Chopin

He left Warsaw at twenty and never returned. He spent the rest of his life in Paris, living on aristocratic pupils and published editions, and gave perhaps thirty public concerts in total. He died of tuberculosis at thirty-nine; at his request his sister carried his heart back to Warsaw, where it is still sealed in a pillar of the Church of the Holy Cross.

He wrote almost exclusively for the piano and made it into an instrument that breathes. In the mazurkas and polonaises the rhythmic weight falls on unexpected beats — that is the grammar of Polish dance, not ornament. His rubato means literally 'stolen time': the left hand keeps the pulse while the right borrows from it and pays it back. When you hear a nocturne, listen to the left hand. That is where the technique actually is.