The Music Lesson Desktop Theme
By Vanessa Zoe

If music be the food of love, play on; 
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, 
The appetite may sicken, and so die. 

William Shakespeare. Twelfth Night (Act i. Sc. 1).

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** If you have Word 97, please, consider reading the .doc file,
which is much more complete. If you don't have Word 97, you can
dowload the MS Word Viewer 97 for Windows 98 or NT for free at:
http://www.microsoft.com/word/internet/viewer/viewer97/default.htm.

Make sure to install the *.ttf file (the font file) included in this
theme *before* reading the Word 97 document.

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Contents

Part 1 - Introduction

Part 2 - Theme Installation & Troubleshooting

Part 3 - Jan Vermeer (Life and Work)

Part 4 - The Music Lesson

Part 5 - Frédéric Chopin


Part 1 - Introduction

This Desktop Theme features one of the most famous work of the Dutch painter Jan Vermeer, "The Music 
Lesson" and the sublime Study Op. 10, 3 for pianoforte in E Major composed by Frédéric Chopin.
 
Your display should be set to 800x600 and true color for this theme. 
Do not stretch the wallpaper. 

IMPORTANT! In order to combine high quality with reasonable filesize, the sound files in this theme are 
compressed in MPEG Layer-3 format. If you want to use them, you'll need to install "Microsoft 
NetShow" (http://www.microsoft.com/netshow/).

If you have any question or comments, do not hesitate to contact me.
Vanessa Zoe (zoe@webave.com).
http://members.xoom.com/v_zoe


Part 2 - Theme Installation & Troubleshooting

To install this theme:

1. Run a decompression program like WinZip;
2. Unzip all the files into your Theme file directory (usually c:\program files\plus!\themes);    
3. Run Microsoft Plus! or any other theme file installer (such as Desktop Themes, by J. Porter) and select 
the theme file that you just unzipped;

***IMPORTANT NOTE***	
The *.ttf file (the font file) will not be automatically placed in the correct location. You must cut and paste 
them into the "Windows\Fonts" folder yourself BEFORE installing the theme.

Common problems and how to fix them.

If errors are encountered while installing the theme:

1. Make sure you used a long file name-compatible uncompression 
2. program like WinZip to unzip the theme;
3. Check that all the correct directories have been made;
4. Make sure that you have Microsoft Plus! or another theme file installer installed. The theme file will not 
install automatically as soon as you unzip it!
5. If you don't have MS Plus! you can download a very nice theme installer called "Desktop Themes" at 
http://www.lss.com.au/


Part 3 - Jan Vermeer (Life and Work)

Life.
    
Johannes Vermeer also rendered JOHANNES (b. Oct. 31, 1632, Delft, Neth. --buried Dec. 15, 
1675, Delft) was born in his family's tavern in the marketplace of Delft, and he lived his entire life in that 
city. The city archives indicate that he married on April 5, 1653, and was enrolled in the artists' guild in 
December of that year. That he had some reputation in his lifetime is indicated by the record left by 
Balthazar de Monconys, a Frenchman, who went to Delft especially to see him in 1663. He served as 
chairman of the artists' guild in 1662-63 and 1670-71. Further records, however, indicate his financial 
difficulties. It appears that he looked principally to his activities as an art dealer to support his family, 
rather than to the sale of his own paintings. 
    
According to the sparse records of this quiet man, Vermeer lived in a small world of bakers and grocers 
who accepted his paintings as pawns for his debts. It was in a shopkeepers' milieu that he conducted his 
artistic experiments: these tradesmen of his neighbourhood supplied him the bread, with its hard and shiny 
crust, the flowing milk, and the other bodily nourishments to which he added a spiritual dimension in his 
painting, as in his "Kitchen-Maid." 
    
Vermeer also depicted Dutch aristocratic and upper middle-class society, in which refined ladies read their 
mail, do lacework, receive cavaliers, play music, dabble in philosophy and literature, and entertain in their 
salons. The theatre in which these characters appear is a lavish one, with precious carpets, fine musical 
instruments, embroidered dresses and robes, ermine and silk, pearls, and silver cutlery. 
    
Vermeer re-created the figures of Dutch society as wholly devoted to the weighing of pearls, to poetry and 
astronomy, to music and geography; they are heroes of a closed universe, in which gradations of natural and 
reflected daylight are rendered with infinite care. His paintings may be said to depict a refined life, if 
refinement is understood as a sifting of reality designed to make it more easily apprehended. 
    
The mystery of Vermeer's life has produced scores of interpretations, all revealing the same tendency to 
circumscribe it narrowly. One art historian, Reginald H. Wilenski, presented him as a laboratory researcher 
attempting to broaden the scope of the eye by means of optical instruments and mirrors. In France, André 
Malraux saw him enclosed in his family circle and recognized his wife, Catharina Vermeer, in scores of his 
characters. Notably, however divergent the views are, both represented him as a recluse. A close scrutiny 
of his paintings also brings to mind the idea of an artist confined to the rooms that he is depicting, attentive 
to all the objects separating him from his main theme but giving no hint whether he considers them obstacles 
to his progression or supports in a difficult enterprise. It should be added here that the two known 
landscapes by Vermeer were both painted from a window; it is uncertain whether it was some physical 
infirmity or merely the wish to paint with all his supplies at hand that rooted Vermeer to the stool on which 
he portrayed himself, seen from the back, in his "Allegory of Painting." The question reveals the paucity of 
knowledge of his surpassingly accomplished and hermetic art. It scarcely influenced either his 
contemporaries or the painters of later time, however; its tightly knit texture was enough to discourage 
whole legions of artists, and even a major 20th-century counterfeiter of Vermeer did not dare to imitate his 
mature works but rather forged works from the Delft master's unknown youth. 
    
In his own time Vermeer's works seem to have been regarded as experimental and therefore not widely 
appreciated. After he died, at the age of 43, and was buried in the Old Church of Delft, his wife, 
Catharina, frantically tried to save 29 of his paintings from the bankruptcy that was her lot. Vermeer had 
been ruined by the political troubles and the wars of the times. 
    
Work.
    
The art of Vermeer expresses a knowledge of matter that is so sensitive as to be almost scientific. Each 
painting seems to be the sum of various analytic experiments with light and with the microscopic 
observation of matter, as well as of a specifically pictorial research that frees his colours from merely 
rendering forms, that investigates new visual means of suggesting the rapports between the human presence 
and its environment, and that explores bold perspectives that today suggest the use of wide-angle lenses 
and telescopic lenses in photography. It is noteworthy that the rediscovery of Vermeer in the late 19th 
century coincided with the interest in the refinement of perception accompanying the development of 
photography. 
    
A certain number of paintings attributed to Vermeer are clearly marginal in respect of his sustained and 
exceptionally high level of production. Although unsigned, they cannot be attributed to any other artist. 
These works--"Diana and Her Companions" (c. 1655), "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" (c. 
1654-55), the "Procuress" (1656), and "A Girl Asleep"--are assumed to be works in which Vermeer 
conducted his earliest investigations. 
    
Elements such as colour treatment, the perspective, the analysis of some objects, although not conclusive in 
themselves, unmistakably relate them to the Delft master's greatest works, next to which they become unified 
and attuned. In his next stage, the great painter acceded to the levels at which art is the absolute master of 
subject matter; he assumed a gradually fuller possession of reality. Neither distance nor shade attenuated 
the perception of every element in the paintings. Vermeer even went so far as to indicate the time on the 
clock--7:10 AM--in a celebrated "View of Delft." At this level of perfection, it is difficult to establish a 
clear progression among the various paintings. There are some works of exceptional power and others that 
are less accomplished. Some may even reveal a side of the painter not particularly noticed before: 
"Allegory of the Faith," for example, is of an unexpected symbolical complexity. One composition that 
seems to surpass all the rest is the "Allegory of Painting," which was long attributed to Pieter de Hooch. 
    
Since the authenticity of the dates on his paintings is generally considered to be doubtful, the chronology of  
Vermeer's sparse production is almost impossible to determine. Within the assemblage of his greatest 
paintings, it is impossible to determine that one is an improvement over another. The traditional rule of art 
historians is that the more complex compositions are created later in the artist's career. Accordingly, the 
"Allegory of the Faith" and the "Allegory of Painting" should represent the painter's ultimate 
accomplishments. But Vermeer is just as faithful to himself in such simpler compositions as the "Head of a 
Young Girl" or "The Girl in a Red Hat," not to mention his landscapes. "Young Woman Reading a Letter," 
sometimes known as "Woman in Blue," and "The Kitchen-Maid" are simpler and therefore inferably earlier 
than those compositions in which there is a wealth of symbolic elements, but the simpler works are also 
bolder in experimentation, which is traditionally an indication of a later work. 
    
Vermeer somehow manages to be unique within a typically Dutch genre. He withstood all of the Italian, the 
French, and the Flemish influences that are sensed in the work of other Dutch artists of his time. Whereas 
Frans Hals seems at times to converse with the Spaniard Velázquez, for example, and Rembrandt with the 
Italian Baroque painter Guercino, Vermeer is preoccupied with a wholly personal direction unlike any 
other. Vermeer is typically Dutch, however, in his way of "planning" reality, of analyzing it thoroughly. It is 
reminiscent of the rigorous methods of the Dutch hydraulic engineers in their conquests over marshland and 
sea or of the astronomer Huygens discovering the rings girding Saturn. 
 
Despite their unique denseness and clarity, all of Vermeer's works were attributed to others until, in 1866, 
the art historian Théophile Thoré (pseudonym of W. Bürger), who rediscovered him, attributed 76 
paintings to him. Two years later, this number was reduced by another scholar to 56. By 1907, the 
number was reduced to 34, and it remains between 30 and 35, depending on the authority. 
   
An attempt to create a chronology of his works in 1937 brought the authorities into heated controversy 
with each other. The matter was greatly complicated when a forger, Hans van Meegeren, in 1945 
demonstrated that he had painted works that had been attributed by the greatest connoisseurs to Vermeer's 
early period. Insofar as Vermeer studies are concerned, the art world has not yet recovered from that hoax. 
    
Major Works
    
MAJOR WORKS. "A Girl Asleep" (c. 1656; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City); 
"Officer and Laughing Girl" (c. 1657; Frick Collection, New York City); "Lady Reading a Letter at an 
Open Window" (c. 1657; Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Ger.); "Girl Drinking Wine with a Gentleman" (c. 
1658-60; Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin); "The Kitchen-Maid" (c. 1658; 
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam); "Young Woman with a Water Jug" (c. 1658-60; Metropolitan Museum of 
Art); "The Little Street" (c. 1658; Rijksmuseum); "The Music Lesson: A Lady at the Virginals with a 
Gentleman Listening" (c. 1660; Buckingham Palace, London); "View of Delft" (c. 1660; Mauritshuis, 
The Hague); "Young Lady with a Pearl Necklace" (1662-63; Staatliche Museen Preussischer 
Kulturbesitz); "A Woman Weighing Gold" (c. 1662-63; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); 
"Young Woman Reading a Letter" (c. 1662-63; Rijksmuseum); "Dentellière" ("The Lacemaker"; c. 
1664-65; Louvre, Paris); "Allegory of Painting" (c. 1665; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); "Head 
of a Young Girl" (c. 1665; Mauritshuis); "The Girl with a Red Hat" (c. 1665; National Gallery of 
Art, Washington, D.C.); "Young Girl with a Flute" (c. 1665; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 
D.C.); "The Letter" (c. 1666; Rijksmuseum); "A Lady Writing a Letter, with Her Maid" (c. 1667; Sir 
Alfred Beit Collection, Russ Borough, Co. Wicklow, Ire.); "The Astronomer" (1668; Baron Edouard de 
Rothschild Collection, Paris); "Der Astronom," sometimes known as "The Geographer" (1669; 
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main); "Allegory of the Faith" (c. 1669-70; Metropolitan 
Museum of Art); "A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal" (c. 1670; National Gallery, London). 
    

Part 4 - The Music Lesson

(c. 1662-1665) Oil on canvas, 74.6 x 64.1 cm. Royal Collection, St. James' Palace, London 

This famous painting was executed by Vermeer at the height of his powers. The formal, almost abstract, 
composition is presented as patterns of color and shape, but at the same time the ambiguity of the human 
relationship draws us in. The perfectly rendered window provides a frame at the left, and the spare 
horizontality of the roof-beams frames the picture at the top. The diagonal pattern of marble floor-tiles 
draws our eye into the picture and the pattern of rectangles on the back wall would be spoiled if any one 
of them were moved; in this geometric composition, one can imagine a preview of another great Dutch 
artist, Piet Mondrian. The woman playing the clavecin has her back to us, so that we see composition and 
human relationship rather than her face. But she is reflected in the mirror above her. The real and reflected 
heads are not consistent: in the mirror she seems to be turning towards the man.It has been suggested that 
the mirror shows part of the artist's easel, drawing us into the picture in a very explicit way. As with Girl 
Interrupted at her Music, it is not clear if the man is a teacher or a lover. Behind the woman is a bass viol, 
which perhaps the man has been playing in duet. On the clavecin, there is an inscription, Musica Letitiae 
Comes Medicina Dolorum, [Music is the Companion of Joy, the Medicine of Sorrow]. At lower right is 
a richly decorated oriental carpet, anchoring the eye and providing a separation between viewer and 
subjects, on it is the familar, prominent white pitcher, which may contain wine; are we to conclude that the 
couple are about to descend into sin, lubricated by demon drink? 

Note: The following is an excerpt from the excellent book "Vermeer & the Art of Painting", by Arthur K. 
Wheelock, Jr. It is just one of the seventeen Vermeer works described by Mr. Wheelock. Do yourself a 
favor and check out the rest of his wonderful book. It is published by Yale University Press, ISBN 0-
300-06239-7. You can order this book on my website: http://members.xoom.com/vzoe/vermeer.htm.

The virginal was an instrument greatly admired by the Dutch upper class during the mid-seventeenth 
century. The Iyrical yet restrained tones that resonated from its keyboard underscored the refinement in 
taste that accompanied the increase of wealth and influence enjoyed by this society. The music written for 
the virginal, by (among others) Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), was measured in its rhythms, and 
nuances of timing were carefully conceived and executed. The lyrics that often accompanied the music 
extolled love, both human and spiritual, and the solace that could be gained from it. The sentiments the 
music and Iyrics expressed and the role they played within the upper echelons of Dutch society frequently 
were inscribed on the instruments themselves. The text on the lid of the virginal in The Music Lesson reads: 
"Mvsica letitiae co[me]s medicina dolor[vm]" (Music: companion of joy, balm for sorrow). Of the many 
paintings from the period that feature the virginal, none captures as well as Vermeer's the balance and 
harmony of its music or the elegance and refinement of the world to which it belonged. Every object in 
Vermeer's spacious interior is as carefully considered and identified as the notes in a song by Huygens, yet 
these independent entities are likewise carefully orchestrated to be brought together into a whole whose 
mood is based upon a firm mathematical and geometric foundation.The instrument that is at the focus of 
Vermeer's painting can be identified as one made by the famed Antwerp instrument maker Andreas 
Ruckers (1579-1654). Its large scale and the elaborately painted decorative elements covering its 
various surfaces mark it as one of Ruckers' finest productions. The painter clearly admired the craftsmanship 
with which it was made and recorded its exquisite detail with care.

That Vermeer gave such prominence to the virginal and that a family expended the vast sum that such an 
outstanding instrument would have required indicate the importance of this instrument in Dutch society. To 
judge from the number of depictions of maidens seated or standing at such instruments from the 1650s 
and 1660s by Frans van Mieris, Jan Steen, Gerard ter Borch, Gerard Dou, Gabriel Metsu, and 
Vermeer, a young woman's proficiency in this art was greatly esteemed. A music master was often retained 
to instruct the young woman. Once having mastered the art she would perform solo or as part of a duet or 
trio, usually within a domestic setting. Indeed, aside from being an artistic form of expression suitable for a 
young woman, proficiency at the clavecin, virginal, or harpsichord also served a social function, for it 
facilitated polite contact between the sexes.

Artists were fascinated with the nature of that contact, and exploited the theme of the music lesson or 
concert as a vehicle for depicting the sensuality as well as the social acceptability of a woman playing such 
an instrument. Sometimes, as in Jan Steen's Harpsichord Lesson in the Wallace Collection, the music 
master's attentions to the attractive pupil are seen as lecherous, but usually a spirit of sensual harmony 
pervades the scene that is not out of keeping with the elevated ideals inscribed on the instruments.  In 
Steen's Music master, c. 1659, for example, the man's attentive attitude conveys an ease and familiarity 
with the woman, yet nothing in his demeanor or in her upright posture suggests that they are disrespectful of 
the elevated sentiments plainly visible on the cover of the harpsichord: "Soli Deo Gloria." Indeed, rather 
than a music master, it seems more probable that the man is a suitor who, moved by the woman's beauty 
and that of her music, feels in perfect harmony with his beloved.A comparable feeling of harmony pervades 
Vermeer's Girl Interrupted at Her Music from the early 1660s, where an attentive gentleman assists a 
young woman with her sheet music. A painting of Cupid on the rear wall affirms that the contact between 
the two is amorous; the relationship of this image of Cupid to an emblem by Otto van Veen, which stresses 
the importance of taking but one lover, establishes the moral tenor of the scene. Similarly, the man who is so 
transfixed by the music in The Music Lesson is almost certainly not a music master, and his presence must 
be otherwise explained. He is an aristocratic gentleman, perhaps a suitor, dressed in a conservative black 
costume that is accented by a white collar and elegant white cuffs. He stands resting a hand on his staff, 
while a gold-knobbed sword hangs from the white sash that crosses his chest.

Music was often used metaphorically to suggest the harmony of two souls in love. In one of his most 
familiar emblems, for example, Jacob Cats depicted a lute player in an interior before an open window. 
Beside him lies another lute, unused. As Cats explained in his text, the emblem "Qvid Non Sentit Amor" 
means that the resonances of one lute echo onto the other just as two hearts can exist in total harmony even 
if they are separated. Steen's painting probably incorporates a similar sentiment, for in the background of 
the scene a young servant brings the man at the clavecin a lute, an indication of the harmony shared by the 
pair. The presence of the bass viol on the floor in Vermeer's Music Lesson may serve a similar thematic 
function.

Even more directly related to Vermeer's painting is the emblem "Zy blinckt, en doet al blincken" (it shines 
and makes everything shine) in P. C. Hooft's Emblemata Amatoria.  The emblem contains two vignettes, 
Cupid holding a mirror reflecting sunrays in the foreground, and a man standing near a woman playing a 
keyboard instrument in the background. The accompanying verses explain that just as a mirror reflects the 
sunlight it receives, so does love reflect its source in the beloved. What love one possesses comes not from 
oneself, but from the beloved. Although the image of Cupid with the mirror depicts quite literally the 
message of Hooft's verses, the figures in the background - the man looking with rapt attention at his 
beloved, whose music has so moved him - expand upon them metaphorically. The compositional 
relationships between the emblem and The Music Lesson suggest that Vermeer had a similar concept in 
mind when conceiving his work. Not only do the figures in the background of the emblem bear a striking 
resemblance to those in The Music Lesson, the emphasis on the mirror in the emblem parallels the 
prominence given to the woman's reflection in the mirror in Vermeer's painting.

Given the similarity in theme between Steen's and Vermeer's paintings, the differences in their artistic 
approaches are remarkable. Steen emphasized the narrative elements of the scene by allowing the viewer to 
look over the harpsichord player's shoulder and watch her hands playing the keys. The music book can be 
seen and the figures' expressions studied. The room around them is undefined so that primary attention is 
placed on their relationship, although the angle at which Steen placed the harpsichord does lead the eye 
back to the doorway and to the servant bringing the lute down the stairs. Vermeer, in contrast, virtually 
eliminated the narrative. The woman is seen directly from behind. Her hands and music are obscured from 
the viewer; her face, partially turned toward the gentleman, is only dimly visible in the mirror hanging before 
her. Thus Vermeer emphasized less the specifics of the woman and her music than the abstract concepts her 
music embodies: joy, harmony in love, healing, and solace. Vermeer seems to have rethought the pictorial 
tradition within which Steen worked by transforming the allusions to love into something more universal and 
less moralizing.

Vermeer's message, delivered in measured cadences rather than in a compelling narrative, partakes of the 
total environment in which the figures exist rather than being focused on their attitudes and activities. For 
Vermeer, the room's geometric character, its furnishings, and the light that pervades it establish the essential 
framework for conveying the nature of the relationships of the figures at the clavecin. The theme of healing 
and solace, for example, is reinforced through the painting partially visible on the rear wall. Just enough of 
its image is visible to identify it as a depiction of Cimon and Pero, a story taken from Valerius Maximus 
that is better known as Roman Charity. Other elements in the room also reinforce the painting's thematic 
content, including the white pitcher on the tapestry-covered table in the immediate foreground of this 
deeply recessive interior space. Brilliantly illuminated by the sun, this pure white, elegantly proportioned 
ceramic pitcher on a sparkling silver platter is an object whose meaning has never been explained. A similar 
pitcher occurs in both The Glass of Wine in the Gemaldegalerie, Berlin and The Girl with the Wine Glass 
in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick. In each instance Vermeer has depicted it as the vessel 
from which the wine has been poured, and thus as part of the sensual, and hence negatively intended, 
component of the composition. An even more explicit example of the sensual implications of the wine 
pitcher is evident in Frans van Mieris' Oyster Meal, where it is placed in conjunction with a platter of 
oysters, which were commonly viewed as an aphrodisiac. It could be argued that such associations exist 
here as well. Nevertheless, its context is essentially different from the ones seen in the Berlin and Brunswick 
paintings. Here it exists independent of a genre context. No glasses are visible, no figures are near. The 
beauty and purity of its starkly illuminated form gives it an almost sacramental character, reminiscent of the 
ewer and basin found in early Netherlandish scenes of the Annunciation. The pitcher reinforces the positive 
thematic message of the painting. Whether seen as a vessel containing the cleansing freshness of water or the 
nourishment of wine, its function parallels rather than contrasts with those symbolized by the Roman Charity 
and the woman at the virginal.


Part 5 - Frédéric Chopin
    
Polish FRYDERYK FRANCISZEK SZOPEN (b. March 1, 1810, Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, 
Duchy of Warsaw [now in Poland]--d. Oct. 17, 1849, Paris, France), Polish-French composer and 
pianist of the Romantic period, best known for his solo pieces for piano and his piano concerti. Although 
he wrote little but piano works, many of them brief, Chopin ranks as one of music's greatest tone poets by 
reason of superfine imagination and fastidious craftsmanship. 
    
Life.
    
Chopin's father, Nicholas, a French émigré in Poland, was employed as a tutor to various aristocratic 
families, including the Skarbeks, at Zelazowa Wola, one of whose poorer relations he married. When 
Frédéric was eight months old, Nicholas became a French teacher at the Warsaw lyceum. Chopin himself 
attended the lyceum from 1823 to 1826. 
    
All the family had artistic leanings, and even in infancy Chopin was always strangely moved when listening 
to his mother or eldest sister playing the piano. By six he was already trying to reproduce what he heard or 
to make up new tunes. The following year he started piano lessons with the 61-year-old Wojciech 
(Adalbert) Zywny, an all-around musician with an astute sense of values. Zywny's simple instruction in 
piano playing was soon left behind by his pupil, who discovered for himself an original approach to the 
piano and was allowed to develop unhindered by academic rules and formal discipline. 
    
Chopin found himself invited at an early age to play at private soirées, and at eight he made his first public 
appearance at a public charity concert. Three years later he performed in the presence of the Russian tsar 
Alexander I, who was in Warsaw to open Parliament. Playing was not alone responsible for his growing 
reputation as a child prodigy. At seven he wrote a Polonaise in G Minor, which was printed, and soon 
afterward a march of his appealed to the Russian grand duke Constantine, who had it scored for his 
military band to play on parade. Other polonaises, mazurkas, variations, ecossaises, and a rondo followed, 
with the result that, when he was 16, his family enrolled him at the newly formed Warsaw Conservatory of 
Music. This school was directed by the Polish composer Joseph Elsner, with whom Chopin already had 
been studying musical theory. 
    
No better teacher could have been found, for, while insisting on a traditional training, Elsner, as a 
Romantically inclined composer himself, realized that Chopin's individual imagination must never be checked 
by purely academic demands. Even before he came under Elsner's eye, Chopin had shown interest in the 
folk music of the Polish countryside and had received those impressions that later gave an unmistakable 
national colouring to his work. At the conservatory he was put through a solid course of instruction in 
harmony and composition; it was only in piano playing itself that he  was practically self-taught. 
    
Despite the lively musical life of Warsaw, Chopin urgently needed wider musical experience, and so his 
devoted parents found the money to send him off to Vienna. After a preliminary expedition to Berlin in 
1828, Chopin visited Vienna and made his performance debut there in 1829. A second concert 
confirmed his success, and on his return home he prepared himself for further achievements abroad by 
writing his Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor (1829) and his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor 
(1830), as well as other works for piano and orchestra designed to exploit his brilliantly original piano 
style. His first études were also written at this time (1829-32) to enable him and others to master the 
technical difficulties in his new conception of piano playing. 
    
In March and October 1830 he presented his new works to the Warsaw public and then left Poland 
with the intention of visiting Germany and Italy for further study. He had gone no farther than Vienna when 
news reached him of the Polish revolt against Russian rule; this event, added to the disturbed state of 
Europe, caused him to remain profitlessly in Vienna until the following July, when he decided to make his 
way to Paris. Soon after his arrival in what was then the centre of European culture and a focal point of the 
Romantic movement, Chopin realized that he had found the exact milieu in which his genius could flourish. 
He quickly established ties with many Polish émigrés and with a younger generation of composers, including 
Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Vincenzo Bellini, and Felix Mendelssohn. The circles to which Chopin's talents 
and distinction admitted him quickly acknowledged that they had found the artist whom the moment 
required, and after a brief period of uncertainty Chopin settled down to the main business of his life--
teaching and composing. His high income from these sources set him free from the strain of concert giving, 
to which he had an innate repugnance. 
    
Initially, there were problems, professional and financial. After his Paris concert debut in February 1832, 
Chopin realized that his extreme delicacy at the keyboard was not to everyone's taste in larger concert 
spaces. But an introduction to the wealthy Rothschild banking family later that year suddenly opened up 
new horizons. With his elegant manners, fastidious dress, and innate sensitivity, Chopin found himself a 
favourite in the great houses of Paris, both as a recitalist and as a teacher. His new piano works at this time 
included two startlingly poetic books of études (1829-36), the Ballade in G Minor (1831-35), the 
Fantaisie-Impromptu, and many smaller pieces, among them mazurkas and polonaises inspired by Chopin's 
strong nationalist feeling. 
    
Chopin's youthful love affairs with Constantia Gladkowska in Warsaw (1830) and Maria Wodzinska in 
Dresden (1835-36) had come to nothing, though he actually became engaged to the latter. In 1836 he 
met for the first time the free-living novelist Aurore Dudevant, better known as George Sand. She fell in 
love with him and offered to become his mistress. Chopin eventually succumbed to her persuasions, and 
their liaison began in the summer of 1838. That autumn he set off with her and her children, Maurice and 
Solange, to winter on the island of Majorca. They rented a simple villa and were idyllically happy until the 
sunny weather broke and Chopin became ill. When rumours of tuberculosis reached the villa owner, they 
were ordered out and could only find accommodations in a monastery in the remote village of Valldemosa. 

The cold and damp, malnutrition, peasant suspiciousness of their strange ménage, and the lack of a suitable 
concert piano hindered Chopin's artistic production and further weakened his precarious physical health. 
Indeed, the privations that Chopin endured brought on the slow decline in his health that ended with his 
death from tuberculosis 10 years later. Sand realized that only immediate departure would save his life. 
They arrived at Marseille in early March 1839, and, thanks to a skilled physician, Chopin was sufficiently 
recovered after just under three months for them to start planning a return to Paris. The summer of 1839 
they spent at Nohant, Sand's country house about 180 miles (290 km) south of Paris. This period 
following the return from Majorca was to be the happiest and most productive of Chopin's life, and the 
long summers spent at Nohant bore fruit in a succession of masterpieces. As a regular source of income, he 
again turned to private teaching. His method permitted great flexibility of the wrist and arm and daringly 
unconventional fingering in the interests of greater agility, with the production of beautiful, singing tone a 
prime requisite at nearly all times. There was also a growing demand for his new works, and, since he had 
become increasingly shrewd in his dealings with publishers, he could afford to live elegantly. 
   
Health was a recurrent worry, and every summer Sand took him to Nohant for fresh air and relaxation. 
Close friends, such as Pauline Viardot and the painter Eugène Delacroix, were often invited, too. Chopin 
produced much of his most searching music at Nohant, not only miniatures but also extended works, such 
as the Fantaisie in F Minor (composed 1840-41), the Barcarolle (1845-46), the Polonaise-Fantaisie 
(1845-46), the Ballade in A-flat Major (1840-41) and Ballade in F Minor (1842), and the Sonata 
in B Minor (1844). Here, in the country, he found the peace and time to indulge an ingrained quest for 
perfection. He seemed particularly anxious to develop his ideas into longer and more complex arguments, 
and he even sent to Paris for treatises by musicologists to strengthen his counterpoint. His harmonic 
vocabulary at this period also grew much more daring, though never at the cost of sensuous beauty. He 
valued that quality throughout life as much as he abhorred descriptive titles or any hint of an underlying 
"program." 
   
Family dissension arising from the marriage of Sand's daughter Solange caused Chopin's own relationship 
with Sand to become strained, and he grew increasingly moody and petulant. By 1848 the rift between 
him and Sand was complete, and pride prevented either from effecting the reconciliation they both actually 
desired. Thereafter Chopin seems to have given up his struggle with ill-health. 
    
Broken in spirit and depressed by the revolution that had broken out in Paris in February 1848, Chopin 
accepted an invitation to visit England and Scotland. His reception in London was enthusiastic, and he 
struggled through an exhausting round of lessons and appearances at fashionable parties. Chopin lacked the 
strength to sustain this socializing, however, and he was also unable to compose. By now his health was 
deteriorating rapidly, and he made his last public appearance on a concert platform at the Guildhall in 
London on Nov. 16, 1848, when, in a final patriotic gesture, he played for the benefit of Polish 
refugees. He returned to Paris, where he died the following year; he was buried at the cemetery of Père 
Lachaise. 
    
Works.
    
As a pianist Chopin was unique in acquiring a reputation of the highest order on the basis of a minimum of 
public appearances--few more than 30 in the course of his lifetime. His original and uninhibited approach 
to the keyboard allowed him to exploit all the resources of the piano of his day. He was inexhaustible in 
discovering colourful new passage work and technical figures; he understood as no one before him the true 
nature of the piano as an expressive instrument, and he had the secret of writing music that is bound up 
with the instrument for which it was conceived and which cannot be imagined apart from it. His innovations 
in fingering, his use of the pedals, and his general treatment of the keyboard form a milestone in the history 
of the piano, and his works set a standard that is recognized as unsurpassable. 
    
Chopin's works for solo piano include about 55 mazurkas; 16 polonaises; 26 preludes; 27 études; 21 
nocturnes; 20 waltzes; 3 sonatas; 4 ballades; 4 scherzos; 4 impromptus; and many individual pieces, 
such as the Barcarolle, Opus 60; the Fantasia, Opus 49; and the Berceuse, Opus 57; as well as 17 
Polish songs. 
    
As a composer Chopin has acquired increased stature after a period in the late 19th century when his 
work was judged by academic standards that were in fact inapplicable to its individual character. In 
keyboard style, harmony, and form, he was innovative according to the demands of each specific 
compositional situation. 

He had the rare gift of a very personal melody, expressive of heartfelt emotion, and his music is penetrated 
by a poetic feeling that has an almost universal appeal. Although "romantic" in its essence, Chopin's music 
has none of the expected trappings of Romanticism--there is a classic purity and discretion in everything he 
wrote and not a sign of Romantic exhibitionism. He found within himself and in the tragic story of Poland 
the chief sources of his inspiration. The theme of Poland's glories and sufferings was constantly before him, 
and he transmuted the primitive rhythms and melodies of his youth into enduring art forms. At the same 
time, he subtly differentiated, for example, the intimate poetic inspiration of the mazurka from the more 
outward-looking, ceremonial aspect of the polonaise, which in works like the Polonaise-Fantaisie he 
expanded to the proportions of symphonic poems for the piano. The waltz, meanwhile, offered him a 
courtly dance medium on a smaller scale, and he responded not by expanding it but by bringing it to 
unprecedented levels of polish and grace. From the great Italian singers of the age he learned the art of 
"singing" on the piano, and his nocturnes reveal the perfection of his cantabile style and delicate charm of 
ornamentation. His ballades and scherzos, on the other hand, have a dramatic turbulence and passion, as 
well as a symphonic scope, which effectively dispel the notion that Chopin was merely a drawing-room 
composer. 
    
Chopin's small output was mostly confined to solo piano; yet within its limited framework its range is seen 
to be vast, comprehending every variety of intensely experienced emotion. Though Chopin squandered too 
much time on the drawing-room Parisian aristocracy and disappointed critics who valued artistic worth only 
in terms of large-scale achievement, he was immediately recognized at his true worth by more discerning 
contemporaries, who were astounded by the startling originality he reconciled with exquisite craftsmanship. 
Present-day evaluation places him among the immortals of music by reason of his insight into the secret 
places of the heart and because of his awareness of the magical new sonorities to be drawn from the piano.

