Frederic Chopin

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Summary: The life of the great Polish composer Frederic Chopin
Review: Frederic Chopin has a French name, a French father, and spent almost half his life in France, but was always considered a Polish composer because his music drew on the peasant tunes and dances of his native land. Perhaps more than any other great classical composer it was Chopin who represented the ideal "poet in music," especially the ideal poet of the Romantic age. What Lord Byron, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley were to poetry, Chopin's piano works were to music. Chopin's work was sensitive, tender, amorous, lyrical and melancholy by turn. Richard Tames provides a straightforward juvenile biography of the composer's life for the Lifetime series. Frederic Francois Chopin (or Fryderyk Franciszek Szopen as he was christened) was born in Warsaw in 1810 and his first composition, a polonaise, was published in 1817. After enjoying success in both Warsaw and Vienna, the failed Polish revolt against Russia made him an exile living in Paris in 1831.

Overall, the book is much more of a biography than a lesson in music appreciation, paying much more attention to Chopin's travels and love interests before his death at the age of 39 than in specific compositions. However, I think that when young readers are introduced to the life of a great composer they should also be steered towards specific works (in fact, I think you should always listen to the music of a composer while you read about their life; certainly there are various "greatest hits" CDs that you can pick up with that will let you hear the Minute Waltz in D-Flat Major, the Nocturne in E-Flat Major, and the Military Polonaise). There are a couple of detailed sidebars on the notorious George Sand and the pianoforte as "The King of Instruments." The book is illustrated with many drawings and paintings made during Chopin's life time, including a sketch by George Sand of Chopin concentrating while composing, as well as a daguerreotype of the composer and a photography of the romantic monument to Chopin in Paris's Parc Monceau. Young readers will get a sense of Chopin's life from this slim biography, but will have to look elsewhere for an appreciation of his music.