Early life Childhood Frédéric François Chopin was born in
Żelazowa Wola, 46 kilometres () west of Warsaw, in what was then the
Duchy of Warsaw, a Polish state established by
Napoleon. The parish baptismal record, which is dated 23 April 1810, gives his birthday as 22 February 1810, and cites his
given names in the Latin form (in Polish, he was ). The composer and his family used the birthdate 1 March, which is now generally accepted as the correct date. His father,
Nicolas Chopin, was a Frenchman from
Lorraine who emigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen. He married
Justyna Krzyżanowska, a poor relative of the Skarbeks, one of the families for whom he worked. Chopin was baptised in the same
Catholic church where his parents had married, in
Brochów. His eighteen-year-old
godfather, for whom he was named, was
Fryderyk Skarbek, a pupil of Nicolas Chopin. Chopin was the second child of Nicolas and Justyna and their only son; he had an elder sister,
Ludwika, and two younger sisters, Izabela and Emilia, whose death at the age of 14 was probably from
tuberculosis. Nicolas Chopin was devoted to his adopted homeland, and insisted on the use of the
Polish language in the household. , by
Mieroszewski, 1829 In October 1810, six months after Chopin's birth, the family moved to Warsaw, where his father acquired a post teaching French at the
Warsaw Lyceum, then housed in the
Saxon Palace. Chopin lived with his family on the Palace grounds. His father played the flute and violin; his mother played the piano and gave lessons to boys in the boarding house that the Chopins kept. Chopin was of slight build, and even in early childhood was prone to illnesses. Chopin may have had some piano instruction from his mother, but his first professional music tutor, from 1816 to 1821, was the
Czech-born pianist
Wojciech Żywny. His elder sister Ludwika also took lessons from Żywny, and occasionally played duets with her brother. It quickly became apparent that he was a
child prodigy. By the age of seven he had begun giving public concerts, and in 1817, he composed two
polonaises, in G minor and B major. His next work, a polonaise in A major of 1821, dedicated to Żywny, is his earliest surviving musical manuscript. In 1817, the Saxon Palace was requisitioned by Warsaw's Russian governor for military use, and the Warsaw Lyceum was reestablished in the
Kazimierz Palace (today the rectorate of
Warsaw University). Chopin and his family moved to a building, which still survives, adjacent to the Kazimierz Palace. During this period, he was sometimes invited to the
Belweder Palace as playmate to the son of the ruler of
Russian Poland,
Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich of Russia; he played the piano for Konstantin Pavlovich and composed a march for him.
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, in his dramatic
eclogue, "" ("Our Discourses", 1818), attested to "little Chopin's" popularity.
Education after 1853 From September 1823 to 1826, Chopin attended the Warsaw Lyceum, where he received organ lessons from the Czech musician
Wilhelm Würfel during his first year. In the autumn of 1826 he began a three-year course under the
Silesian composer
Józef Elsner at the
Warsaw Conservatory, studying
music theory,
figured bass, and
composition. Throughout this period he continued to compose and to give recitals in concerts and salons in Warsaw. He was engaged by the inventors of the "aeolomelodicon" (a combination of piano and mechanical organ), and on this instrument in May 1825 he performed his own improvisation and part of a concerto by
Moscheles. The success of this concert led to an invitation to give a recital on a similar instrument (the "aeolopantaleon") before
Tsar Alexander I, who was visiting Warsaw; the Tsar presented him with a diamond ring. At a subsequent aeolopantaleon concert on 10 June 1825, Chopin performed his
Rondo Op. 1. This was the first of his works to be commercially published and earned him his first mention in the foreign press, when the Leipzig praised his "wealth of musical ideas". From 1824 until 1828, Chopin spent his vacations away from Warsaw, at a number of locations. In 1824 and 1825, at
Szafarnia, he was a guest of
Dominik Dziewanowski, the father of a schoolmate. Here, for the first time, he encountered Polish rural
folk music. His letters home from Szafarnia (to which he gave the title "The Szafarnia Courier"), written in a very modern and lively Polish, amused his family with their
spoofing of the Warsaw newspapers and demonstrated the youngster's literary gift. In 1827, soon after the death of Chopin's youngest sister Emilia, the family moved from the Warsaw University building, adjacent to the Kazimierz Palace, to
lodgings just across the street from the university, in the south annex of the
Krasiński Palace (aka "Czapski Palace") on
Krakowskie Przedmieście, where Chopin lived until he left Warsaw in 1830. Here his parents continued running their boarding house for male students. Four boarders at his parents' apartments became Chopin's intimates:
Tytus Woyciechowski,
Jan Nepomucen Białobłocki,
Jan Matuszyński, and
Julian Fontana. The latter two would become part of his Paris milieu. , 1829 Chopin was friendly with members of Warsaw's young artistic and intellectual world, including Fontana,
Józef Bohdan Zaleski, and
Stefan Witwicki. Chopin's final Conservatory report (July 1829) read: "Chopin F., third-year student, exceptional talent, musical genius." In 1829,
Ambroży Mieroszewski executed a set of portraits of Chopin family members, including the first known portrait of the composer. Letters from Chopin to Woyciechowski in the period 1829–30 (when Chopin was about twenty) contain apparent homoerotic references to dreams and to offered kisses. before 1879 According to
Adam Zamoyski, such expressions "were, and to some extent still are, common currency in Polish and carry no greater implication than the 'love concluding letters today. "The spirit of the times, pervaded by the Romantic movement in art and literature, favoured extreme expression of feeling ... Whilst the possibility cannot be ruled out entirely, it is unlikely that the two were ever lovers." Chopin's biographer
Alan Walker considers that, insofar as such expressions could be perceived as homosexual in nature, they would not denote more than a passing phase in Chopin's life, or be the resultin Walker's wordsof a "mental twist". The musicologist
Jeffrey Kallberg notes that concepts of sexual practice and identity were very different in Chopin's time, so modern interpretation is problematic. Other
scholars argue that these are clear, or potential, demonstrations of homosexual impulses on Chopin's part. Probably in early 1829, Chopin met the singer
Konstancja Gładkowska and developed an intense affection for her, although it is not clear that he ever addressed her directly on the matter. In a letter to Woyciechowski of 3 October 1829 he refers to his "ideal, whom I have served faithfully for six months, though without ever saying a word to her about my feelings; whom I dream of, who inspired the Adagio of my Concerto". All of Chopin's biographers, following the lead of
Frederick Niecks, agree that this "ideal" was Gładkowska. After what would be Chopin's farewell concert in Warsaw in October 1830, which included the concerto, played by the composer, and Gładkowska singing an aria by
Gioachino Rossini, the two exchanged rings, and two weeks later she wrote in his album some affectionate lines bidding him farewell. After Chopin left Warsaw, he and Gładkowska did not meet and apparently did not correspond.
Career Travel and domestic success , 1829 (painting by
Siemiradzki, 1887) In September 1828, Chopin, while still a student, visited Berlin with a family friend, zoologist
Feliks Jarocki, enjoying operas directed by
Gaspare Spontini and attending concerts by
Carl Friedrich Zelter,
Felix Mendelssohn, and other celebrities. On an 1829 return trip to Berlin, he was a guest of Prince
Antoni Radziwiłł, governor of the
Grand Duchy of Posenhimself an accomplished composer and aspiring cellist. For the prince and his pianist daughter Wanda, he composed his
Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C major for cello and piano, Op. 3. Back in Warsaw that year, Chopin heard
Niccolò Paganini play the violin, and composed a set of variations, . It may have been this experience that encouraged him to commence writing his first
Études (1829–1832), exploring the capacities of his own instrument. After completing his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory, he made his debut in Vienna. He gave two piano concerts and received many favourable reviewsin addition to some commenting (in Chopin's own words) that he was "too delicate for those accustomed to the piano-bashing of local artists". In the first of these concerts, he premiered his
Variations on , Op. 2 (variations on a duet from
Mozart's opera
Don Giovanni) for piano and orchestra. He returned to Warsaw in September 1829, where he premiered his
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21 on 17 March 1830. Chopin's successes as a composer and performer opened the door to western Europe for him, and on 2 November 1830, he set out, in the words of
Zdzisław Jachimecki, "into the wide world, with no very clearly defined aim, forever". With Woyciechowski, he headed for Austria again, intending to go on to Italy. Later that month, in Warsaw, the
November 1830 Uprising broke out, and Woyciechowski returned to Poland to enlist. Chopin, now alone in Vienna, was nostalgic for his homeland, and wrote to a friend, "I curse the moment of my departure." When in September 1831 he learned, while travelling from Vienna to Paris, that the uprising had been crushed, he expressed his anguish in the pages of his private journal: "Oh God! ... You are there, and yet you do not take vengeance!". The journal is now in the
National Library of Poland. Jachimecki ascribes to these events the composer's maturing "into an inspired
national bard who intuited the past, present and future of his native Poland".
Paris , 1835 When he left Warsaw on 2 November 1830, Chopin had intended to go to Italy, but violent unrest there made that a dangerous destination. His next choice was Paris; difficulties obtaining a visa from Russian authorities resulted in him obtaining transit permission from the French. In later years he would quote the passport's endorsement ("In transit to London via Paris"), joking that he was in the city "only in passing". Chopin arrived in Paris on 5 October 1831; he would never return to Poland, thus becoming one of many expatriates of the Polish
Great Emigration. In France, he used the French versions of his given names, and after receiving French citizenship in 1835, he travelled on a French passport. Chopin remained close to his fellow Poles in exile as friends and confidants. He never felt fully comfortable speaking French or considered himself to be French, despite his father's French origins. According to
Adam Zamoyski, he always saw himself as a Pole. In Paris, Chopin encountered artists and other distinguished figures and found many opportunities to exercise his talents and achieve celebrity. During his years in Paris, he was to become acquainted with, among many others,
Hector Berlioz,
Franz Liszt,
Ferdinand Hiller,
Heinrich Heine,
Eugène Delacroix,
Alfred de Vigny, and
Friedrich Kalkbrenner, who introduced him to the piano manufacturer
Camille Pleyel. This was the beginning of a long and close association between the composer and Pleyel's instruments. Chopin was also acquainted with the poet
Adam Mickiewicz, principal of the Polish Literary Society, some of whose verses he set as songs. He also was more than once guest of Marquis
Astolphe de Custine, one of his fervent admirers, playing his works in Custine's salon. Two Polish friends in Paris were also to play important roles in Chopin's life there. A fellow student at the Warsaw Conservatory, Julian Fontana, had originally tried unsuccessfully to establish himself in England; Fontana was to become, in the words of the music historian Jim Samson, Chopin's "general
factotum and copyist".
Albert Grzymała, who in Paris became a wealthy financier and society figure, often acted as Chopin's adviser and, in Zamoyski's words, "gradually began to fill the role of elder brother in [his] life". On 7 December 1831, Chopin received the first major endorsement from an outstanding contemporary when
Robert Schumann, reviewing the Op. 2 Variations in the (his first published article on music), declared: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius." On 26 February 1832 Chopin gave a debut Paris concert in the at 9 rue Cadet, which drew universal admiration. The critic
François-Joseph Fétis wrote in the : "Here is a young man who ... taking no model, has found, if not a complete renewal of piano music, ... an abundance of original ideas of a kind to be found nowhere else ..." After this concert, Chopin realised that his essentially intimate keyboard technique was not optimal for large concert spaces. Later that year he was introduced to the wealthy
Rothschild banking family, whose
patronage also opened doors for him to other private
salons (social gatherings of the aristocracy and artistic and literary elite). By the end of 1832 Chopin had established himself among the Parisian musical elite and had earned the respect of his peers such as Hiller, Liszt, and Berlioz. He no longer depended financially upon his father, and in the winter of 1832, he began earning a handsome income from publishing his works and teaching piano to affluent students from all over Europe. This freed him from the strains of public concert-giving, which he disliked. Chopin seldom performed publicly in Paris. In later years he generally gave a single annual concert at the
Salle Pleyel, a venue that seated three hundred. He played more frequently at salons but preferred playing at his own Paris apartment for small groups of friends. The musicologist
Arthur Hedley has observed that "As a pianist Chopin was unique in acquiring a reputation of the highest order on the basis of a minimum of public appearancesfew more than thirty in the course of his lifetime." The list of musicians who took part in some of his concerts indicates the richness of Parisian artistic life during this period. Examples include a concert on 23 March 1833, in which Chopin, Liszt, and Hiller performed (on pianos) a
concerto by J. S. Bach for three keyboards; and, on 3 March 1838, a concert in which Chopin, his pupil
Adolphe Gutmann,
Charles-Valentin Alkan, and Alkan's teacher
Joseph Zimmermann performed Alkan's arrangement, for eight hands, of two movements from
Beethoven's
7th symphony. Chopin was also involved in the composition of Liszt's
Hexameron; he wrote the sixth (and final) variation on
Bellini's theme. Chopin's music soon found success with publishers, and in 1833, he contracted with
Maurice Schlesinger, who arranged for it to be published not only in France but, through his family connections, also in Germany and England. , self-portrait In the spring of 1834, Chopin attended the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in
Aix-la-Chapelle with Hiller, and it was there that Chopin met Felix Mendelssohn. After the festival, the three visited
Düsseldorf, where Mendelssohn had been appointed musical director. They spent what Mendelssohn described as "a very agreeable day", playing and discussing music at his piano, and met
Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow, director of the Academy of Art, and some of his eminent pupils such as
Lessing,
Bendemann,
Hildebrandt and
Sohn. In 1835, Chopin went to
Carlsbad, where he spent time with his parents; it was the last time he would see them. On his way back to Paris, he met old friends from Warsaw, the Wodzińskis, their sons, and their daughters, amongst which
Maria, whom he occasionally had given piano lessons in Poland. This meeting prompted him to stay for two weeks in Dresden, when he had previously intended to return to Paris via
Leipzig. The sixteen-year-old girl's portrait of the composer has been considered, along with Delacroix's, as among the best likenesses of Chopin. In October he finally reached Leipzig, where he met Schumann,
Clara Wieck, and Mendelssohn, who organised for him a performance of his own oratorio
St. Paul, and who considered him "a perfect musician". In July 1836 Chopin travelled to
Marienbad and
Dresden to be with the Wodziński family, and in September he proposed to Maria, whose mother Countess Wodzińska approved in principle. Chopin went on to Leipzig, where he presented Schumann with his
G minor Ballade. At the end of 1836, he sent Maria an album in which his sister Ludwika had inscribed seven of his songs, and his 1830
Nocturne in C minor, Lento con gran espresisione. The anodyne thanks he received from Maria proved to be the last letter he was to have from her.
Franz Liszt , 1838 Although it is not known exactly when Chopin first met
Franz Liszt after arriving in Paris, on 12 December 1831, he mentioned in a letter to his friend Woyciechowski that "I have met
Rossini,
Cherubini,
Baillot, etc.also Kalkbrenner. You would not believe how curious I was about
Herz, Liszt, Hiller, etc." Liszt was in attendance at Chopin's Parisian debut on 26 February 1832 at the Salle Pleyel, which led him to remark: "The most vigorous applause seemed not to suffice to our enthusiasm in the presence of this talented musician, who revealed a new phase of poetic sentiment combined with such happy innovation in the form of his art." The two became friends, and for many years lived close to each other in Paris, Chopin at 38 , and Liszt at the on the , a few blocks away. They performed together on seven occasions between 1833 and 1841. The first, on 2 April 1833, was at a benefit concert organised by Hector Berlioz for his bankrupt Shakespearean actress wife
Harriet Smithson, during which they played
George Onslow's
Sonata in F minor for piano duet. Later joint appearances included a benefit concert for the Benevolent Association of Polish Ladies in Paris. Their last appearance together in public was for a charity concert conducted for the
Beethoven Monument in Bonn, held at the Salle Pleyel and the Paris Conservatory on 25 and 26 April 1841. Although the two displayed great respect and admiration for each other, their friendship was uneasy and had some qualities of a love–hate relationship.
Harold C. Schonberg believes that Chopin displayed a "tinge of jealousy and spite" towards Liszt's virtuosity on the piano, and others have also argued that he had become enchanted with Liszt's theatricality, showmanship, and success. Liszt was the dedicatee of Chopin's Op. 10 , and his performance of them prompted the composer to write to Hiller, "I should like to rob him of the way he plays my studies." However, Chopin expressed annoyance in 1843 when Liszt performed one of his nocturnes with the addition of numerous intricate embellishments, at which Chopin remarked that he should play the music as written or not play it at all, forcing an apology. Most biographers of Chopin state that after this the two had little to do with each other, although in his letters dated as late as 1848 he still referred to him as "my friend Liszt". Some commentators point to events in the two men's romantic lives which led to a rift between them; there are claims that Liszt had displayed jealousy of his mistress
Marie d'Agoult's obsession with Chopin, while others believe that Chopin had become concerned about Liszt's growing relationship with
George Sand.
George Sand 's
joint portrait of Chopin and Sand, 1838 In 1836, at a party hosted by Marie d'Agoult, Chopin met the French author George Sand (born [Amantine] Aurore [Lucile] Dupin). Short (under five feet, or 152 cm), dark, big-eyed and a cigar smoker, she initially repelled Chopin, who remarked, "What an unattractive person
la Sand is. Is she really a woman?" However, by early 1837 Maria Wodzińska's mother had made it clear to Chopin in correspondence that a marriage with her daughter was unlikely to proceed. It is thought that she was influenced by his poor health and possibly also by rumours about his associations with women such as d'Agoult and Sand. Chopin placed the letters he had received from Maria and her mother into a large envelope, wrote on it the words ("My sorrow"), and to the end of his life retained in a desk drawer this keepsake of the second love of his life. Sand, in a letter to Grzymała of June 1838, admitted strong feelings for the composer and debated whether to abandon a current affair to begin a relationship with Chopin; she asked Grzymała to assess Chopin's relationship with Maria Wodzińska, without realising that the affair, at least from Maria's side, was over. In June 1837, Chopin visited London incognito in the company of the piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel, where he played at a musical soirée at the house of English piano maker
James Broadwood. On his return to Paris his association with Sand began in earnest, and by July 1838 they had become lovers. Sand, who was six years older than the composer and had had a series of lovers, wrote at this time: "I must say I was confused and amazed at the effect this little creature had on me ... I have still not recovered from my astonishment, and if I were a proud person I should be feeling humiliated at having been carried away ..." The two spent a miserable winter on
Mallorca (8 November 1838 to 13 February 1839), where, together with Sand's two children, they had journeyed in the hope of improving Chopin's health and that of Sand's 15-year-old son
Maurice, and also to escape the threats of Sand's former lover
Félicien Mallefille. After discovering that the couple were not married, the deeply traditional Catholic people of Mallorca became inhospitable, making accommodation difficult to find. This compelled the group to take lodgings in a former
Carthusian monastery in
Valldemossa, which gave little shelter from the cold winter weather. sewing, from
Delacroix's
joint portrait of Chopin and Sand, 1838 On 3 December 1838, Chopin complained about his bad health and the incompetence of the doctors in Mallorca, commenting: "The three most celebrated doctors on the island have seen me ... The first said I was dead, the second that I am dying, and the third that I'm going to die." He also had problems having his
Pleyel piano sent to him, having to rely in the meantime on a piano made in
Palma by Juan Bauza. The Pleyel piano finally arrived from Paris in December, just shortly before Chopin and Sand left the island. Chopin wrote to Pleyel in January 1839: "I am sending you my
Preludes [Op. 28]. I finished them on your little piano, which arrived in the best possible condition in spite of the sea, the bad weather and the Palma customs." Chopin was also able to undertake work while in Mallorca on his
Ballade No. 2, Op. 38; on two
Polonaises, Op. 40; and on the
Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39. Although this period had been productive, the bad weather had such a detrimental effect on Chopin's health that Sand determined to leave the island. To avoid further customs duties, Sand sold the piano to a local French couple, the Canuts. The group travelled first to
Barcelona, then to
Marseille, where they stayed for a few months while Chopin convalesced. While in Marseille, Chopin made a rare appearance at the organ during a requiem mass for the tenor
Adolphe Nourrit on 24 April 1839, playing a transcription of
Franz Schubert's (D. 939). George Sand gives a description of Chopin's playing in a letter of 28 April 1839: In May 1839, they headed to Sand's estate at
Nohant for the summer, where they spent most of the following summers until 1846. In autumn they returned to Paris, where Chopin's apartment at 5 rue Tronchet was close to Sand's rented accommodation on the rue Pigalle. He frequently visited Sand in the evenings, but both retained some independence. (In 1842, he and Sand moved to the
Square d'Orléans, living in adjacent buildings.) On 26 July 1840, Chopin and Sand were present at the dress rehearsal of Berlioz's , composed to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the
July Revolution. Chopin was reportedly unimpressed with the composition. During the summers at Nohant, particularly in the years 1839–1843 (except 1840), Chopin found quiet, productive days during which he composed many works, including his
Polonaise in A major, Op. 53. Sand compellingly describes Chopin's creative process: an inspiration, its painstaking elaboration – sometimes amid tormented weeping and complaining, with hundreds of changes in concept – only to return finally to the initial idea. Among the visitors to Nohant were Delacroix and the mezzo-soprano
Pauline Viardot, whom Chopin had advised on piano technique and composition. Delacroix gives an account of staying at Nohant in a letter of 7 June 1842:
Decline From 1842 onwards, Chopin showed signs of serious illness. After a solo recital in Paris on 21 February 1842, he wrote to Grzymała: "I have to lie in bed all day long, my mouth and tonsils are aching so much." He was forced by illness to decline a written invitation from Alkan to participate in a repeat performance of the Beethoven 7th Symphony arrangement at
Érard's on 1 March 1843. Late in 1844,
Charles Hallé visited Chopin and found him "hardly able to move, bent like a half-opened penknife and evidently in great pain", although his spirits returned when he started to play the piano for his visitor. Chopin's health continued to deteriorate, particularly from this time onwards. Modern research suggests that apart from any other illnesses, he may also have suffered from
temporal lobe epilepsy. Chopin's output as a composer throughout this period declined in quantity year by year. Whereas in 1841 he had written a dozen works, only six were written in 1842 and six shorter pieces in 1843. In 1844 he wrote only the
Op. 58 sonata. 1845 saw the completion of three mazurkas (Op. 59). Although these works were more refined than many of his earlier compositions, Zamoyski concludes that "his powers of concentration were failing and his inspiration was beset by anguish, both emotional and intellectual". Chopin's relations with Sand were soured in 1846 by problems involving her daughter
Solange and Solange's fiancé, the young fortune-hunting sculptor
Auguste Clésinger. The composer frequently took Solange's side in quarrels with her mother; he also faced jealousy from Sand's son Maurice. Moreover, Chopin was indifferent to Sand's radical political pursuits, including her enthusiasm for the
February Revolution of 1848. As the composer's illness progressed, Sand had become less of a lover and more of a nurse to Chopin, whom she called her "third child". In letters to third parties she vented her impatience, referring to him as a "child", a "poor angel", a "sufferer", and a "beloved little corpse". In 1847, Sand published her novel
Lucrezia Floriani, whose main charactersa rich actress and a prince in weak healthcould be interpreted as Sand and Chopin. In Chopin's presence, Sand read the manuscript aloud to Delacroix, who was both shocked and mystified by its implications, writing that "Madame Sand was perfectly at ease and Chopin could hardly stop making admiring comments". That year their relationship ended following an angry correspondence which, in Sand's words, made "a strange conclusion to nine years of exclusive friendship". Grzymała, who had followed their romance from the beginning, commented, "If [Chopin] had not had the misfortune of meeting G. S. [George Sand], who poisoned his whole being, he would have lived to be Cherubini's age." Chopin would die two years later at thirty-nine; the composer Luigi Cherubini had died in Paris in 1842 at the age of 81.
Tour of Great Britain with young Fanny Elgin, Chopin's public popularity as a virtuoso began to wane, as did the number of his pupils, and this, together with the political strife and instability of the time, caused him to struggle financially. In February 1848, with the cellist
Auguste Franchomme, he gave his last Paris concert, which included three movements of the
Cello Sonata Op. 65. In April, during the 1848 Revolution in Paris, he left for London, where he performed at several concerts and numerous receptions in great houses. This tour was suggested to him by his Scottish pupil
Jane Stirling and her elder sister. Stirling also made all the logistical arrangements and provided much of the necessary funding. In London, Chopin took lodgings at
Dover Street, where the firm of
Broadwood provided him with a grand piano. At his first engagement, on 15 May at
Stafford House, the audience included
Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert. The Prince, who was himself a talented musician, moved close to the keyboard to view Chopin's technique. Broadwood also arranged concerts for him; among those attending were the author
William Makepeace Thackeray and the singer
Jenny Lind. Chopin was also sought after for piano lessons, for which he charged the high fee of one
guinea per hour, and for private recitals for which the fee was 20 guineas. At a concert on 7 July he shared the platform with Viardot, who sang arrangements of some of his mazurkas to Spanish texts. A few days later, he performed for
Thomas Carlyle and his wife
Jane at
their home in
Chelsea. On 28 August he played at a concert in Manchester's Gentlemen's Concert Hall, sharing the stage with
Marietta Alboni and
Lorenzo Salvi. In late summer he was invited by Jane Stirling to visit Scotland, where he stayed at Calder House near
Edinburgh and at
Johnstone Castle in Renfrewshire, both owned by members of Stirling's family. She clearly had a notion of going beyond mere friendship, and Chopin was obliged to make it clear to her that this could not be so. He wrote at this time to Grzymała: "My Scottish ladies are kind, but such bores", and responding to a rumour about his involvement, answered that he was "closer to the grave than the nuptial bed". He gave a public concert in Glasgow on 27 September, and another in Edinburgh at the Hopetoun Rooms on Queen Street (now Erskine House) on 4 October. In late October 1848, while staying at 10 Warriston Crescent in Edinburgh with the Polish physician Adam Łyszczyński, he wrote out his last will and testament"a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere", he wrote to Grzymała. Chopin made his last public appearance on a concert platform at London's
Guildhall on 16 November 1848, when, in a final patriotic gesture, he played for the benefit of Polish refugees. This gesture proved to be a mistake, as most of the participants were more interested in the dancing and refreshments than in Chopin's piano artistry, which drained him. By this time he was very seriously ill, weighing under 45 kg (99 lb), and his doctors were aware that his sickness was at a terminal stage. At the end of November Chopin returned to Paris. He passed the winter in unremitting illness, but gave occasional lessons and was visited by friends, including Delacroix and Franchomme. Occasionally he played, or accompanied the singing of
Delfina Potocka, for his friends. During the summer of 1849, his friends found him an apartment in
Chaillot, out of the centre of the city, for which the rent was secretly subsidised by an admirer, Princess Yekaterina Dmitrievna Soutzos-Obreskova. He was visited here by Jenny Lind in June 1849.
Death and funeral , 1849, commissioned by
Jane Stirling. From left:
Aleksander Jełowicki; Chopin's sister
Ludwika;
Marcelina Czartoryska;
Wojciech Grzymała; and Teofil Kwiatkowski With his health further deteriorating, Chopin desired to have a family member with him. In June 1849 his sister Ludwika came to Paris with her husband and daughter, and in September, he took an apartment at the
Hôtel Baudard de Saint-James on the
Place Vendôme, with rent possibly supported by Jane Stirling. After 15 October, when his condition took a marked turn for the worse, only a handful of his closest friends remained with him. Viardot remarked sardonically, though, that "all the grand Parisian ladies considered it to faint in his room". Some of his friends provided music at his request; among them, Potocka sang and Franchomme played the cello. Chopin bequeathed his unfinished notes on a piano tuition method, , to Alkan for completion. On 17 October, after midnight, the physician leaned over him and asked whether he was suffering greatly. "No longer", he replied. He died a few minutes before 2 a.m. He was 39. Those present at the deathbed appear to have included his sister Ludwika, Fr.
Aleksander Jełowicki, Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, Sand's daughter Solange, and his close friend Thomas Albrecht. Later that morning, Solange's husband Clésinger made Chopin's
death mask and a cast of his left hand. The funeral, held at the
Church of the Madeleine in Paris, was delayed almost two weeks until 30 October. Entrance was restricted to ticket holders, as many people were expected to attend. Over 3,000 people arrived without invitations, from as far as London, Berlin and Vienna, and were excluded.
Mozart's Requiem was sung at the funeral; the soloists were
Jeanne-Anaïs Castellan, Viardot,
Alexis Dupont, and
Luigi Lablache; Chopin's Preludes No. 4 in E minor and No. 6 in B minor were played by organist
Alfred Lefébure-Wély. The funeral procession to
Père Lachaise Cemetery, which included Chopin's sister Ludwika, was led by the aged Prince
Adam Czartoryski. The pallbearers included Delacroix, Franchomme, and Camille Pleyel. At the graveside, the
Funeral March from
Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 was played, in
Reber's instrumentation. , enclosing (at bottom) Chopin's heart Chopin's tombstone, featuring the
muse of music,
Euterpe, weeping over a broken
lyre, was designed and sculpted by Clésinger and installed on the anniversary of his death in 1850. The expenses of the monument, amounting to 4,500 francs, were covered by Jane Stirling, who also paid for the return of the composer's sister Ludwika to Warsaw. As requested by Chopin, Ludwika took
his heart (which had been removed by his doctor
Jean Cruveilhier and preserved in alcohol in a vase) back to Poland in 1850. She also took a collection of 200 letters from Sand to Chopin; after 1851 these were returned to Sand, who destroyed them. Chopin's disease and the cause of his death have been topics of debate. His death certificate gave the cause as
tuberculosis, and his physician, Cruveilhier, was then the leading French authority on this disease. Other possibilities advanced have included
cystic fibrosis,
cirrhosis, and
alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency. A visual examination of Chopin's preserved heart (the jar was not opened), conducted in 2014 and first published in the
American Journal of Medicine in 2017, suggested that the likely cause of his death was a rare case of
pericarditis caused by complications of chronic tuberculosis. ==Music==