<P> The "Polish character" of Chopin's work is unquestionable; not because he also wrote polonaises and mazurkas...which forms...were often stuffed with alien ideological and literary contents from the outside...As an artist he looked for forms that stood apart from the literary - dramatic character of music which was a feature of Romanticism, as a Pole he reflected in his work the very essence of the tragic break in the history of the people and instinctively aspired to give the deepest expression of his nation...For he understood that he could invest his music with the most enduring and truly Polish qualities only by liberating art from the confines of dramatic and historical contents . This attitude toward the question of "national music"--an inspired solution to his art--was the reason why Chopin's works have come to be understood everywhere outside of Poland...Therein lies the strange riddle of his eternal vigour . </P> <Tr> <Td> Karol Szymanowski, 1923 </Td> </Tr> <P> With his mazurkas and polonaises, Chopin has been credited with introducing to music a new sense of nationalism . Schumann, in his 1836 review of the piano concertos, highlighted the composer's strong feelings for his native Poland, writing that "Now that the Poles are in deep mourning (after the failure of the November Uprising of 1830), their appeal to us artists is even stronger...If the mighty autocrat in the north (i.e. Nicholas I of Russia) could know that in Chopin's works, in the simple strains of his mazurkas, there lurks a dangerous enemy, he would place a ban on his music . Chopin's works are cannon buried in flowers!" The biography of Chopin published in 1863 under the name of Franz Liszt (but probably written by Carolyne zu Sayn - Wittgenstein) states that Chopin "must be ranked first among the first musicians...individualizing in themselves the poetic sense of an entire nation ." </P> <P> Some modern commentators have argued against exaggerating Chopin's primacy as a "nationalist" or "patriotic" composer . George Golos refers to earlier "nationalist" composers in Central Europe, including Poland's Michał Kleofas Ogiński and Franciszek Lessel, who utilised polonaise and mazurka forms . Barbara Milewski suggests that Chopin's experience of Polish music came more from "urbanised" Warsaw versions than from folk music, and that attempts (by Jachimecki and others) to demonstrate genuine folk music in his works are without basis . Richard Taruskin impugns Schumann's attitude toward Chopin's works as patronizing and comments that Chopin "felt his Polish patriotism deeply and sincerely" but consciously modelled his works on the tradition of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Field . </P>

Describe the contributions of chopin to development of romantic music