THE LINEAMENTS of Chopin's short, dramatic life are familiar to most classical-music enthusiasts. Born in 1810 in Warsaw to a middle-class family, he was a child prodigy and became a noted pianist and composer of small-scale but exquisite Romantic pieces of music, such as ballades, etudes, impromptus, mazurkas, nocturnes and polonaises. He was mostly based in France, mingling with the cream of Parisian society and the arts and playing for aristocrats and royalty. The German poet Heinrich Heine reverentially called him "the Raphael of the piano".
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