According to an eyewitness, Frédéric Chopin died without suffering, between three and four in the morning of October 17, 1849. On the third day of his death, after the sculptor Clésinger took casts of his face and left hand, the autopsy was carried out by extracting the heart that will later be placed on a column in the Church of the Holy Cross, in Warsaw, thus fulfilling the express wish of the composer, made to his sister Ludwika.
The body of the "great artist Chopin" – as it was designated by Débats magazine in an article published following his death – was embalmed and then dressed and laid out again on his bed. Surrounded by flowers, he was exposed to his friends, admirers, and onlookers to say goodbye. The admirers would parade for days through the apartment of Place Vendôme, the last residence of the Polish master.
The Funeral
It was not held until October 30. The funeral ceremony began at eleven in the morning, and at noon, the coffin was carried aloft by the side aisle and placed on a high catafalque, to the sounds of its own funeral march and in the presence of the three thousand people who were taking part the Madeleine Church. Then the orchestra and choir of the Conservatory's Concert Society sang Mozart's Requiem, which had not been heard in Paris since the return of Napoleon's ashes in 1840.
Before starting the journey to the Pére Lachaise cemetery, the organist of La Madeleine dismissed Frédéric's body by playing some of his preludes, including a "plaintive, galvanized with startles, almost desperate melody". It is Prelude N ° 4 in E minor, one of the 24 Preludes of opus 28, completed in Mallorca ten years before, and which we present here in the rendition of the Chinese pianist Eric Lu.
At the grave, there were no speeches. The handful of Polish earth that Frédéric had received from his friends when he left Poland and which he kept until then in a silver goblet, was simply dropped on the coffin.
