Arthur Hedley English musicologist and scholar, biographer 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"....

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Arthur Hedley was educated at Durham and at the Sorbonne

Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

, and he devoted much of his life to the study of the composer Frédéric Chopin and his music. 1947 saw the publication of Hedley's biography of Chopin, as part of The Master Musicians series. Having lived in Poland for several years, Hedley learned Polish and was able to translate and edit many of Chopin's letters, which had been collected and annotated by Bronislaw Edward Sydow, and which were published in 1962 as Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin.

Hedley was vice-president of the International Chopin Competition in 1949, the centenary of Chopin’s death, and received the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. He processed a considerable collection of Chopiniana, and died at Birmingham on 8 November 1969, aged 63, and is buried in Lodge Hill Cemetery.