Sand wrote: ‘He sat there weeping as he played his amazing Prelude…the piece he had composed that evening was full of raindrops beating on the tiles, but in his mind and his music they had become tears from heaven beating on his heart.’

The quote has been associated with the Raindrop subtitle for the 15th of the 24 preludes that Chopin completed in Mallorca. There he also scored Ballade No 2, the Scherzo No 3, the two Polonaises Opus 40, the Mazurka in E Minor and drafted the bulk of the Piano Sonata No 2 in B Minor, including the Funeral March.

After leaving Mallorca, Chopin did not travel overseas again until 1848. It was the year of European revolution. Having separated from Sand the previous year, Chopin, like King Louis-Philippe I, crossed the English Channel and spent seven months in Britain. Despite being meticulously cared for by his Scottish student, Jane Stirling, and meeting Queen Victoria, the cold and rain were too much for the composer who grew increasingly frail. ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t work; I feel alone, alone, alone,’ he wrote in Edinburgh in September 1848. Two months later, shortly after his last public concert at the Guildhall, he returned to Paris on doctor’s orders.

On 17 October 1849, Chopin died at his Paris home. He was 39. But his travels continued. His sister Ludwika returned to Warsaw with a glass jar containing Chopin’s preserved heart. It was placed inside the Holy Cross Church in 1882, with a plaque that read simply: ‘Here rests the heart of Frédéric Chopin.’

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