A - Autograph
| Date: | (IX-X) 1835 |
| Title: | 4 Mazurkas || Nro 1 |
| Dedication: | Monsieur le Comte de Perthuis |
The autograph of the Mazurkas Op. 24 was almost certainly written later than the presentation autograph of the third of them (Mazurka in A flat major – AI), which was dated 22 Sept. 1835 and contained a still non-final version of the work. On the other hand, by mid-December that year the entire work was probably already printed, first in Leipzig and then in Paris. It seems, therefore, that A must have been ready not later than the beginning of November.
A served as the base text for Breitkopf & Härtel to prepare GE1. The manuscript contains typical foreign hand additions in crayon (inscriptions at the beginning of the work and other) and in pencil (numbers denoting the planned division of the musical text into pages and systems).
A was written hastily, yet with visible care for legibility. The vast majority of corrections are in the form of erasures (e.g. removal of the pedalling and bass notes on the 1st beat of the bar in bars 3-4) or additions to the existing signs by changing their shape and sense (e.g. replacement of augmenting dots with semiquaver rests in bar 33, or correction of slurring in bars 39-40). Deletions, so typical of Chopin, appear only twice in this Mazurka, in bars 34 and 62.
Features of notation that suggest hasty writing include imprecisely placed slurs, often written with a bold pen stroke that makes it difficult to read them properly, e.g. in bar 21; some marks demonstrate clear reduction of their graphic form, almost bordering on sketching, e.g. 
in bar 31 or 
marks in bar 32 or 36.
| Original in: | Biblioteka Narodowa, Warsaw |
| Shelf-mark: | Mus. 216 |
