As long as we live and keep in touch with the works of the great composers we shall love more and more the music of Frederic François Chopin.
It will be pleasant to learn from time to time something about him. We should like, for example, to know:
In what country he was born.
In what places he lived.
What kinds of music he composed.
Perhaps we may begin by learning that he was born in a little village in Poland not far from the City of Warsaw, beside which flows the famous river Vistula. Here is a picture of the house in which Chopin was born.
CHOPIN'S BIRTHPLACE
Chopin's father, a Frenchman by birth, was a schoolmaster. (So was the father of Franz Schubert, you remember.) The boy's mother was a native of Poland. From the time when he was a little boy, the future great composer loved his mother's country and the people just as much as he loved the dear mother herself.
The father knew that his little son was musical, so he took the greatest care to have him taught by the best teachers. He watched over him quite as Leopold Mozart watched the progress of Wolferl; and as Mendelssohn's mother guided Felix and Fanny in their first music lessons.