Frederic Chopin was born in 1810 near Warsaw and died in Paris in 1849. He was one of the most prolific composers and pianists of the Romantic period who was most well-known for his piano concerti as well as solo piano pieces. Although he mostly composed music for piano, Chopin is also famous for being one of the period’s greatest tone poets due to his imagination and creativity. (Hedley & Plantinga, 2018)
Nicholas Chopin, Frederic’s father, was a French immigrant in Poland who worked as a tutor to numerous aristocratic families, and he became a French teacher when Frederic was eight months old. Frederic attended the Warsaw lyceum, where his father worked, between the years 1823 and 1826. (Hedley & Plantinga, 2018)
Chopin began to show an affinity
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He developed an imaginative and gentle approach to the keyboard which allowed him to utilise all of the piano’s functions that were available in the Romantic period. Chopin managed to create an almost unlimited number of new melodic passages and rhythmic figures – he was the first composer to understand truly the expressive nature of the piano, and therefore was able to write music according to this quality of the instrument. He set a certain standard for the piano as an instrument with inventions in fingering and his use of the pedals. (Hedley & Plantinga, …show more content…
The note values used throughout consist mainly of crotchets and quavers. The bass clef has a repeated rhythmic figure of three crotchets per bar, and this provides the harmonic foundation of the piece. It also keeps the piece consistent. There are three different themes within this piece, all of which differing in rhythm, tonality and character. The first theme consists of a crotchet, six quavers and a minim, and it has a minor tonality. The second theme consists of a dotted crotchet and 3 quavers, and has a slightly happier tonality than the first theme. The third and final theme occurs in the B major section, and consists of a crotchet, a dotted quaver, a semiquaver and another