The placement of slur beginnings in bars 159, 167, 175 and 183 is a tough issue for the editors. In EE and FE, the slurs begin on the 2nd beat of the bar, together with the quaver figurations. However, in GC they are clearly placed earlier, on the 1st beat. Such a notation may have been intended by Chopin for emphasizing the prevailing importance of the chords ending each one of the phrases:
On the other hand, slurs in GC tend to be imprecisely written; it is sufficient to have a look at the endings of the first two of the slurs discussed here, or the slur in bars 51-56. It is then possible that we are dealing here with a certain graphic mannerism, and the notation - despite its consistency - is simply inaccurate. The slurring of GC was treated as dubious already in GE, in which the majority of slurs was reproduced in accordance with the division of phrases as marked by the pianistic texture. That edition also has arbitrarily added slurs below the L.H. part - a way of making the notation more precise that was only rarely used by Chopin.
In the main text we give the slurring of EE and FE, notated without errors and matching in a natural manner the hand movements as dictated by the texture.
The problem, in a similar form, applies to all the analogous phrases appearing many times in the course of the Scherzo (bars 203, 291, 307, 453, 497).
Compare the passage in the sources »
category imprint: Graphic ambiguousness; Differences between sources
issues: GE revisions, Inaccuracies in GC
notation: Slurs
