PrintChopin in Manchester by Peter Willis
A discussion of music, architecture and Chopin's stay in Manchester in 1848
Hardcover: 48 pages, with 24 black & white and colour illustrations
Publisher: Elysium Press Publishers (30 November 2011)
ISBN: 978 0 904712 05 6
Price: £16.00
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A fascinating and original contribution to Chopin studies
Professor Jeremy Dibble, Department of Music, Durham University
Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) visited Manchester only once, in 1848, the year before his death, when he played in the Gentlemen’s Concert Hall.
Earlier that year, he had fled to London from Paris in the wake of the February Revolution. After giving recitals in private houses in London, and some teaching, he travelled north to Scotland at the urging of his friend and pupil, Jane Stirling. From Edinburgh he ventured to Manchester for a few days, staying with his friends the Schwabe family at Crumpsall House.
Chopin in Manchester is a study of that visit, and draws upon a wide range of documentary, published and visual material to set Chopin and his concert in the context of the life of mid-nineteenth-century Manchester.
Apart from containing a discussion of music and architecture, Chopin in Manchester provides new insights into the Schwabes and their circle, George Osborne, Jenny Lind, and Professor A.J. ‘Sandy’ Scott, the first principal of Owens College, later the Victoria University of Manchester.
In Manchester, Chopin showed clear signs of his terminal illness. After brief spells in Scotland, then London, he returned to Paris in the autumn of 1848. He had only a year to live. His visit to Manchester, therefore, occupies a poignant place in the last phase of Chopin’s life.
Dr Peter Willis, the author, is an architect and architectural historian. He undertook research for Chopin in Manchester in the Department of Music at Durham University, as part of his wider study of Chopin’s visits to England and Scotland in 1837 and 1848. His books Chopin in Scotland and Chopin in London are in preparation.