b. 13

 

 

Chopin most often used a numeral and a slur to mark an irregular rhythmic group. When adding - usually later – articulating and phrasing slurs, he treated the already present "rhythmic" slurs in various ways:

  • he did not regard them as interpretation marks and added other, usually much longer, slurs. The irregular group was in this situation embraced by two slurs of various length; or
  • he accepted them as part of the articulation-phrasing slurring and added other slurs before or after the "rhythmic" slur; we come across that type of situation several times in this Nocturne, cf. slurs over the triplets in bars 11 & 12;
  • or else he replaced them with articulation and phrasing slurs, e.g. modifying their extent, which automatically changed their function – cf. bar 15 of the Nocturne.

The editors are of the opinion that the slur in FEJ belongs to the last-mentioned category.

category imprint: Differences between sources; Corrections & alterations

issues: Annotations in teaching copies, Authentic post-publication changes and variants, Annotations in FEJ

notation: Slurs

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