AI - Earlier autograph
| Date: | IX 1836 |
| Title: | Etude |
| Dedication: | None |
Currently lost, known from a reproduction in the book by Leopold Binental Chopin (Warsaw, 1930), AI was in the album of Maria Wodzińska including also autographs of the Etude in F minor, No. 2 and of the song titled The Ring. Kornelia Parnas (On Chopin's Exercise Books, Lviv 1912), who described the album, paid attention to the fact that the paper on which the Etude in A
major was written differs from the paper of the remaining part of the album, so that four pages (a double chart) with the Etude were "stitched into the exercise book [album] probably later". It cannot be excluded that Chopin, having at his disposal a ready, quite clear working autograph, used it – after reviewing and completing performance indications – as a gift. However, one has to state that despite the different paper the autographs of both Etudes are quite similar when it comes to the number of deletions and corrections, the number of performance indications or the date: Dresden 1836. It suggests that both autographs were created at a similar stage of finishing the composition.
The text of the Etude in AI shows a number of difference with respect to A, which was written later:
- no upbeat and indication of tempo-character;
- more frequent change of pedal (bars 1-2, 4, 7, 12, 33, 35) or less frequent (17 and 19, 36 and 38, 40-41), as well as other differences in this respect (e.g., bars 9-10, 37 and 39);
- numerous pitch differences, e.g., in bars 1, 7, 7-8, 8, 23, 28, 29, 36;
- different notation of the main and secondary melodic line in bar 15,
-
much more frequent use of accents, replaced in the final version – depending on the context – through
hairpins (e.g. bar 2) or bigger note heads (bars 42-43);
In some of the places one can see pencilled additions, which introduce the final edition on the previous versions written with ink – D instead of d in bar 13, twice d2 instead of b1 in bar 24, harmonic change in the 2nd half of bar 30, twice e instead of E in bar 35, A instead of A1 in bar 38 (but in bar 40 Chopin changed A – the eventual final version – to A1), the ending of the Etude in bars 48-49. The natural added before the melodic note on the 3rd beat in bar 25 is probably only an addition to the overlooked sign.
AI is rather carefully written when it comes to cautionary accidentals – in some of the places the later autograph lacks in the elements which are present here, e.g., in bar 15, 16, 23.
In the notation of repeating figures Chopin often uses an abbreviated notation with the use of the // sign.
