Op. 39, Scherzo in C♯ minor

GC is a copy made by Adolf Gutmann, Chopin's pupil and copyist of many of his works. It was used as the base text for the first German edition of the Scherzo and was itself based on the lost autograph, [A1] – probably the earlier one from among the two written by Chopin. This autograph was probably completed in 1839, as at the beginning of that year Chopin offered Scherzo to the editor Camille Pleyel (letter of 22 Jan. 1839), specifiying that the work is to be finished "in a few weeks" (letter to Julian Fontana from the same date). However, from another letter to Fontana dated two months later (17 March 1839) we read "Don't speak of the Scherzo to anyone, I don't know when I shall finish it [...]". Considering that GC was supposedly made as the second copy of [A1], after a probably written but non-extant other copy (by Fontana?), we could assume 1840 as the year in which GC was most probably prepared (not later than September, as in that month GE1 based on it was published).

GC conveys the version of the Scherzo in which certain details of notation were most meticulously reproduced, such as the wedge in bar 31, accent in bar 117, or tempo primo in bar 367. In several places, Chopin's own hand can be recognized (e.g. sostenuto in bar 320 or naturals in bars  470 and 472), which is a proof that the composer went through the manuscript. 

On the other hand, GC contains a large number of errors and inaccuracies of various degrees of gravity, among them: 

• omissions of various elements, e.g. rest and note in bar 64, augmenting dots for the minims in bars 75-89, octave sign in bars 167-168, whole lines of pedal marks in bars 259-266, 548-553, 632-634;
• pitch errors in bar 166 or 293-294, including the so-called "Terzverschreibung errors", for instance in bars 59, 91 and 100; 
• inaccurately or mistakenly written notes, e.g. e¹/f¹ in bar 45, G/F in bar 100, e¹/d¹ in bar 350 or E/C in bar 621;
• inaccurate slurs that often reach too far, e.g. in bars 163 and 171 and 311, or dynamic hairpins (bars 243-249).

The fact that GC is most probably based directly on the autograph, traces of corrections in Chopin's own hand and details absent from other sources make GC a source of primary importance.