Frederic francois chopin biography movies

For the Paralympic skier, see Frédéric François (alpine skier).

Musical artist

Frédéric François (born Francesco Barracato; 3 June 1950 in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, Italy), is a French-speaking singer-composer living in Belgium.

Biography

Origins and childhood

Born on 3 June 1950 in Lercara Friddi in Sicily, in a very modest Italian family, he is the second child of Antonina (Nina) Salemi and Giuseppe (Peppino) Barracato. His mother was a seamstress in Lercara and his father was initially a miner in a sulphur mine in Lercara. He emigrated to Belgium in the coal basin of Liège, where he signed a three-year contract as a miner. In 1951, Nina and her two sons joined Giuseppe in Tilleur in a Red Cross Convoy. Francesco Barracato grew up in a family of eight children. Peppino used to sing Neapolitan songs and opera arias for pleasure and accompanied himself on the guitar. Young Francesco was only 10 when he sang O Sole Mio for the first time in public in a café frequented mostly by Sicilians in Tilleur, "Le Passage à Niveau" [The Level Crossing].

Early days

In 1963, he turned semi-professional as a singer-guitarist in a group called "Les Eperviers" [The Sparrow hawks]. He left the technical college in 1965 for the Liège conservatoire to study violin, where he took courses particularly in diction, declamation and voice.

In 1966, he joined a new group called "Les Tigres Sauvages" [Wild Tigers] and won the "Microsillon d'Argent" [Silver Microgroove Record] at the Festival of Châtelet in Belgium – a prize that included the recording of a single. He recorded two titles: “Petite fille” [Little Girl] and "”Ne pleure pas" [Don't cry], under the pseudonym of François Bara. His father bought the 500 records that were pressed and managed to sell them for jukeboxes. The winner also got to perform as a warm-up act for three confirmed artists: Johnny Hallyday, Pascal Danel and Michel Polnareff, his idol.

Few figures have had so profound an influence on the Romantic era as the Polish composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849). Born in Poland and later settling in Paris, Chopin devoted almost all of his composing energies to pieces for solo piano. His works are rightly famed for their lyrical beauty, dazzling technique, and deep emotional expressiveness. Here's an introduction to the life and times of this great, but troubled Romantic.

Who was Chopin?

Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin) was one of the 19th century's most important composers, as well as a virtuoso pianist. Most of his output is for solo piano, and it includes some of the instrument's best known and best loved repertoire.

Think of Chopin and you might consider first his passion for his native Poland while in Parisian exile. Schumann’s remark about Chopin’s mazurkas containing ‘guns buried in flowers’ has much to do with this; besides, the delicate pianist-composer’s first childhood scribbling was a polonaise and his dying notes a chromatic, heartbreaking mazurka.

But that’s not necessarily what makes Chopin so Chopinesque. Such forms were simply a springboard from which this musical visionary could launch himself into another world. Perhaps the heart of Chopin’s music lies in his dark side: the subconscious, feverish, often tortured imagination which found its chief release in improvisation. He was a mass of paradoxes and contradictions, and his music blended diverse influences into a musical language that was of its day yet ultimately incomparable.

When and where was Chopin born?

Chopin was born in the small Polish village of Żelazowa Wola in the Duchy of Warsaw, Poland, on 1 March 1810.

The young Frédéric was a child prodigy, playing in public for the first time at the age of eight, having written his first polonaises a year earlier. He studied with Jozef Els

Frédéric François Chopin, in PolishFryderyk Franciszek Chopin (the surname is pronounced [ˈʂɔpɛn̪] in Polish; [ʃɔpɛ̃] in French; and usually /ˈʃoʊpæn/ in English; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer, virtuoso pianist, and music teacher of French-Polish parentage. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music.

Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw. A renowned child-prodigy pianist and composer, he grew up in Warsaw and completed his musical education there. Following the Russian suppression of the Polish November 1830 Uprising, he settled in Paris as part of the Polish Great Emigration. He supported himself as a composer and piano teacher, giving few public performances. From 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French woman writerGeorge Sand. For most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris at age 39.

All of Chopin's works involve the piano. They are technically demanding but emphasize nuance and expressive depth. Chopin invented the musical form known as the instrumental ballade and made major innovations to the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu and prélude.

Life

Childhood

Chopin's father was Nicolas Chopin, a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen and had served in Poland's National Guard during the Kościuszko Uprising. In France he had been baptised Nicolas but later, living in Poland, he used the Polish form of his given name, Mikołaj. He subsequently tutored children of the aristocracy, including the Skarbeks, whose poorer relative, Justyna Krzyżanowska, he married. The wedding took place at the 16th-century parish church in Brochów on 2 June 1806. (Justyna's brother would become the father of Am

Polish composer and pianist (1810–1849)

"Chopin" redirects here. For other uses, see Chopin (disambiguation).

Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading composer of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".

Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising. At 21, he settled in Paris. Thereafter he gave only 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and by giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann. After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska from 1836 to 1837, he maintained an often troubled relationship with the French writer Aurore Dupin (known by her pen name George Sand). A brief and unhappy visit to Mallorca with Sand in 1838–39 would prove one of his most productive periods of composition. In his final years, he was supported financially by his admirer Jane Stirling. For most of his life, Chopin was in poor health. He died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39.

All of Chopin's compositio