What were two of Frederic Chopin's most important musical accomplishments?

Answer 1

Chopin major contributions:

Harmony

Piano forms

Technique

Discovering piano sounds

Chopin is unique in that he exclusively wrote for the piano - there are piano concertos in E and F minors with orchestra and pieces with piano and cello but always with piano present. He devoted his life to this instrument and brought out of it all new and varied colours previously unexplored.

He was polish and a lot of his homeland's Folk Music was written and extended into beautiful music - see his Mazurkas and Poloniases. His harmonies are instantly recognizable - to discuss this is a lifetime's study - but compare one of his pieces to his contemporaries Liszt, Mendelsohn and you will know instantly which are his.

He changed the technique of piano playing - using the thumb on the black keys, half-pedalling and soft-pedalling to create new effects, writing studies or etudes which rather than exercises are beautiful works of genius - no one had done this before. Czerny for all his good exercises - can you remember any of them - really? Chopin's are beautiful.

He adopted a rubato approach - a sense of extended time in his playing.

He was the poet of this instrument and has never been equalled by anybody - in my view Liszt's works are very advanced but lack the beauty of Chopin.

There is more - he extended the Nocturne form invented by John Field into a mastery of this form. Every work of his is a masterpiece - listen to all his music. He was fanatically obsessed with editing his woks often rewriting bars HUNDREDS of times to perfect them. In short, he is the true genius of the pianoforte and its beauty as an instrument and he never composed away from it because he had to hear how the notes etc. combined - paper writing wasn't good enough.

Answer 2

"Stand By Me" and " I Just Want To Dance"