The book contains extended articles from the 5th International Academic Conference The Sources of Chopin: Creative Style: Inspirations and Contexts, organised by the Institute in December 2005. This conference was the first of four conferences devoted to the style of Chopin's music in different periods of his life, within the context of European culture.

The articles examine the relations between Chopin’s music on one hand, and Polish folk music and existing stylistic trends in music – style brillant, bel canto, the music of the Viennese Classics and salon music – on the other. They also present newly discovered facts from Chopin’s life and discuss different phenomena in the artistic life of contemporary Warsaw that could have influenced Chopin's personality.