Born and bred on Poland's soil, son of a French father and a Polish
mother, Frederic Chopin (1809-1849) combined within himself two natures,
each complementing the other, both uniting to form a personality not
understood by every casual observer. He is described as kind, courteous,
possessed of the most captivating grace and ease of manner, now inclined
to languorous melancholy, now scintillating with a joyous vivacity that
was contagious. His sensitive nature, like the most exquisitely
constructed sounding-board, vibrated with the despairing sadness, the
suppressed wrath, and the sublime fortitude of the brave, haughty,
unhappy people he loved, and with his own homesickness when afar from
his cherished native land.
Patriot and tone-poet in every fibre of his being, his genius inevitably
claimed as its own the soul's divinest language, pure music, unfettered
by words. The profound reserve of his nature made it peculiarly
agreeable to him to gratify the haunting demands of his lyric muse
through the medium of the one musical instrument that lends itself in
privacy to the exploitation of all the mysteries of harmony.
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