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In his autographs, Chopin would generally use , which was quite often misinterpreted by the engravers, as it was less popular than the typical
marking – cf., e.g. the Etude in C
minor, Op. 10 No. 4, bar 1. Therefore, it seems likely that "zf", appearing 7 times throughout FE (bar 1, 50, 75, 78, 101, 179 and 207), is simply a distorted version of the Chopinesque
marking. Both GE and EE tried to replace this strange abbreviation (without a reasonable counterpart in Italian) by another one, actually used in musical notation. In GE it was carried out inconsistently – it was only the markings in bar 1 (to
) and 78 and 207 (to rf) that were changed. On the other hand, in EE all 7 abbreviations were changed – in bar 1, 50 and 75 to
, in bar 78 and 101 to rf, while in bar 179 and 207 to
. We reproduce the problematic abbreviation only in the graphic transcriptions of FE and GE, replacing it by
in the content transcriptions and in the main text.
category imprint: Interpretations within context; Differences between sources
issues: EE revisions, Inaccuracies in FE, GE revisions
notation: Verbal indications
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