If we consider the Romantic period in music, which roughly spans from 1815 to 1848—that is, from the Congress of Vienna to what is known as the ‘Spring of Nations’—Frédéric Chopin emerges as the most authentically Romantic of composers, and was indeed celebrated as such by Mendelssohn and, above all, Schumann. In his works, he reveals himself as he truly is, without ever retreating into what Alfred de Vigny called ‘the modesty of the soul’, yet concealing within the depths of his being something that gnaws at him, a nagging, unfulfilled longing for compassion for his misfortunes, a deep-seated anguish stemming as much from his physical condition as from the tragedies unfolding in his native land.

    Chopin was a tormented soul: an aristocrat in his way of life, a poet in his demeanour — including in his romantic relationships — and a perfectionist in his approach to work. Very quickly, he devoted himself entirely to the instrument he embodied and which, in a sense, he had married for ever: the piano. As a result, he may not have been as all-round a musical genius as Bach or Mozart, who excelled in every existing genre of music, but he marked the height of the Romantic period just as Bach had marked that of the Baroque period, and Mozart that of the Classical period. After him, post-Romantic composers would usher in a different musical era, one that was less introspective and more exuberant; they would be less inclined to express their own feelings through their music.

    Drawing on the collection compiled by the Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina in Warsaw, its archives and publications, as well as numerous accounts from contemporaries and the findings of recent research, this biography recounts Chopin’s life as it really was, stripped of the clichés and legends that still surround him, put into perspective and set within its historical context — that unspoken element of the text which enables us to understand the various facets of his genius.