PART II:--HIS MUSIC
VI. THE STUDIES:--TITANIC EXPERIMENTS
October 20, 1829, Frederic Chopin, aged twenty, wrote to his
friend Titus Woyciechowski, from Warsaw: "I have composed a study
in my own manner;" and November 14, the same year: "I have
written some studies; in your presence I would play them well."
Thus, quite simply and without booming of cannon or brazen
proclamation by bell, did the great Polish composer announce an
event of supreme interest and importance to the piano-playing
world. Niecks thinks these studies were published in the summer
of 1833, July or August, and were numbered op. 10. Another set of
studies, op. 25, did not find a publisher until 1837, although
some of them were composed at the same time as the previous work;
a Polish musician who visited the French capital in 1834 heard
Chopin play the studies contained in op. 25. The C minor study,
op. 10, No. 12, commonly known as the Revolutionary, was born at
Stuttgart, September, 1831, "while under the excitement caused by
the news of the taking of Warsaw by the Russians, on September 8,
1831.
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