Martha Argerich: Fifteen Facts About One of the Greatest Pianists Ever

by Emily E. Hogstad

Martha Argerich is simultaneously one of the most celebrated and most enigmatic of classical music stars. Many people call her the greatest pianist of her generation – and others, the greatest pianist who ever lived!

Today, we are taking a look at the life and career of this fascinating woman and looking at fifteen facts you might not have known about her.

1. Martha Argerich was a precocious child.

Martha Argerich as a kid

She began kindergarten before her third birthday. One day, a schoolmate teased her that she couldn’t play piano. She then proceeded to sit down and play a piece by ear that their teacher had just played for them. She was just three years old.

2. Her first piano teacher was Italian pianist Vincenzo Scaramuzza.

He said of her that she may have been six, but she had the soul of a 40-year-old.

3. When she was a teenager, her family moved to Europe, and she began studying with one of the quirkiest pianists of all time.

Friedrich Gulda and Martha Argerich

His name was Friedrich Gulda, and he flouted convention by doing things like playing a concert in the nude and even faking his own death. His rebellious spirit appealed to Argerich, and although she only studied with him for eighteen months, she has cited him as one of the most important influences in her musical life.

4. When she was sixteen years old, she won two major competitions within the span of three weeks:

The Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition. 

5. When she was a young woman, she gave up the piano for three years.

Martha Argerich

During this time, she considered becoming a doctor or a secretary. Luckily for listeners, she returned to the keyboard, and she won the 1965 Chopin competition when she was twenty-four, shortly after her break and after having given birth to her first child.

6. Her personal life has been tumultuous.

Her first husband was composer and conductor Robert Chen, a friend whom she was married to briefly in 1964. In 1969, she married conductor Charles Dutoit, who became a trusted musical collaborator. In the 1970s she was partnered with pianist Stephen Kovacevich. She had three daughters, one during each relationship. 

7. Argerich was an unconventional mom.

She liked having her kids at home rather than sending them to school, and she fostered a bohemian atmosphere, often staying up all night and sleeping well past noon. She did not have custody of her first daughter, Lyda Chen, and didn’t see her very often until she was a teenager. The two have reconciled and, according to a 2016 profile in the Washington Post, mother and daughter remain close.

8. Martha Argerich speaks six languages:

Spanish (her native language), Portuguese, French, English, German, and Italian. She spoke French at home when raising her daughters.

9. She can feel “lonely” onstage.

To combat this, she has shied away from solo repertoire and focused on chamber music and concerto performances, where she has other musicians to bounce ideas off of.

10. She is notorious for canceling appearances, due to incapacitating stage fright.

This happens so often that she doesn’t sign contracts. She also loathes giving interviews, which is why you read so few of them.

11. Her repertoire is relatively small.

Martha Argerich with The Philadelphia Orchestra, 2008 © carnegiehall.org

She doesn’t like to perform pieces that she doesn’t feel a deep connection with. Her favorite composers, and the composers she feels the deepest connection to, include Schumann, Ravel, and Chopin.

12. She loves Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto so much that she has never played it in public.

She also says that hearing Stephen Kovacevich playing this concerto was the thing that made her fall in love with him. She believes she will never play it in public. It’s the only Beethoven piano concerto that she hasn’t performed.

13. She travels the world with a stuffed Paddington bear.

Argerich’s oldest daughter told Gramophone in 2021, “She is always hugging her Paddington Bear and it is falling to pieces. This is the bear that Stéphanie [her youngest daughter] offered her to protect her during her travels, and has been traveling for at least 25 years, and recently had a change of clothes which was very complicated because we could not find exactly the right red hat and blue outfit.”

14. Martha Argerich was diagnosed with malignant melanoma in 1990.

She was forty-nine years old. It was treated and went into remission, but then returned five years later. Luckily, an experimental treatment in California resulted in Argerich becoming cancer-free.

15. In 2012 Stéphanie Argerich filmed a thoughtful documentary about her mother called Bloody Daughter.

In it, Martha Argerich comes across as a magnetic presence, simultaneously intense and childlike. In a poignant voiceover, Stéphanie says, “My mother is a supernatural being in touch of something beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. In fact, I’m the daughter of a goddess.”

How These Ten Pieces Can Help Writers Unlock Creativity

by Emily E. Hogstad

Writing is hard. It’s a lonely pursuit requiring not only focus and discipline, but inspiration, too.

While there are many tools and techniques that writers can use to boost their creativity, one often overlooked resource is classical music.

© helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com

Today we’re looking at ten famous pieces of classical music and why they might appeal to writers.

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a writer or just starting out, here’s how these classical pieces can help you unlock your full potential and take your writing to the next level.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: MOONLIGHT SONATA

This melancholy piece for solo piano will encourage writerly introspection, enabling authors to explore their deepest thoughts and feelings…even when those thoughts and feelings might be dark or sad.

Its mesmerizing triplet rhythm will help writers get into a meditative creative groove, too. 

ANTONIO VIVALDI: THE FOUR SEASONS

The ever-shifting moods contained within these four timeless concertos by Vivaldi will inspire writers to weave a diverse range of emotions and experiences into their writing. 

Here’s a hint: if you want a modern take on these concertos, try listening to Max Richter’s Recomposed, a reimagining of Vivaldi’s original music. It sounds like a movie soundtrack. 

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: REQUIEM IN D MINOR

The haunting melodies and solemn nature of this masterpiece will help writers contemplate profound questions about life, death, and the human condition.

Mozart died young while writing the Requiem. Hopefully apart from the music, that story will encourage authors to seize the day and prioritize that writing project they’ve always dreamed about tackling. 

J.S. BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

This intricate piece for keyboard will inspire writers to strive for perfection in their craft and pay attention to every little detail, just like Bach did.

The thoughtful complexity of the Goldberg Variations – like so much of Bach’s music, and Baroque music in general – can help writers of all kinds to get into a particularly productive flow state. 

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY: SWAN LAKE

The grandiose gestures of this iconic Romantic ballet will help writers channel their inner drama queen and imbue their writing with a sense of old-fashioned romance.

This is perfect music for when you’re writing characters experiencing fierce arguments, grand realizations, or passionate love affairs. 

CLAUDE DEBUSSY: CLAIR DE LUNE

This dreamy, atmospheric solo piano piece will transport writers into a world of inspiration, enabling them to easily visualize the beauty of a moonlit night.

This piece would be perfect to listen to while writing quiet scenes between two characters, or the inner monologue of a character who is alone and lost in thought. 

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL: MESSIAH

The soaring melodies and powerful choral outbursts of Handel’s masterpiece will inspire writers to explore themes of faith, hope, and redemption, and infuse their writing with a sense of transcendence and wonder.

And again, like so much Baroque music, its propulsive rhythms will help writers get into that sought-after creative groove.

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN: NOCTURNES

The moody, atmospheric nature of these piano pieces evokes a sense of longing and introspection in any writer and will inspire them to delve into their characters’ inner worlds.

The nocturnes would be especially perfect for anyone writing historical fiction or Gothic drama. Nothing conjures up a Victorian parlor or doomed period romance like Chopin’s piano music! 

Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 1

The majesty of Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 will inspire writers to think big and aim for greatness, while the soaring melodies and powerful crescendos might give them ideas about how to build suspense and excitement in their own work.

This piece should also inspire every writer to keep at their craft and never give up, because this symphony took Brahms over twenty years to compose! The next time you have a bad writing day, think of Brahms and his persistence. 

GUSTAV HOLST: THE PLANETS

Each movement of The Planets represents a different planet in the solar system, so you can imagine how dramatic this music gets!

It’s no coincidence that The Planets often sounds like movie music. Composer John Williams was deeply inspired by Holst’s portrait of the cosmos when composing his classic soundtracks. 

These ten pieces of classical music are only the beginning. By taking the time to explore different genres, composers, and pieces, writers can tap into a rich source of inspiration – and in the process, unlock their full creative potential.

Happy writing!

The Great Composers’ Final Works

by Emily E. Hogstad 

A jaw-dropping collection of technically dazzling fugues, stopped mid-measure, annotated by a poignant note from a grieving son.

Two delicate mazurkas that the composer was too sick to play and never heard performed.

A cantata for the freemasons.

A standard string quartet movement requested by a publisher to replace a masterpiece finale.

A song about a carrier pigeon.

These are descriptions of the final works of the most famous composers in classical music history. Composers rarely choose which piece will be the last one in their output. As a result, the stories behind all of them are varied – and very fascinating.

Bach’s Final Work: Art of Fugue

3D portrait of J.S. Bach by Hadi Karimi

The most famous final work in classical music history is probably Bach’s Art of Fugue, a set of pieces written for an unknown instrument.

But was it really Bach’s last work? The apparently final fugue in Art of Fugue is known as the “Fuga a 3 Soggetti” (or, in English, the “Fugue in Three Subjects”). Its manuscript famously ends in the middle of measure 239, as if Bach went off to dinner and never came back.

At the end of the aborted fugue, there’s a note in the handwriting of Bach’s son, composer Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, that reads: “While working on this fugue, which introduces the name BACH in the countersubject, the composer died.”

However, scholars have pointed out that Bach endured a period of failing health before his death, including severe vision trouble that would have precluded his writing out this fugue. It seems more likely that the fugue dates back slightly earlier, to a year or two before his death.

Regardless of whether this was in fact Bach’s final work or not, it has entered classical music lore as such. And who are we to get in the way of a good story?

Mozart’s Final Work: Little Masonic Cantata

Mozart’s death mask

Thanks to the movie Amadeus, pop culture would have us believe that Mozart’s final piece was his Requiem. Mozart was indeed working on the Requiem upon his death in early December 1791, but his final completed work was actually a piece called the Little Masonic Cantata, written to celebrate the opening of the temple of the New Crowned Hope Lodge in Vienna. It premiered on 17 November 1791. Conducting that premiere would mark Mozart’s last public appearance as a musician.

Mozart monument in Vienna

This cantata creates a somewhat unusual sound palette, in that it was written for male choir and three tenor soloists, so it sounds very different from other works that Mozart wrote. 

Beethoven’s Final Work: String Quartet No. 16

Beethoven on his deathbed

“What was the last music Beethoven composed?” you ask. There are two potential answers to that question.

The final work that he actually finished was his sixteenth string quartet, which was eventually published as his op. 135. It was completed in October 1826, five months before Beethoven died.

Beethoven’s Op. 130 “Große Fuge”

However, the final music that he wrote was the final movement of his thirteenth string quartet Op. 130, which he composed in November 1826. Beethoven’s publisher was not a fan of the original finale to the thirteenth quartet, claiming that it was too long, too demanding, and generally indecipherable. In response, Beethoven reluctantly tossed off a replacement finale. This replacement finale was added to the quartet, and the indecipherable monster movement was published separately as the Grosse Fuge.

(Another work that could conceivably be added to this list is Beethoven’s tenth symphony, which was completed in 2021 by artificial intelligence, based on Beethoven’ surviving notes.)

Schubert’s Final Work: “Die Taubenpost”

Grave of Franz Schubert at at Central Cemetery Wiener Zentralfriedhof

We don’t know for sure what Schubert’s final piece of music was, but the most frequently cited candidate is the song “Die Taubenpost” (“The Pigeon Post”). The text by poet Johann Gabriel Seidl describes the speaker’s carrier pigeon, who has been entrusted with an important message for a lover. At the end of the poem, the pigeon’s name and symbolic identity are revealed:

Her name is – Longing! Do you know her?
The messenger of constancy.

“Die Taubenpost” was published after Schubert’s death in a fourteen-song collection assembled by publisher Tobias Haslinger. Haslinger dubbed the collection “Schwanengesang” (Swan Song). It’s unlikely that Schubert actually intended for these songs to be published together, but of course the “swan song” theme of the collection suggested itself after Schubert’s untimely death.

Chopin’s Final Works: “Mazurka in G Minor, Op. 67, No. 2” and “Mazurka in F minor, Op. 68, No. 4”

Chopin’s death mask © Wikipedia

When Chopin was on his deathbed in 1849, he asked that all of his music not yet assigned opus numbers be burned. Luckily for music lovers, after Chopin died in October, his mother and his sisters decided to veto his request. A Chopin friend named Julian Fontana selected a variety of manuscripts from Chopin’s papers and published them in 1855.

Chopin on his deathbed

Among them are what are believed to be Chopin’s last two compositions: the “Mazurka in G Minor, Op. 67, No. 2” and the “Mazurka in F minor, Op. 68, No. 4.” According to legend, Chopin never actually heard these last works, as he was too weak to leave his bed to play. They are both dreamy, haunting, devastating works: a quiet sendoff from an ever-elegant composer.

Six of the Best Romantic Era Piano Sonatas by Women Composers

By Emily Hogstad, Interlude

The Romantic Era: it was a time of drama, high emotion, and relentless social upheaval. And over the course of the nineteenth century, more women than ever before were allowed to find their creative voices. Today we’re looking at six beautiful Romantic Era piano sonatas written by women composers, from Andrée to Valborg Aulin.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: Easter Sonata in A-major (1828)

Fanny Mendelssohn

In 1970, a piano sonata manuscript was discovered in France. It was signed “F. Mendelssohn” and promptly attributed to Felix. Some musicologists, however, had doubts as to its authorship. In 2010, music professor Angela Mace Christian took a serious look at the manuscript and proved that it had been cut out of a composition book kept not by Felix, but by his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel.

The sonata is programmatic and portrays the death of Jesus (hence the sonata’s “Easter” nickname). The final movement describes the New Testament story of how the curtain in the Jerusalem Temple was torn in half at the moment Jesus died. That is followed up by the finale’s fantasy on the chorale hymn “Christe, du Lamm Gottes” (Christ, the Lamb of God). It’s a fabulous sonata that reminds us that music history isn’t always what it seems! 

Clara Schumann: Piano Sonata in G-minor (1841-42)

Clara Schumann 3D Render © Hadi Karimi

For Christmas 1841, Clara Schumann gave an incredibly thoughtful gift to her new husband Robert. They’d been married the year before and had embarked together on a self-guided composition study, focusing especially on counterpoint. Clara had their first baby in September 1841, but pregnancy and raising a baby girl didn’t keep her from composing. She gave Robert the manuscript of the first two movements of her piano sonata for Christmas 1841. Later, she rounded the sonata out with the final two movements. However, she never played the piece in public, and it wasn’t even published until 1991.

Elfrida Andrée: Piano Sonata in A-major (1870)

Elfrida Andrée

Elfrida Andrée was born in Visby, Sweden, in 1841. She initially made her name as an organist, and at the age of 26 was appointed organist at the Gothenburg Cathedral, making her one of the first professional women organists in Scandinavia. She kept that job for a staggering sixty-two years, working until her death. She also conducted and composed, and was an activist for women’s rights in Sweden.

Marie Jaëll: Sonate pour piano (1873)

Marie Jaëll

Marie Jaëll was a passionate Romantic. She was born in 1846 in Alsace and enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire when she was sixteen. She married great pianist Alfred Jaëll when she was still in her teens, and a few years later, met Franz Liszt, who completely dazzled her. In her twenties, she began studying composition in earnest, garnering praise from giants of French music Franck and Saint-Saëns.

This piano sonata dates from 1873, the year she turned twenty-seven. It has a quality of great, serious restlessness. The work was dedicated to Liszt, and it’s easy to see his influence in the sonata, from its frequent chromaticism and bold harmonic exploration to its sheer technical difficulty. 

Laura Valborg Aulin: Piano Sonata in F-minor “Grande Sonate sérieuse” (1885)

Laura Valborg Aulin

Laura Valborg Aulin was born in Gävle, Sweden, in 1860. She began her musical studies with her pianist grandmother, then began attending the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, where she studied composition in addition to piano performance. In the mid-1880s she won the Jenny Lind Mendelssohn Travelling Fellowship, which gave her the necessary funds to study outside of Stockholm. In 1885, the year this sonata was written, she moved to Copenhagen to study with Niels Wilhelm Gade, before continuing on to Paris.

This masterful work may be inspired by Schumann’s third piano sonata, also in F-minor, which had a similar grand subtitle: “Concert sans orchestre” (Concerto Without Orchestra). 

Cécile Chaminade: Piano Sonata in C-minor (1895)

Cecile Chaminade

Although she has been widely forgotten today, and her music often unfairly trivialized, Cécile Chaminade was one of the most famous musical figures of the nineteenth century. She was a child prodigy who was kept from studying at the Conservatoire because her father forbade it. She was, however, allowed to study privately with some of the teachers who taught at the Conservatoire. When she was twelve, no less a figure than Georges Bizet praised her musical output.

Chaminade was extraordinarily prolific, composing around 400 works. She specialized in Romantic salon pieces that wore their hearts on their sleeves, many of them relatively technically accessible, which, combined with their beauty, made them big hits in the domestic sheet music market. In America, she grew so famous that so-called “Chaminade Clubs” began popping up around the turn of the century.

Her piano sonata in C-minor dates from 1895. It’s bold, virtuosic, beautiful…one might even say romantic.

Five of the Angriest Classical Music Feuds

 By Emily F. Hogstad, Interlude

Artistic types are famous for their big personalities and the beef and rivalries that result. Over the centuries, classical composers have had more than their fair share of tiffs. Today we’re looking at the stories and personalities behind five of the most famous feuds in classical music history.

Salieri v. Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri © slavicwritings.com

Everyone who saw the 1984 movie “Amadeus” knows the story. Antonio Salieri was a mediocre composer who was blindingly jealous of his young and impish colleague, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In fury, he sabotages his career – and ultimately, his life.

That said… It’s not true. In real life, Salieri was a generally well-liked and well-regarded man, and a prolific and talented composer. He even taught Mozart’s son after Mozart died. And he didn’t poison Mozart.

The core of the legend came from letters that Mozart and his father wrote to each other in the 1780s, positing the existence of an “Italian cabal” that was seeking to block Mozart’s ascendance. The Mozart men were irritated that the Austrian court gave such prominence to the work of Italians; they believed that Austrian artists should reign supreme at court. This wider feud between Italian and Germanic styles of music persisted long after Mozart and Salieri, and perhaps consequentially, a rumor arose after their deaths that Salieri outright poisoned Mozart. So there was indeed a feud between the two composers, but it was a bit one-sided, and it wasn’t as dramatic – or deadly – as Hollywood suggests. 

Brahms v. Wagner

Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner © operalibera.net

After Beethoven’s revolutionary contributions to orchestral music, composers had to make tough decisions about how they would respond. Would they continue to embrace and refine the more instrumental-based genres that Beethoven had embraced, like the symphony or the sonata? Or would they throw out the old rule book and push forward to create new musical concepts and languages, as seen in program music? What genre would win the battle for cultural relevance: symphonies or operas?

This argument grew incredibly heated in the mid-1800s and became known (perhaps a bit melodramatically) as the War of the Romantics. Generally speaking, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert and Clara Schumann were seen as the “conservatives” in this struggle, while figures like Liszt, Berlioz, and Wagner were seen as the “radicals.” A great deal of ink was spilled delineating the positions of the two camps. In the end, Wagner never wrote a symphony, and Brahms never wrote an opera.

Although their music was very different, Brahms appreciated at least some of Wagner’s music. “I’m the best of Wagnerians,” he told his friends in private. He even collected original Wagner manuscripts (much to Wagner’s irritation). That said, Brahms wasn’t such a fan of the loud extra-musical opinions that Wagner blared in various screeds and pamphlets.

Debussy v. Ravel

Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel © wfmt.com

The music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel is often jammed together on compilation discs with titles like “French Impressionism.” But just because the two men were writing music at the same time in the same city doesn’t mean they were best friends.

They met around 1900 when Debussy’s stepson Raoul Bardac, a classmate of Ravel’s, introduced them. Ravel was thirteen years younger and at a different stage of artistic and professional development than Debussy was, and Ravel admired the older man’s work intensely, to the point where he was criticized in the press for copying Debussy too closely.

In 1903, a hubbub arose when Debussy wrote a piece that seemed to be inspired by the Spanish-sounding strains in Ravel’s music. It was understandable for a younger man to copy an older one, the train of thought went, but should the older one be the composer copying the younger one? Then in 1913 the two – without knowing the other one was embarking on the same project – set some of Stéphane Mallarmé’s new poetry to music, before the poetry had been published. Their mutual distrust grew.

Another scandalous issue closer to home had caused the two composers to drift apart emotionally. Raoul Bardac introduced his (married) mother to (the married) Debussy…and the two fell in love and ran off together. Debussy’s first wife was left without a husband, and Ravel was one of the Parisians who made a financial contribution to her. The feud became official. 

Mendelssohn v. Liszt

Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn

We wrote an entire article about the rivalry between Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt! But to make a long story short, these two men got caught up in the War of the Romantics, just like Brahms and Wagner did. On a more personal note, Liszt once rewrote portions of Mendelssohn’s G-minor piano concerto, which understandably greatly irritated Mendelssohn. They also had an encounter at a salon gathering that could easily have turned into a disaster, when Liszt debuted yet another arrangement that he’d made of one of Mendelssohn’s work, the Capriccio, Op. 5…but Mendelssohn managed to smooth it over by joking afterward and congratulating Liszt on his extraordinary performance. 

Stravinsky v. Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, 1920 © History of Music Facebook Page

Stravinsky and Prokofiev are often mentioned in the same sentence simply because they both were Russian composers, born in 1882 and 1891 respectively. But just like in the case of Ravel and Debussy, that didn’t guarantee they got along.

Although Stravinsky once magnanimously praised Prokofiev’s ballet “Chout” as “the single piece of modern music [he] could listen to with pleasure”, the relationship eventually deteriorated. By the following year, when “Chout” was being run through for a possible revival, Stravinsky started an argument with Prokofiev, telling him he was wasting his time writing opera. The younger man retorted that Stravinsky “was in no position to lay down a general artistic direction” since Stravinsky himself “was not immune to error.”

Prokofiev later described what came next: Stravinsky “became incandescent with rage” and “we almost came to blows and were separated only with difficulty.”

Jane Stirling: Why Did This Piano Student Pay for Chopin’s Funeral?

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

Jane Stirling – Frédéric Chopin’s student, patroness, caretaker, manager, and legacy-builder – has always lived in the shadows of her piano teacher. And yet she was an integral part of Chopin’s later life and one of the reasons why his legacy still endures today.

Frédéric Chopin © ClassicFM

Jane Stirling’s Childhood

Jane Wilhelmina Stirling was born 15 July 1804 in Perthshire in central Scotland. She was the daughter of John Stirling of Kippendavie, a wealthy landowner who had property in Scotland and the West Indies, and his wife Mary.

Jane was born into a big family: she had twelve older siblings! Tragically, her mother died when she was a child, and then her father died a few years later. The grieving teenage heiress moved in with her older sister Katharine Erskine, a young and independent widow.

Despite the tragedies of her teenage years, Stirling proved to be a social butterfly. She loved the arts, playing the piano, and going to dances and balls. As the legend goes, over thirty men proposed to her, but she turned them all down because she never fell in love with any of them.

Young Adulthood in Paris

In 1826, when Stirling was twenty-two, her older sister brought her to Paris. The sisters loved the city so much that they began to live part-time in France.

When the time came for Stirling to choose a Parisian piano teacher, she chose Frédéric Chopin, a mutual acquaintance of her former teacher, pianist Lindsay Sloper. Chopin and Stirling became friends. Chopin respected her and her musicianship enough to pass along one of his students to her, and in 1844, she was thrilled to find out that he dedicated two nocturnes to her (the pair in his op. 55). 

At the time, Chopin was in the midst of an unraveling relationship with author George Sand, and he was trying to come to grips with his new lifestyle. Stirling wanted to help. So they came to an unconventional arrangement: Stirling would serve as a kind of agent and business manager to help keep Chopin’s life running smoothly. She even took on arranging his concerts and worked with him on assembling the French-bound volumes of his works.

George Sand’s daughter wrote about Stirling and Erskine:

“During lessons, when you visited the Master you could meet two tall persons, typical Scottish women, skinny, pale, in indefinite age, serious, dressed in black, never smiling. Under this quite gloomy appearance, there were lofty, noble, and devoted hearts.”

Chopin’s Helper

Stirling seems to have been rather omnipotent in Chopin’s life during this time. She saw to all of the details of his famous Salle Pleyel concert in February 1848, down to the temperature of the auditorium and the choice of flowers. He played a Mozart piano trio, his cello sonata, and some relatively undemanding pieces for solo piano. After the concert was done, he staggered backstage to Stirling and collapsed in her arms. It would be his last Paris concert. In March, revolution broke out, and many of Chopin’s aristocratic supporters fled the country.

A couple of months later, Stirling arranged for him to visit London. Chopin dreaded the rigors of traveling, but he needed the money badly, so in the spring of 1848, they set off together. 

Chopin’s Last Tour – And a Proposal?

Chopin’s Pleyel grand piano, 1848 (The Cobbe Collection, UK)

While in London, Chopin ended up keeping three pianos in his room from three different makers. His furious landlord doubled the rent, but Stirling stepped in to cover the cost for him. The social highlight of this English visit came when he performed for Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert at a private party.

After the stay in London, he took the train to Edinburgh, per Stirling’s suggestion. He played in Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Tickets were expensive – and Jane purchased many of them herself, then gave them away for free. Ominously, while Chopin was in Edinburgh, feeling that he would not live much longer, he drew up a will.

Rumors swirled of an impending engagement between the sick man and his energetic promoter, but Chopin never made a formal offer of marriage. Something about Stirling grew to irritate him – maybe his growing weakness and his increasing dependence on both her and her sister. He wrote things to friends like “A rich woman needs a rich husband” and “They have married me to Miss Stirling; she might as well marry death.” The sisters’ enthusiastic promotion of Protestantism was also proving to be extremely grating.

Chopin’s Death and Its Aftermath

In November 1848, Chopin left the gloomy British Isles to return to Paris. He was deeply in debt, and Stirling quietly paid those debts off. His condition only deteriorated. Over the course of 1849, it became clear that Chopin’s death was imminent. After much suffering, in October he passed away from what is generally believed to have been tuberculosis.

Chopin’s death mask © Wikipedia

After he died, Stirling dressed in mourning black, as if her husband had passed away. She paid the cost of his extravagant funeral at Paris’ famous La Madeleine (although Chopin’s sister Ludwika eventually paid back the cost), and it was attended by thousands. Fearing unscrupulous thieves or souvenir hunters, it is believed by historians that she was likely the anonymous buyer who purchased much of Chopin’s estate, including his famous death mask, to distribute to those who loved him. She also saw that his preserved heart would be brought from Paris to Warsaw.

A portrait she’d commissioned of Chopin by Polish artist Teofil Kwiatkowski turned into a deathbed portrait. Pictured in the portrait is Chopin, dressed in white, and surrounded by the dark-clothed figures of author Aleksander Jełowicki, Chopin’s sister Ludwika, piano student Marcelina Czartoryska, Polish politician Wojciech Grzymała, and the artist. Stirling is nowhere to be found: she’s already slipping into the background of the historical record.

Chopin on His Deathbed, by Kwiatkowski, 1849, commissioned by Jane Stirling.

To mark the first anniversary of his death, Stirling wrote to Ludwika asking for a handful of Polish soil so that she could sprinkle it on Chopin’s grave. The request was granted. In a particularly moving gesture, Stirling paid to have one of Chopin’s pianos shipped to Ludwika, and the two women carried on a considerable correspondence after his death, tending to matters of his legacy.

Intriguingly, according to legend, Chopin told Stirling – and Stirling alone – his true date of birth. She is said to have written it down, placed it in a box, and buried it with him.

Stirling’s Post-Chopin Life and Legacy

Stirling lived for another decade after Chopin’s death and died of an ovarian cyst in 1859. She never married. She left most of Chopin’s estate to his mother. It ended up in a palace in Warsaw, where it was destroyed by Russian troops in 1861.

Jane Stirling may not be nearly as famous as Chopin’s other caretaker figure, George Sand, but she was certainly one of his most faithful friends and one of the people we have to thank today for helping to preserve the rich musical legacy that her friend and teacher left behind.