About this Recording 8.550358 - CHOPIN: Mazurkas, Vol. 1
Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849)   Fryderyk Chopin was born in
Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, in 1810. His father, Nicolas Chopin,
was French by birth, but had been taken to Poland in 1787, at
the age of sixteen, working first as a clerk in a tobacco
factory, before taking part in the Polish rising against the
foreign domination of the country as an officer in the National
Guard. After the failure of this attempt, he was able to earn
his living as a French tutor in various private families, and in
1806 he married a poor relation of his then employer, Count
Skarbek.  Chopin was to inherit from his father a fierce sense
of loyalty to Poland, a feeling that he fostered largely in
self-imposed exile, since the greater part of his career was to
be spent in Paris. His early education, however, was in Warsaw,
where his father had become a teacher at a newly established
school. He was able to develop his already precocious musical
abilities with piano lessons from the