The Eighteen Nocturnes

John Field invented the piano nocturne — a lyrical, contemplative piece with a singing melody over a broken-chord accompaniment — more than a decade before Chopin transformed it into the defining genre of Romantic piano music. Field's 18 nocturnes were composed over approximately three decades (c.1810–1837) and published singly or in groups, with no single collected edition appearing in his lifetime. The standard numbering derives from 19th-century posthumous collections. As a body, the nocturnes range from the simple, heartfelt beauty of the early E♭ and C minor examples to the more elaborate and ornamental later ones. They are the direct model for Chopin, who studied them carefully and acknowledged the debt, and through Chopin they shaped the entire Romantic piano tradition.