Here's something wild: Frédéric Chopin, one of history's greatest composers, wrote almost exclusively for solo piano. No symphonies, no operas, barely any orchestral music. Just him and his beloved instrument, yet he completely revolutionized what the piano could express.

Born in Poland in 1810, Chopin left Warsaw at 20 and never returned to his homeland. He spent most of his creative life in Paris, where he became the darling of aristocratic salons despite being painfully shy and preferring intimate gatherings to concert halls. Unlike the showman Liszt, Chopin rarely performed publicly—he'd give maybe one concert a year. His playing was so delicate that people in the back rows sometimes couldn't hear him. But those lucky enough to sit close described his performances as pure magic, with a touch so nuanced it seemed like the piano was singing.

Here's a heartbreaker: Chopin died at just 39 from tuberculosis, but not before composing some of the most emotionally raw music ever written. His Revolutionary Étude? Written in fury after hearing Warsaw had fallen to Russian forces. And get this—when he died in Paris in 1849, his sister smuggled his heart back to Poland in a jar of cognac, where it remains sealed in a Warsaw church to this day. Talk about leaving your heart in your homeland.