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Chopin

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) left Poland for Paris in 1830 and never returned; the failure of the Polish uprising against Russian rule shortly afterwards made return impossible. He settled in Paris, giving perhaps thirty public concerts in his entire career, preferring the intimacy of the salon to the concert hall. He died of tuberculosis at thirty-nine, and at his request his heart was removed after death and smuggled to Warsaw by his sister, where it remains today in a pillar of the Church of the Holy Cross. His music is almost entirely for piano, but his nocturnes, mazurkas, and melodies translate with unusual naturalness to strings.

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