Veronique Bonnecaze.chopinjpg

Music often takes me like a sea !
Towards my faint star,
Under a roof of fog or in a vast ether,
I set sail …[…]
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The Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire

[…] In the effervescence of a burgeoning career, the young musician is confronted with a first major grief. His sister Emilia dies on April 10, 1827, aged 14. As a consequence, this tragedy which was alas common as it was caused by the scourge of tuberculosis, causes Chopin’s personality to turn even more introvert. He takes refuge into music and in the study of his illustrious elders: Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. He is not out to imitate their styles but he explores and analyzes the sources of their genius so as to harden the ground under the first steps of his own independence. And what is better than the great form, the prestige of a first sonata to distance himself from conventions? And so he composes it in 1828.
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