Heart Failure copyright@ Will Maguire At 39, in his artistic prime, the composer Frederick Chopin began to feel a nagging and then constant ache in his chest. That year he had been in a tempestuous and ultimately ruinous affair with a woman, but only later did it become clear that the pain was a medical issue. She loved him, but Chopin lived the financially insecure life often demanded of an artist. So she gave herself to a man who could better provide for her and they both went on ruined in the way that love can ruin two souls simply by the knowledge of each other’s existence. She became someone else’s wife and then a mother and lived with a tepid affection for her innocent husband, haunted by that rare Supposed to Be passion that she had given up. Chopin for his part took what was given, which is to say what was taken, and used the longing to forge a new kind of music. It was the sound of a heart fractured by its own feeling. Later that year, over the course of a few months t
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