Author ORCID Identifier
Semester
Spring
Date of Graduation
2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Type
DMA
College
College of Creative Arts
Department
School of Music
Committee Chair
Peter Amstutz
Committee Co-Chair
Amy Simpson
Committee Member
Lucy Mauro
Committee Member
Hope Koehler
Committee Member
General McArthur Hambrick
Abstract
Chopin’s Innovation and Influence on the French Piano School: From his Predecessors to his Principal Students and Successors
Wenjun Xia
This research explores Frédéric Chopin's (1810–1849) innovations in piano technique, pedagogy, composition, and interpretation, as well as Chopin’s subsequent influence on the French piano school. Before Chopin’s arrival in Paris, the French piano school was primarily influenced by Louis Adam (1758–1848) and Friedrich Kalkbrenner (1785–1849), whose approaches dominated piano pedagogy at the Paris Conservatoire. Early French piano pedagogy centered on finger precision, virtuosity, and clarity, but expressivity was somewhat limited. Chopin initiated Romantic trends that emphasized emotion and natural physical motion. This study focuses on how Chopin’s unique performance style and pedagogy reshaped French pianistic traditions. The shift in French piano pedagogy and performance from its early 19th-century tradition to late 19th-century Romanticism resulted in a more expressive, free, and nuanced approach introduced and embodied by Chopin and his followers.
Chopin’s students and contemporaries, Georges Mathias (1826–1910), Karol Mikuli (1821–1897), and Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813–1888), along with later French pianists including Isidor Philipp (1863–1958) and Alfred Cortot (1877–1962), carried Chopin’s pedagogical ideals to succeeding generations.
Recommended Citation
Xia, Wenjun, "Chopin’s Innovation and Influence on the French Piano School: From his Predecessors to his Principal Students and Successors" (2025). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 12890.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/12890