Chopin: Funeral March - Interlude

It is said that the first meeting Chopin had with the novelist George Sand went like this:
–What a repulsive woman Sand is! –Chopin said to a friend. –I'm inclined to doubt it.
Almost simultaneously, on the other side of the room, Sand whispered to a friend:
–That Monsieur Chopin, is he a girl?

It was the fall of 1836 and both attended a soiree in a Parisian hotel, Chopin having been invited by Liszt, and Sand by Marie d'Agoult, Liszt's lover at that time. The evening was enjoyable and ended up without any reason to suppose that Frédéric and Sand would see each other again.
But life is full of surprises, and after a few months, the writer who wore trousers and smoked cigars could not get Frédéric out of her mind. Her beloved Chip, Chop, or Chopinski, as she began to call him later, gladly allowed himself to be cherished.

It was only in October 1838 when, after several attempts, Sand finally managed to take Frédéric to a vacation in Mallorca, accompanied by her children.
Everything went swimmingly until the Mallorcan summer changed dramatically in late November and Frédéric, George Sand, and her children were forced to spend the day within their calamitous rooms.

A gratifying Interlude
In January, the weather was unbearable. Ill sheltered from the rain and the wind that raged outside, Chopin composed, Sand wrote and, surely, the children were bored to death. But we could imagine that in the evenings they might have read together under the light of a candle and, who knows, an unexpected instant of grace occurred. All of a sudden, Frédéric might have rushed to the pitiful little piano (the only available before the arrival of the piano sent off to him by his friend Pleyel) to create the Interlude that goes right in the middle of the Funeral March, which, according to some, was composed during that horrible summer. Precisely those notes have now become the most suitable way of saying goodbye, a century and a half later, to JF Kennedy for example, or, who would have thought, to Stalin and Brezhnev.

It was also performed at Chopin's funeral, in addition to the Mozart's Requiem, which the departed had expressly requested.
The Interlude, quite a finding for its quiet beauty just in the midst of such solemnity, is preceded by a low octave, immediately following the first part of the most celebrated melody.


Composing at least one funeral march was de rigueur for the musicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whilst living with George Sand, with whom he finally spent eight splendid years, Chopin has given the world the most famous of them all, the one that was going to take a life of its own. This was not always true. The piece was added as the third movement of the Sonata in B flat minor, composed in 1839. Chopinski was 29. He had returned from Mallorca more dead than alive but had already recovered.

You are invited to listen to Chopin's Funeral March, knowing that the very same notes were heard by those who marched behind the coffin of Frédéric from the Madeleine Church to the cemetery of Pére-Lachaise, Paris, one hundred and sixty years ago. (The Interlude begins at 3:00).

Chopin's Funeral March - Arthur Rubinstein

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