Chopin

In this new study of Chopin's life and works, Jim Samson alternates chapters of biographical narrative with original and penetrating commentary on a unique musical legacy. Previous biographers have tended to concentrate on Chopin's life in France and to pay less attention to his formative years in Poland. Jim Samson redresses the balance by investigating the influence on Chopin of family, teachers, and the eventful political and cultural climate of Warsaw in his youth. He also takes an objective approach to Chopin's relations with George Sand, the worldly novelist who adopted a masculine name and persona. In reassessing Chopin's life, Samson has returned to primary and early secondary sources, including contemporary newspapers, correspondence, and memoirs and articles - some in manuscript - by Chopin's friends from the Warsaw years.