A poet of the piano, a virtuoso musician and a visionary Romantic composer,
Frédéric Chopin lived and composed, with few exceptions, only for an instrument
that was never the same after him. Fryderyk Francsizek Chopin was born in
Żelazowa Wola, some 50 kilometers from Warsaw, on March 1, 1810. The son of a
French-born teacher, Nicolas Chopin, married to a Polish woman, Justyna
Krzyżanowska, the boy grew up with his three sisters in a Poland divided between
Prussia, the Russian Empire and Austria, with the Duchy of Warsaw under Russian
rule. After his birth, the family moved to Wa...