Conservatory (July 1829), Chopin is recorded as showing "exceptional talent, musical genius."

Throughout this period Chopin continued to compose and to give recitals in concerts and salons in Warsaw. He was engaged by the inventors of a mechanical organ, the "eolomelodicon", and in May 1825 performed on this instrument part of a Moscheles concerto and his own improvisation. The success of this concert resulted in him being asked to give a similar recital on the instrument before Tsar Alexander I, who was visiting Warsaw; the Tsar presented Chopin with a diamond ring. At a subsequent eolomelodicon concert (10 June 1825) Chopin performed his Rondo Op.1 (the first of his works to be commercially published); this earned him his first mention in the foreign press, when the Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung praised his "wealth of musical ideas."While Chopin himself never gave thematic or "programmatic" titles to his instrumental works – instead, he identified them simply by genre and number– his compositions were often inspired by emotional experiences in his life. One of these was his passion for a young singing student at the Warsaw Conservatory (later a singer at the Warsaw Opera), Konstancja Gładkowska. In letters to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski, Chopin indicated which of his works, and even which of their passages, were influenced by his fascination with her. In this period he was also friendly with members of Warsaw's young artistic and intellectual world, including Mauryry Mochnacki, Jan Matuszewski, Józef Bohdan Zaleski, Julian Fontana and Stefan Witwicki.

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TravelIn September 1828, Chopin visited Berlin with a family friend, the zoologist Feliks Jarocki. There he enjoyed operas directed by Gaspare Spontini, attended several concerts, and saw Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn and other celebrities. On a return trip to Berlin, he was a guest of PrinceAntoni Radziwiłł, governor of the Grand Duchy of Posen—himself an accomplished composer and aspiring cellist. For the Prince and his pianist daughter Wanda, Chopin composed his Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C major for cello and piano, Op. 3. Back in Warsaw, in 1829, Chopin heard Niccolò Paganini play and met the German pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel. On 11 August of the same year, three weeks after completing his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, Chopin made his debut in Vienna. He gave two piano concerts and received many favorable reviews—in addition to some that criticized the "small tone" that he drew from the piano. In one of these concerts on 11 August, he premiered his Variations on "Là ci darem la mano", Op. 2 (variations on a theme from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni) for piano and orchestra. On his return to Poland he premiered, in December 1829, at the Warsaw Merchants' Club, his Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21. In this period he also began writing his first Études (1829–32). Chopin's successes as a composer and performer opened the door for him to western Europe, and on 2 November 1830, seen off by friends and admirers, with a ring from Konstancja Gładkowskaon his finger, and carrying with him a silver cup containing soil from his native land, Chopin set out, writes Chopin's interwar Polish biographer Zdzisław Jachimecki, "into the wide world, with no very clearly defined aim, forever." With Tytus Woyciechowski he headed for Austria, intending to go on to Italy.Later that month, in Warsaw, the November 1830 Uprising broke out, and Woyciechowski returned to Poland to enlist. Chopin, now alone in Vienna, was nostalgic for his homeland, and wrote to a friend, "I curse the moment of my departure." When in September 1831 he learned, while traveling from Vienna to Paris, that the uprising had been crushed, he expressed his anguish in the pages of his private journal, (which is now in the National Library of Poland): "O God!... You are there, and yet you do not take vengeance!"[

Jachimecki ascribes to these events the composer's maturing "into an inspired national bard who intuited the past, present and future of his native Poland." However, shortly after this outburst, Chopin was already comfortable in Paris, which was sympathetic to the Polish cause and had already become the home of many Polish émigrés. George SandIn 1836, at a party hosted by Liszt's mistress Marie d'Agoult, Chopin met the French author George Sand (real name: Aurore Dupin). Chopin initially felt an aversion to Sand, and wrote, "What an unattractive person la Sand is. Is she really a woman?" However, by early 1837 Maria's mother had made it clear to Chopin in correspondence that the marriage was unlikely to proceed. It is thought that she was influenced by his poor health and possibly also by rumours about his associations with women such as d'Agoult and Sand. Chopin finally placed the letters from Maria and her mother in a package on which he wrote, in Polish, "My tragedy". Sand, in a letter to Grzymała of June 1838, admitted strong feelings for

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the composer and debated whether to abandon a current affair in order to begin a relationship with Chopin; she asked Grzymała to assess Chopin's relationship with Maria Wodzińska, without realising that the affair, at least from Maria's side, was over.By the end of June 1838, Chopin and Sand had become lovers. Sand, who was six years older than Chopin, and who had had a series of lovers, wrote at this time: "I must say I was confused and amazed at the effect this little creature had on me... I have still not recovered from my astonishment, and if I were a proud person I should be feeling humiliated at having been carried away..."[  The two spent a miserable winter on Majorca (8 November 1838 to 13 February 1839), where, together with Sand's two children, they had journeyed in the hope of improving the healths of Chopin and Sand's 15-year-old son Maurice, and also to escape the threats of Sand's former lover Félicien Mallefille.1 However, after discovering that the couple were not married, the deeply religious people of Majorca became inhospitable, making accommodation difficult to find; this compelled the group to take lodgings in a former Carthusian monastery inValldemossa which gave little shelter from the cold winter weather.On 3 December, Chopin complained about his bad health and the incompetence of the doctors in Majorca: "Three doctors have visited me... The first said I was dead; the second said I was dying; and the third said I was about to die." Chopin also had problems having his Pleyel piano sent to him. It finally arrived from Paris in December. Chopin wrote to Pleyel in January 1839: "I am sending you myPreludes [(Op. 28)]. I finished them on your little piano, which arrived in the best possible condition in spite of the sea, the bad weather and the Palma customs." Chopin was also able to undertake work on his Ballade No. 2, Op. 38; two Polonaises, Op. 40; Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39; the Mazurka in E minor from Op. 41; and probably revisited his Sonata No. 2, Op. 35.Although this period had been productive, the bad weather had such a detrimental effect on Chopin's health that Sand determined to leave the island. To avoid further customs duties, Sand sold the piano to a local French couple, the Canuts.The group traveled first to Barcelona, then to Marseilles, where they stayed for a few months while Chopin convalesced.[61] In May 1839 they headed to Sand's estate at Nohant for the summer (where they spent most summers until 1846). In autumn they returned to Paris, where Chopin's apartment, at 5 rue Tronchet, was close to Sand's rented accommodation at the rue Pigalle. Chopin frequently visited Sand in the evenings, but both retained some independence.[62] At the funeral of the tenor Adolphe Nourrit in Paris 1839, Chopin made a rare appearance at the organ, playing a transcription of Franz Schubert's lied Die Gestirne.[63]In 1842 Chopin and Sand moved to the Square d'Orléans, living in adjacent buildings. During the summers at Nohant, particularly in the years 1839–43, Chopin found quiet but productive days during which he composed many works. They included his Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53. Sand gives a "novelistic" description of Chopin's creative process in an account of an evening in Nohant with their friend Delacroix:Final years

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Chopin's public popularity as a virtuoso began to wane, as did the number of his pupils. In February 1848 he gave his last Paris concert, with Franchomme, which included three movements of the Cello Sonata Op. 65. In April, with the Revolution of 1848underway in Paris, he left for London, where he performed at several concerts and at numerous receptions in great houses. This tour was suggested to Chopin by his Scottish pupil Jane Stirling and her elder sister. Stirling also made all the necessary arrangements and provided much of the necessary funding. In late summer he was invited by Jane Stirling to visit Scotland, staying at Calder House near Edinburgh and at Johnstone Castle inRenfrewshire, both owned by members of Jane Stirling's family.[74] Stirling proposed to him, but Chopin was already sensing his approaching end and in any case cherished his freedom more than the prospect of living at a wife's expense. He gave a single concert in Edinburgh, at the Hopetoun Rooms on Queen Street (now Erskine House). In late October 1848, while staying in Edinburgh, at 10 Warriston Crescent, with the Polish physician Adam Łyszczyński, Chopin wrote out his last will and testament—"a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere," he wrote to Grzymała. Chopin made his last public appearance on a concert platform at London's Guildhall on 16 November 1848, when, in a final patriotic gesture, he played for the benefit of Polish refugees. He was at this time clearly seriously ill (weighing less than 45 kg) and his doctors were aware that his sickness was in a terminal stage. At the end of November, Chopin returned to Paris. He passed the winter in unremitting illness, but in spite of it he continued seeing friends and visited and played for the ailing Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, whose poems he had once set to music. Chopin no longer had the strength to give lessons, but he continued to compose. He lacked money for the most essential expenses and for his physicians, and had to sell off his more valuable furnishings and belongings. In his increasing illness, Chopin desired to have a family member with him. In June 1849 his sister Ludwika came to Paris with her husband and daughter. In September 1849, supported by the financial assistance of Jane Stirling, Chopin took an apartment at Place Vendôme 12. After 15 October, when Chopin's condition took a marked turn for the worse, only a handful of his closest friends remained with him, although Viardot sardonically remarked that "all the grand Parisian ladies considered it de rigueur to faint in his room." Some of his friends provided music at his request; amongst them, Delfina Potocka (who had arrived in Paris on 15 October) sang and Auguste Franchomme played the cello. He requested that his body be opened after death (for fear of being buried alive) and his heart returned to Warsaw. He also bequeathed his unfinished piano method to the composer and pianistCharles-Valentin Alkan for completion. On 17 October, after midnight, the physician leaned over him and asked whether he was suffering greatly. "No longer", Chopin replied. He died a few minutes before two o'clock in the morning. Those present at the deathbed appear to have included his sister Ludwika, Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, Solange (George Sand's daughter), and Thomas Albrecht.

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Later that morning, Solange's husband Clésinger made Chopin's death mask and a cast of his left hand. Before the funeral, Chopin's heart was removed, as he had requested.Chopin's disease and the cause of his death have since been a matter of debate. His death certificate gave the cause astuberculosis, and his physician, Jean Cruveilhier, was then the leading French authority on this disease. The terminal symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis resemble those of cystic fibrosis, which would be described and named only a century later; but in the 19th century, in the absence of modern respiratory therapy and medical support, survival with cystic fibrosis to age 39 was virtually impossible. Given Chopin's history and symptoms, it seems likely that he suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis. Funeral and afterThe funeral, to be held at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, was delayed almost two weeks, until 30 October, by the extensiveness of the elaborate organisation. The delay before the funeral enabled a number of people to travel from London, Berlin and Vienna who would not normally have been able to attend. George Sand did not attend.Mozart's Requiem was sung at the funeral, though it is unclear whether this was, as alleged, at Chopin's request. The Madeleine Church had never previously permitted female singers in its choir, but finally consented (the female singers had to perform behind a curtain). The soloists in the Requiem were: soprano Jeanne-Anais Castellan; mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot; tenor Alexis Dupont; and bass Luigi Lablache. Also played were Chopin's Preludes No. 4 in E minor and No. 6 in B minor. The organist was Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély. The funeral procession to Père Lachaise Cemetery was led by the aged PrinceAdam Jerzy Czartoryski; immediately after the casket, whose pallbearers included Delacroix, Franchomme, and the pianist Camille Pleyel, walked Chopin's sister, Ludwika. At the graveside, Chopin's Funeral March from his Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35, was played, in Reber's instrumentation. Chopin's tombstone, featuring the muse of music, Euterpe, weeping over a broken lyre, was designed and sculpted by Clésinger. The expenses of the funeral and monument, in the amount of five thousand francs, were covered by Jane Stirling, who also paid for the return of Chopin's sister Ludwika to Warsaw. Ludwika took with her, in an urn, Chopin's heart, preserved in alcohol. She also took to Poland a collection of 200 letters from Sand to Chopin; after 1851 these were returned to Sand, who seems to have destroyed them.

Franz Liszt

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Early lifeThe earliest known ancestor of Liszt is his great-grandfather, Sebastian List who was one of the thousands of German migrant serfs locally migrating within the Austrian Empire's territories (around the area now constituting Lower Austria and Hungary) in the first half of the 18th century. Sebastian was a cotter ("Söllner"), said to be born in Rajka (Ragendorf), Moson County, Kingdom of Hungary, around 1703,[6] where he died on January 7, 1793. Liszt's grandfather was an overseer on several Esterházy estates; he could play the piano, violin and organ.[9] The Liszt clan dispersed throughout Austria and Hungary and gradually lost touch with one another.Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt (née Maria Anna Lager)[6] and Adam Liszt on October 22, 1811, in the village of Doborján (German: Raiding) inSopron County, in the Kingdom of Hungary.[n 3] Liszt's father played the piano, violin, cello and guitar. He had been in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven personally. At age six, Franz began listening attentively to his father's piano playing and showed an interest in both sacred and Romani music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight. He appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg (Hungarian: Pozsony; present-day Bratislava, Slovakia) in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franz's musical education abroad.In Vienna, Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, who was then music director of the Viennese court. His public debut in Vienna on December 1, 1822, at a concert at the "Landständischer Saal," was a great success. He was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven andSchubert.[n 4] In spring 1823, when the one-year leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt asked Prince Esterházy in vain for two more years. Adam Liszt therefore took his leave of the Prince's services. At the end of April 1823, the family returned to Hungary for the last time. At the end of May 1823, the family went to Vienna again.Towards the end of 1823 or early 1824, Liszt's first composition to be published, his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli (now S. 147), appeared as Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. This anthology, commissioned by Anton Diabelli, includes 50 variations on his waltz by 50 different composers (Part II), Part I being taken up by Beethoven's 33 variations on the same theme, which are now separately better known simply as his Diabelli Variations, Op. 120. Liszt's inclusion in the Diabelli project—he was described in it as "an 11 year old boy, born in Hungary"—was almost certainly at the instigation of Czerny, his teacher and also a participant. Liszt was the only child composer in the anthology.Adolescence in ParisAfter his father's death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris; for the next five years he was to live with his mother in a small apartment. He gave up touring. To earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to cover long distances. Because of this, he

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kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking and drinking—all habits he would continue throughout his life. The following year he fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles X's minister of commerce. However, her father insisted that the affair be broken off. Liszt fell very ill, to the extent that an obituary notice was printed in a Paris newspaper, and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother. He had many discussions with the Abbé de Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists.[11] Urhan also wrote music that was anti-classical and highly subjective, with titles such as Elle et moi, La Salvation angélique and Les Regrets, and may have whetted the young Liszt's taste for musical romanticism. Equally important for Liszt was Urhan's earnest championship of Schubert, which may have stimulated his own lifelong devotion to that composer's music. During this period, Liszt read widely to overcome his lack of a general education, and he soon came into contact with many of the leading authors and artists of his day, including Victor Hugo,Alphonse de Lamartine and Heinrich Heine. He composed practically nothing in these years. Nevertheless, the July Revolution of 1830 inspired him to sketch a Revolutionary Symphony based on the events of the "three glorious days," and he took a greater interest in events surrounding him. He met Hector Berlioz on December 4, 1830, the day before the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique. Berlioz's music made a strong impression on Liszt, especially later when he was writing for orchestra. He also inherited from Berlioz the diabolic quality of many of his works. PaganiniAfter attending an April 20, 1832, charity concert, for the victims of a Parisian cholera epidemic, by Niccolò Paganini, Liszt became determined to become as great a virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin. Paris in the 1830s had become the nexus for pianistic activities, with dozens of pianists dedicated to perfection at the keyboard. Some, such as Sigismond Thalberg and Alexander Dreyschock, focused on specific aspects of technique (e.g. the "three-hand effect" and octaves, respectively). While it was called the "flying trapeze" school of piano playing, this generation also solved some of the most intractable problems of piano technique, raising the general level of performance to previously unimagined heights. Liszt's strength and ability to stand out in this company was in mastering all the aspects of piano technique cultivated singly and assiduously by his rivals. In 1833 he made transcriptions of several works by Berlioz, including the Symphonie fantastique. His chief motive in doing so, especially with theSymphonie, was to help the poverty-stricken Berlioz, whose symphony remained unknown and unpublished. Liszt bore the expense of publishing the transcription himself and played it many times to help popularise the original score. He was also forming a friendship with a third composer who influenced him, Frédéric Chopin; under his influence Liszt's poetic and romantic side began to develop. With Countess Marie d'Agoult

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In 1833, Liszt began his relationship with the Countess Marie d'Agoult. In addition to this, at the end of April 1834 he made the acquaintance of Felicité de Lamennais. Under the influence of both, Liszt's creative output exploded. In 1834 Liszt debuted as a mature and original composer with his piano compositions Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and the set of three Apparitions. These were all poetic works which contrasted strongly with the fantasies he had written earlier. In 1835 the countess left her husband and family to join Liszt in Geneva; their daughter Blandine was born there on December 18. Liszt taught at the newly founded Geneva Conservatory, wrote a manual of piano technique (later lost) and contributed essays for the Paris Revue et gazette musicale. In these essays, he argued for the raising of the artist from the status of a servant to a respected member of the community. For the next four years, Liszt and the countess lived together, mainly in Switzerland and Italy, where their daughter, Cosima, was born in Como, with occasional visits to Paris. On May 9, 1839, Liszt's and the countess's only son, Daniel, was born, but that autumn relations between them became strained. Liszt heard that plans for a Beethoven monument in Bonn were in danger of collapse for lack of funds, and pledged his support. Doing so meant returning to the life of a touring virtuoso. The countess returned to Paris with the children, while Liszt gave six concerts in Vienna, then toured Hungary. Touring EuropeFor the next eight years Liszt continued to tour Europe, spending holidays with the countess and their children on the island of Nonnenwerth on the Rhine in summers 1841 and 1843. In spring 1844 the couple finally separated. This was Liszt's most brilliant period as a concert pianist. Honours were showered on him and he was adulated everywhere he went.[11] Since Liszt often appeared three or four times a week in concert, it could be safe to assume that he appeared in public well over a thousand times during this eight-year period. Moreover, his great fame as a pianist, which he would continue to enjoy long after he had officially retired from the concert stage, was based mainly on his accomplishments during this time. After 1842, "Lisztomania" swept across Europe. The reception Liszt enjoyed as a result can be described only as hysterical. Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, which they ripped to shreds as souvenirs. Helping fuel this atmosphere was the artist's mesmeric personality and stage presence. Many witnesses later testified that Liszt's playing raised the mood of audiences to a level of mystical ecstasy. Adding to his reputation was the fact that Liszt gave away much of his proceeds to charity and humanitarian causes. In fact, Liszt had made so much money by his mid-forties that virtually all his performing fees after 1857 went to charity. While his work for the Beethoven monument and the Hungarian National School of Music are well known, he also gave generously to the building fund of Cologne Cathedral, the establishment of a Gymnasium atDortmund, and the construction of the Leopold Church in Pest. There were also private donations to hospitals, schools and charitable organizations such as the Leipzig Musicians Pension Fund. When he found out about the Great Fire of Hamburg, which raged for three weeks during May 1842 and destroyed much of the city, he gave concerts in aid of the thousands of homeless there.

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Liszt in WeimarThe following year, Liszt took up a long-standing invitation of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia to settle at Weimar, where he had been appointed Kapellmeister Extraordinaire in 1842, remaining there until 1861. During this period he acted as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theatre. He gave lessons to a number of pianists, including the great virtuoso Hans von Bülow, who married Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857 (years later, she would marry Richard Wagner). He also wrote articles championing Berlioz and Wagner. Finally, Liszt had ample time to compose and during the next 12 years revised or produced those orchestral and choral pieces upon which his reputation as a composer mainly rested. His efforts on behalf of Wagner, who was then an exile in Switzerland, culminated in the first performance ofLohengrin in 1850.Princess Carolyne lived with Liszt during his years in Weimar. She eventually wished to marry Liszt, but since she had been previously married and her husband, Russian military officer Prince Nikolaus zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Ludwigsburg (1812–1864), was still alive, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid. After huge efforts and a monstrously intricate process, she was temporarily successful (September 1860). It was planned that the couple would marry in Rome, on October 22, 1861, Liszt's 50th birthday. Liszt having arrived in Rome on October 21, 1861, the Princess nevertheless declined, by the late evening, to marry him. It appears that both her husband and the Tsar of Russia had managed to quash permission for the marriage at the Vatican. The Russian government also impounded her several estates in the Polish Ukraine, which made her later marriage to anybody unfeasible. Liszt in RomeThe 1860s were a period of great sadness in Liszt's private life. On December 13, 1859, he lost his son Daniel, and on September 11, 1862, his daughter Blandine also died. In letters to friends, Liszt afterwards announced that he would retreat to a solitary living. He found it at the monastery Madonna del Rosario, just outside Rome, where on June 20, 1863, he took up quarters in a small, Spartan apartment. He had on June 23, 1857, already joined the Third Order of St. Francis.[n 5]

On April 25, 1865, he received the tonsure at the hands of Cardinal Hohenlohe. On July 31, 1865, he received the four minor orders of porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte. After this ordination he was often called Abbé Liszt. On August 14, 1879, he was made an honorary canon of Albano. On some occasions, Liszt took part in Rome's musical life. On March 26, 1863, at a concert at the Palazzo Altieri, he directed a programme of sacred music. The "Seligkeiten" of his "Christus-Oratorio" and his "Cantico del Sol di Francesco d'Assisi", as well as Haydn's "Die Schöpfung" and works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Jommelli, Mendelssohn and Palestrina were performed. On January 4, 1866, Liszt directed the "Stabat mater" of his "Christus-Oratorio", and on February 26, 1866, his "Dante Symphony". There were several further occasions of similar kind, but in comparison with the duration of Liszt's stay in Rome, they were exceptions. Bódog Pichler, who visited Liszt in 1864 and asked him for his future plans, had the impression that Rome's musical life was not satisfying for Liszt.

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Last yearsLiszt fell down the stairs of a Hotel in Weimar on July 2, 1881. Though friends and colleagues had noted swelling in his feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month (an indication of possible congestive heart failure), he had been in good health up to that point and was still fit and active. He was left immobilized for eight weeks after the accident and never fully recovered from it. A number of ailments manifested—dropsy, asthma,insomnia, a cataract of the left eye and heart disease. The last-mentioned eventually contributed to Liszt's death. He became increasingly plagued by feelings of desolation, despair and preoccupation with death—feelings which he expressed in his works from this period. As he told Lina Ramann, "I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound." He died in Bayreuth, Germany, on July 31, 1886, at age 74, officially as a result of pneumonia, which he may have contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter Cosima. Questions have been posed as to whether medical malpractice played a part in his death.[28] He was buried on August 3, 1886, in the municipal cemetery of Bayreuth in accordance with his wishes. Composer Camille Saint-Saëns, an old friend, whom Liszt had once called "the greatest organist in the world", dedicated his Symphony No. 3 "Organ Symphony" to Liszt; it had premiered in London only a few weeks before his death.


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