Jane Stirling
Encyclopedia
Jane Stirling was a Scottish
amateur pianist who is best known as a student and later friend of Frédéric Chopin
; two of his nocturnes are dedicated to her. She took him on a tour of England
and Scotland
in 1848, and took charge of the disposal of his effects and manuscripts after his death in 1849. While there is no evidence that they were lovers, she was often referred to, after Chopin's death, as "Chopin's widow".
in Perthshire
, and was descended from a noble Scottish family. Her mother died when she was 12, her father when she was 16. The inheritance made her a wealthy young woman. She was then placed under the charge of her widowed sister, Mrs Katherine Erskine, aged 29. She was popular and very pretty; she was said to have declined over 30 marriage proposals. From 1826, she and her sister divided their social life between Scotland and Paris. She involved herself not only in music and the arts, but also in subjects such as prison reform, homeopathy, and the Protestant movement.
She met Frédéric Chopin
in 1842 or 1843, becoming his pupil immediately. That she was a talented pianist was evident from Chopin's remark to her, "One day you’ll play very, very well." Towards the end of his life he even entrusted one of his own pupils, Vera Rubio, to her tutoring. In 1844 he dedicated his two Nocturnes, Op. 55 to her. She also expressed a desire to learn the cello
, and so Chopin referred her to his collaborator, Auguste Franchomme
.
Jane Stirling worked with Chopin in assembling seven bound volumes of the French editions of most of his works, and in compiling a thematic index. These volumes were later used by the French musicologist and Chopin biographer Édouard Ganche to establish the Oxford original edition of Chopin. However, whether Chopin intended this collection to serve as a basis for a revised collected edition of his music is an open question. She also became his secretary, agent and business manager. She arranged his concert at the Salle Pleyel
on 16 February 1848, and also attended to the heating, the ventilation, and the flowers. The concluding item of the concert was the Barcarole in F-sharp major, but Chopin was too exhausted to complete the final section. After managing to walk unaided to his dressing room, he collapsed in Jane Stirling's arms. This was to prove his final Paris concert. There had been plans for another concert there in March, but on 23 February a revolution broke out, many people fled the city, and Chopin was suddenly deprived of his livelihood.
Jane and her sister suggested that Chopin perform a series of concerts in England
. He was ill and did not want to travel, but as he was in need of the money that such a tour would provide for him, he agreed. They left for London
on 20 April 1848. Through Jane Stirling he was introduced to the crème of British society. He played at a private function on 15 May which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attended (but he was never invited to play for them at Buckingham Palace, as is sometimes claimed). By August, the London season being at an end, he accepted an invitation from Jane Stirling to visit her homeland of Scotland
. Near Edinburgh
, they all stayed at Calder House, the castle of Lord Torphichen
, the ladies' brother-in-law. (Calder House was where in 1556 John Knox
had first celebrated communion.) Being dragged from one wealthy relative to another, and from city to city, all the time meeting many people with whom he could not converse (he spoke only French and Polish) only made Chopin's physical condition worse. In Manchester
, on 28 August, he played three pieces, but was so weak he had to be carried on and off the stage. All his expenses throughout the tour were paid by Jane. It was during this tour, in late October 1848 in Edinburgh, at the home of Dr Adam Łyszczyński, a Polish physician with whom he stayed for a number of days, that Chopin wrote his last will and testament – "a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere," he wrote to his friend Wojciech Grzymała.
It was generally rumoured at this time that Chopin and Stirling were shortly to be engaged. This never happened; indeed, there is no indication in any of Chopin's letters that he ever felt any amorous feelings for her. On the contrary, she often bored him. He said to a friend, "They have married me to Miss Stirling; she might as well marry death."
His final concert in Britain was on 16 November at London's Guildhall, where he played despite being desperately ill. They returned to Paris on 24 November accompanied by mountainous debts, which Jane Stirling paid anonymously.
During Chopin's last weeks in 1849, Stirling commissioned the Polish artist Teofil Kwiatkowski
to produce an oil painting of Chopin, which also included Chopin's sister Ludwika (Louisa) Jędrzejewicz, Marcelina Czartoryska
and Grzymała.
In September 1849, Chopin took an apartment at Place Vendôme 12. The second-floor, seven-room apartment had previously housed the Russian Embassy; Chopin could not afford it, but Jane Stirling rented it for him.
A few days before Chopin's death on 17 October, she purchased his grand piano. She paid the total cost of his funeral; all the travelling expenses from Warsaw of Chopin’s sister Ludwika; and for his piano to be shipped to her in Warsaw. She purchased all of Chopin's remaining furniture and effects, including his death mask by Auguste Clésinger
. She had some of the furniture shipped to Calder House near Edinburgh. It was displayed in a special room which became known as the Chopin Museum. She also collected various manuscripts, sketches, letters and other papers of his, containing handwritten comments, variants and dedications. She had a considerable correspondence with Ludwika Jędrzejewicz concerning the posthumous publication of some of his unpublished works, and 25 of these letters are now in the Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina in Warsaw.
Chopin had told Jane Stirling that she was the only one who knew his true date of birth. She wrote it down and placed it in a box which is buried with him in Père Lachaise Cemetery
. On the first anniversary of his death she scattered over Chopin's grave some Polish soil that she had obtained from Ludwika.
She studied the piano further under Thomas Tellefsen
, himself a Chopin pupil.
Jane Stirling died on 6 February 1859, aged 54, of an ovarian cyst
. She was buried on 11 February in the grounds of Dunblane Castle. Her will bequeathed the Chopin Museum to Chopin's mother Justyna Chopin. In 1863 much of it was destroyed during a Russian attack on Warsaw. One item which still exists is a lock of his auburn hair which Jane had kept.
, and that the Scottish sisters were simply a cover for Lind's anonymity. Their father's will left them only ₤300, which was by no means enough to fund the sort of generosity that was provided to Chopin.
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
amateur pianist who is best known as a student and later friend of Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
; two of his nocturnes are dedicated to her. She took him on a tour of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
in 1848, and took charge of the disposal of his effects and manuscripts after his death in 1849. While there is no evidence that they were lovers, she was often referred to, after Chopin's death, as "Chopin's widow".
Life
Jane Wilhelmina Stirling (Burke's Landed Gentry and the Clan Stirling's own genealogy call her "Jean-Wilhelmina") was born as the youngest of 13 children of John Stirling, Laird of Kippendavie, at Kippenross House, near DunblaneDunblane
Dunblane is a small cathedral city and former burgh north of Stirling in the Stirling council area of Scotland. The town is situated off the A9 road, on the way north to Perth. Its main landmark is Dunblane Cathedral and the Allan Water runs through the town centre, with the Cathedral and the High...
in Perthshire
Perthshire
Perthshire, officially the County of Perth , is a registration county in central Scotland. It extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, Rannoch Moor and Ben Lui in the west, and Aberfoyle in the south...
, and was descended from a noble Scottish family. Her mother died when she was 12, her father when she was 16. The inheritance made her a wealthy young woman. She was then placed under the charge of her widowed sister, Mrs Katherine Erskine, aged 29. She was popular and very pretty; she was said to have declined over 30 marriage proposals. From 1826, she and her sister divided their social life between Scotland and Paris. She involved herself not only in music and the arts, but also in subjects such as prison reform, homeopathy, and the Protestant movement.
She met Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
in 1842 or 1843, becoming his pupil immediately. That she was a talented pianist was evident from Chopin's remark to her, "One day you’ll play very, very well." Towards the end of his life he even entrusted one of his own pupils, Vera Rubio, to her tutoring. In 1844 he dedicated his two Nocturnes, Op. 55 to her. She also expressed a desire to learn the cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, and so Chopin referred her to his collaborator, Auguste Franchomme
Auguste Franchomme
Auguste-Joseph Franchomme was a French cellist and composer.Born in Lille, Franchomme studied at the local conservatoire with M...
.
Jane Stirling worked with Chopin in assembling seven bound volumes of the French editions of most of his works, and in compiling a thematic index. These volumes were later used by the French musicologist and Chopin biographer Édouard Ganche to establish the Oxford original edition of Chopin. However, whether Chopin intended this collection to serve as a basis for a revised collected edition of his music is an open question. She also became his secretary, agent and business manager. She arranged his concert at the Salle Pleyel
Salle Pleyel
The Salle Pleyel is a concert hall in Paris, France. The resident ensembles are the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.-History and Design:...
on 16 February 1848, and also attended to the heating, the ventilation, and the flowers. The concluding item of the concert was the Barcarole in F-sharp major, but Chopin was too exhausted to complete the final section. After managing to walk unaided to his dressing room, he collapsed in Jane Stirling's arms. This was to prove his final Paris concert. There had been plans for another concert there in March, but on 23 February a revolution broke out, many people fled the city, and Chopin was suddenly deprived of his livelihood.
Jane and her sister suggested that Chopin perform a series of concerts in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. He was ill and did not want to travel, but as he was in need of the money that such a tour would provide for him, he agreed. They left for London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on 20 April 1848. Through Jane Stirling he was introduced to the crème of British society. He played at a private function on 15 May which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attended (but he was never invited to play for them at Buckingham Palace, as is sometimes claimed). By August, the London season being at an end, he accepted an invitation from Jane Stirling to visit her homeland of Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. Near Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, they all stayed at Calder House, the castle of Lord Torphichen
Lord Torphichen
Lord Torphichen is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created by Queen Mary in 1564 for Sir James Sandilands , with remainder to his heirs and assigns whatsoever. Sandilands had previously served as Preceptor of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta in Scotland, and...
, the ladies' brother-in-law. (Calder House was where in 1556 John Knox
John Knox
John Knox was a Scottish clergyman and a leader of the Protestant Reformation who brought reformation to the church in Scotland. He was educated at the University of St Andrews or possibly the University of Glasgow and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1536...
had first celebrated communion.) Being dragged from one wealthy relative to another, and from city to city, all the time meeting many people with whom he could not converse (he spoke only French and Polish) only made Chopin's physical condition worse. In Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, on 28 August, he played three pieces, but was so weak he had to be carried on and off the stage. All his expenses throughout the tour were paid by Jane. It was during this tour, in late October 1848 in Edinburgh, at the home of Dr Adam Łyszczyński, a Polish physician with whom he stayed for a number of days, that Chopin wrote his last will and testament – "a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere," he wrote to his friend Wojciech Grzymała.
It was generally rumoured at this time that Chopin and Stirling were shortly to be engaged. This never happened; indeed, there is no indication in any of Chopin's letters that he ever felt any amorous feelings for her. On the contrary, she often bored him. He said to a friend, "They have married me to Miss Stirling; she might as well marry death."
His final concert in Britain was on 16 November at London's Guildhall, where he played despite being desperately ill. They returned to Paris on 24 November accompanied by mountainous debts, which Jane Stirling paid anonymously.
During Chopin's last weeks in 1849, Stirling commissioned the Polish artist Teofil Kwiatkowski
Teofil Kwiatkowski
Teofil Antoni Jaksa Kwiatkowski was a Polish painter.-Life:Kwiatkowski participated in the November 1830 Uprising...
to produce an oil painting of Chopin, which also included Chopin's sister Ludwika (Louisa) Jędrzejewicz, Marcelina Czartoryska
Marcelina Czartoryska
Princess Marcelina Czartoryska née Radziwiłł was a prominent Polish aristocrat and pianist....
and Grzymała.
In September 1849, Chopin took an apartment at Place Vendôme 12. The second-floor, seven-room apartment had previously housed the Russian Embassy; Chopin could not afford it, but Jane Stirling rented it for him.
A few days before Chopin's death on 17 October, she purchased his grand piano. She paid the total cost of his funeral; all the travelling expenses from Warsaw of Chopin’s sister Ludwika; and for his piano to be shipped to her in Warsaw. She purchased all of Chopin's remaining furniture and effects, including his death mask by Auguste Clésinger
Auguste Clésinger
Auguste Clésinger was a 19th-century French sculptor and painter.- Life :...
. She had some of the furniture shipped to Calder House near Edinburgh. It was displayed in a special room which became known as the Chopin Museum. She also collected various manuscripts, sketches, letters and other papers of his, containing handwritten comments, variants and dedications. She had a considerable correspondence with Ludwika Jędrzejewicz concerning the posthumous publication of some of his unpublished works, and 25 of these letters are now in the Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina in Warsaw.
Chopin had told Jane Stirling that she was the only one who knew his true date of birth. She wrote it down and placed it in a box which is buried with him in Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
. On the first anniversary of his death she scattered over Chopin's grave some Polish soil that she had obtained from Ludwika.
She studied the piano further under Thomas Tellefsen
Thomas Tellefsen
Thomas Dyke Acland Tellefsen was a Norwegian pianist and composer.Thomas Tellefsen was born in Trondheim, Norway, where he studied with his father, the organist Johan Christian Tellefsen, and with Ole Andreas Lindeman. Thomas gave his first public concert in his home town at age 18...
, himself a Chopin pupil.
Jane Stirling died on 6 February 1859, aged 54, of an ovarian cyst
Ovarian cyst
An ovarian cyst is any collection of fluid, surrounded by a very thin wall, within an ovary. Any ovarian follicle that is larger than about two centimeters is termed an ovarian cyst. An ovarian cyst can be as small as a pea, or larger than an orange....
. She was buried on 11 February in the grounds of Dunblane Castle. Her will bequeathed the Chopin Museum to Chopin's mother Justyna Chopin. In 1863 much of it was destroyed during a Russian attack on Warsaw. One item which still exists is a lock of his auburn hair which Jane had kept.
An alternative view: Jenny Lind
It has been claimed that the financial assistance said to have been provided by Jane Stirling and Katherine Erskine was actually from the Swedish soprano Jenny LindJenny Lind
Johanna Maria Lind , better known as Jenny Lind, was a Swedish opera singer, often known as the "Swedish Nightingale". One of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century, she is known for her performances in soprano roles in opera in Sweden and across Europe, and for an extraordinarily...
, and that the Scottish sisters were simply a cover for Lind's anonymity. Their father's will left them only ₤300, which was by no means enough to fund the sort of generosity that was provided to Chopin.