Just as Maconchy's career was about to take off in 1932, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Though her doctors advised her to seek treatment in Switzerland, Maconchy, who was unwilling to abandon her burgeoning career, sought treatment in Brighton instead. Although she found Brighton to be more pleasant than she had initially anticipated, as the weeks passed she grew weary of the monotony of her daily routine: waking at 11 in the morning, she would spend an hour in her bath-chair outside from approximately 11:30 to 12:30, followed by a brief respite for lunch before returning for more time in the bath-chair until tea time, after which she would spend the remainder of the day primarily on the sofa. For entertainment, there were frequent games of backgammon to be had with her mother, who had relocated to Brighton along with LeFanu, who commuted daily to London during the week. Despite feelings of perpetual idleness, she nevertheless managed to practise piano and revise her quintet, which Macnaghten planned to play at a private party later in the spring. By late February, she was feeling much improved; however, her doctors advised her that she would have to remain in Brighton for another couple of months. Of her frustration and growing strength, Maconchy recounted in a letter to Williams on 24 February, ‘I went for a short walk this morning, & hope soon to be able to kick the bath-chair into the sea. It amused me so much at first – & Billy & I laughed a lot at ourselves when he pushed me along in it – but by now all the novelty has disappeared & I hate the thing.’

Between 1932 and 1935, Maconchy struggled with poor health, and though she continued to compose a prodigious number of works, her isolation from London proved to be detrimental as she found it increasingly difficult to advocate for her works from afar. During this period, she also began to shift away from composing orchestral works, which had dominated much of her earlier compositional output, and began to focus on chamber music.