Op. 25 No 11, Etude in A minor

Copy performed by Adolf Gutmann, Chopin's pupil and copyist of a number of his works. It served as the basis for the first German edition of the Etude. It was a lost autograph, [A], that was probably the basis for GC, used then as the basis for FE or EE. The dating of the manuscript is based on the same premises which were presented in the characteristics of A of the Etude in A major, No. 1.

GC bears traces of a careful review, performed at least twice by Chopin, who introduced numerous corrections and additions, particularly concerning performance indications:

• he changed different kind of errors of the copyist, e.g., the erroneous crotchet at the beginning of bars 35 and 55;
• he changed the tempo indication from Allegro molto con fuoco to Allegro con brio;
• he added the mteronome tempo (in pencil, most probably in the last phase of reviewing all Etudes);
• he added a number of dynamic signs, e.g.,  in bar 1,  in bars 23 and 31;
• he added dim. - - in bars 7-8, 15-16, 25-26;
• he changed  to  in bars 5 and 13;
• he deleted   hairpins in bars 9-11 and 16-17;
• ha added the fingering in bars 16-17;
• he extended the slurs in the L.H., e.g., in bars 21 and 50-52;
• he added the pedalling signs in bars 7, 15, 31, 33, 45 and 79;
• he deleted b¹ at the beginning of bar 43;
• he added marcato in bar 49;
• he moved  in bar 65 from under the bottom stave between the staves; similarly  in bar 83;
• he moved  in bar 93 from between the staves to the top stave.

Not all visible corrections were performed by Chopin – a part of them was most probably auto-corrections of the copyist, e.g., the correction of the 3rd group of semiquavers in bar 5 correction of the range of the octave sign in bars 11 or 22, shift of the accent in bar 37. In addition, the group most probably includes the majority of minor corrections of pitch, as, e.g., the 2nd semiquaver in bar 17 or the 10th semiquaver in bar 38. In particular, one can assume that two corrections in the places where more significant text discrepancies appear – in bar 83 and 89-90 – were performed by Gutmann, correcting his own errors.

On the other hand, GC includes different kind of errors and inaccuracies, e.g., an erroneous note at the end of bar 24 and in bar 89, inaccurate, often too long slurs in bars 7, 9, 12 and others, erroneous beams in bar 65, too long octave sign in bars 57 and 95, and, above all, repeated omissions of accidentals, probably after [A], e.g., in bars 11, 12, 25 or 27-30 (see also the characteristics of FE).

In this Etude we consider GC to be the base text.