1 March—As you’ll doubtless recall from past years, today is one of Frédéric François Chopin’s birthdays. This year it’s his 214^th. He was born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin to a French father and Polish mother in the Duchy of Warsaw. The parish baptismal record gives Fridericus Franciscus Chopin’s birthday as 22 February (probably to coincide with Polish-American hero George Washington’s), but Fred and his family insisted it was 1 March. So 1 March it is.

You’re waiting for the music, so here it is. It’s the third of the four movements of Chopin’s B-flat Minor Piano Sonata, Opus 35, No. 2. (He actually wrote it a few years before all the other movements.) It’s the popular Funeral March. And the easiest movement for a pianiste-manqué:

Chopin’s Funeral March has been transcribed for orchestra notably by Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Henry Wood, and Leopold Stokowski—a Brit who certainly would have been knighted had he not converted to American. Here, then, is Stokowski’s orchestration, in memory and honor of Alexei Navalny, who was laid to rest in Moscow today: