Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
/Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France
Frédéric Chopin (1 March 1810[1] – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music. In Paris, Chopin made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. Though an ardent Polish patriot, in France he used the French versions of his names and eventually, to avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents, became a French citizen. After some ill-fated romantic involvements with Polish women, from 1837 to 1847 he had a turbulent relationship with the French writer George Sand (Aurore Dudevant). Always in frail health, he died in Paris in 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis.
Auguste Clésinger made Chopin's death mask and casts of his hands the morning he died. Before the funeral, pursuant to Chopin's dying wish (which stemmed from a fear of being buried alive), his heart was removed and preserved in alcohol, perhaps brandy. His sister later took it in an urn to Warsaw, where it was sealed within a pillar of the Holy Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście, beneath an inscription from Matthew VI:21: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Chopin's heart has remained there—except for a period during World War II, when it was removed for safekeeping—within the church that was rebuilt after its virtual destruction during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The church stands only a short distance from Chopin's last Polish residence, the Krasiński Palace at Krakowskie Przedmieście 5.
The funeral was held at the Church of the Madeleine, in Paris, on 30 October 1849 and was attended by nearly three thousand people. Chopin had requested that Mozart's Requiem be sung at his funeral. The Requiem had major parts for female voices, but the Church of the Madeleine had never permitted female singers in its choir. The funeral was delayed for almost two weeks until the Church relented, on condition that the female singers remain behind a black velvet curtain. Also played were Chopin's Préludes No. 4 in E minor and No. 6 in B minor. George Sand did not attend the funeral.
Chopin was buried, in accordance with his wishes, at Père Lachaise Cemetery. At the graveside, the Funeral March from his Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35 was played. Chopin's grave, with its monument carved by Clésinger, attracts numerous visitors and is consistently decorated with flowers, even in winter. (Source)
