son of a French father who had lived in Warsaw and was
teacher in the gymnasium there; his mother was a Polish woman.
Chopin's early talent for music was unmistakable, both his parents
having been gifted in this direction. The child, therefore, was put at
music very young and appeared as a wonder-child at an early age. His
teachers were a Bohemian named Zwyny and Joseph Elsner. But the most
of his work he must have accomplished by himself, since we find that
before he was nineteen he had written his theme and variations upon "La
Ci Darem la Mano," and all his works up to and including the Concerto
in E minor, opus 11. It is believed that the so-called second concerto
in F minor was also completed before this period. This mass of works
included not alone the very remarkable variations upon Mozart's air,
already mentioned, and the brilliant concertos, with certain rondos and
mazurkas and other characteristic illustrations of the Chopin genius,
but also the studies for pianoforte, opus 10, which in methods of
treating the piano amount to a most astonishing advance over anything
which had appeared before them. They are also as beautiful and
original from a musical standpoint as they are remarkable from that of
piano-forte technic.

[Illustration: Frederic Francois Chopin]

Accordingly, when Chopin, in 1828, went upon a concert tour to Paris,
Vienna, and Munich, he was received everywhere with astonishing
enthusiasm, and was very much surprised to hear himself called one of
the first virtuosi of the time, as, indeed, he must have been. At
Paris his opus 2 was published (the variations just mentioned), and
this was the composition which attracted Schumann's attention and
concerning which he wrote such a glowing and enthusiastic account. In
1829 he came to Paris to reside, and immediately became an active
member of a small but extremely brilliant art circle, among the members
of which were to be found such celebrities as Liszt, Berlioz, Heine,
Balzac, Ernst, and Meyerbeer.

Chopin's father having died, he assumed the care of his mother, and
supported himself partly by concert playing and partly by teaching. As
early as 1838 the symptoms of pulmonary weakness began to appear, and
from that time to the end of his life he was more or less an invalid,
always in delicate health and sometimes unfit for any exertion. From
the brilliancy of his position in Paris, the death of Chopin was a
great shock to the artistic world