Chopin was a child prodigy. He was writing his own music by the time he was seven, and giving public piano concerts by the time he was eight. People said his fingers seemed to dance over the keys, even when his hands were tiny.
He grew up listening to the folk music of the Polish countryside - the bouncy dances called mazurkas and polonaises that people played at village weddings. When he became a famous composer he wove that folk music into his pieces. His mazurkas and polonaises are like a postcard from Polish villages, turned into music you can play on a piano.
Chopin moved to Paris as a young man and lived there for the rest of his life, but he never stopped feeling Polish. He kept a small jar of Polish soil with him wherever he travelled. When he played the piano at parties, people said you could close your eyes and almost smell the fields and woods of Poland.
Today Warsaw has a famous Chopin Competition every five years. Young pianists from all over the world come to play his music. The competition is shown on TV, and the winner becomes famous overnight - a bit like Eurovision, but for piano.