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Updated: June 18, 2025
George Sand shares the opinion of M. Tastu that the principal Majorcan rhythms and favourite fioriture are Arabic in type and origin. Of quite another nature was the music that might be heard in those winter months in one of the cells of the monastery of Valdemosa. "With what poesy did his music fill this sanctuary, even in the midst of his most grievous troubles!" exclaims George Sand.
My opinion which not only has probability but also the low opus number and the letters in its favour is that most of the Preludes, if not all, were finished or sketched before Chopin went to the south, and that a few, if any, were composed and the whole revised at Palma and Valdemosa.
The Venta of the Moor's Mill stands, as many know, at the northern end of the Val D'Erraha, looking down upon the broader valley, through which runs the high road from Palma to Valdemosa. The city of Palma, itself, is only a few miles away, for such as know the mountain path. Few customers come this way, and the actual trade of the Venta is small.
When I raise my nose, it is to see through the sky-light of my cell the moon which shines in the midst of the rain on the orange trees, and I think no more of it than she. Madame Sand to M. A. M. Duteil; Valdemosa, January 20, 1839: There are innumerable ones, and yet this is the most beautiful country. The climate is delicious.
It was in the cells of Valdemosa that Madame Sand completed her novel of Monastic life, Spiridion, then publishing in the Revue des Deux Mondes.
The invalid improving somewhat, though still too weak to attempt the return journey to France, Madame Sand transported her ambulance, as she styled it, to some tolerable quarters she had already discovered in the deserted Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa "a poetical name and a poetical abode," she writes; "an admirable landscape, grand and wild, with the sea at both ends of the horizon, formidable peaks around us, eagles pursuing their prey even down to the orange-trees in our garden, a cypress walk winding from the top of our mountain to the bottom of the gorge, torrents over-grown with myrtles, palm-trees below our feet, nothing could be more magnificent than this spot."
In a few weeks you will receive a Ballade, a Polonaise, and a Scherzo. Until now I have not yet received any letters from my parents. I embrace you. Sometimes I have Arabian balls, African sun, and always before my eyes the Mediterranean Sea. I do not know when I shall be back, perhaps as late as May, perhaps even later. Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, January 15, 1839:
"I will go that way, then," said Hillyard, and he strolled off to his luncheon. He drove afterwards over the plain, between groves of olive and almond trees with gnarled stems and branches white with dust, mounted by the twisting road, terraces upon his left and pine-clothed mountainside upon his right, past Valdemosa to the Pass.
"I went to D'Erraha mostly. I used to sail across from Ciudadela to Soller along the coast, you know." "And from Soller?" "From Soller I rode by the Valdemosa road, and then across the mountain and through that narrow valley up to the Val d'Erraha." The Count was smoking thoughtfully. "And you were happy there?" he said. Fitz looked pensively into his long tumbler. "Yes."
This will upset the very pretty legend of music making at the monastery of Valdemosa. Have we not all read with sweet credulity the eloquent pages in George Sand in which the storm is described that overtook the novelist and her son Maurice? After terrible trials, dangers and delays, they reached their home and found Chopin at the piano. Uttering a cry, he arose and stared at the pair. "Ah!
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