GC - Gutmann's Copy
| Date: | ⇒VI 1837 |
| Title: | 7me Etude |
| Dedication: | Mme la Csse d'Agoult |
Copy performed by Adolf Gutmann, Chopin's pupil and copyist of a number of his works. It served as base text for the first German edition of the Etude. GC could have been based on a copy of an autograph which served as basis for FE, corrected and completed by Chopin, or on another autograph (all these hypothetical manuscripts are lost, which significantly impedes the determination of filiation). The manuscript was most probably used as the base text for EE then. The dating of the manuscript is based on the letter of Heinrich Probst to the Breitkopf & Härtel company, stating the fact of sending manuscripts of the entire Op. 25 to the Leipzig editor. (see the characteristics of A of the Etude in A
major, No. 1).
GC bears traces of a very diligent, at least double review by Chopin, who introduced numerous corrections and additions:
- he added the metronome tempo (in pencil, most probably in the last phase of reviewing all Etudes);
- also in pencil, so at the last stage of corrections, one can see a grace note added in bar 50;
- he corrected slurs – generally extended them, e.g., in bars 33-35, but also deleted (e.g., in bar 20, see also bar 47), divided (e.g., in bar 38);
-
added the 14th note of the ornament on the 1st beat in bar 26 (g
); -
added pedal in bar 28 and moved the
sign in bar 45; -
added
in bar 40; - reduced the number of quavers in the bottom voice in the R.H. in bars 18 and 29-35, by deleting or sustaining some of them;
- he separated the top voice from the homogeneous chord texture in the R.H. in bars 19 and 43-44;
- he introduced a number of other additions and corrections, e.g., deletions in bars 25-26 and 36-37, 52 and 63.
On the other hand, GC includes a different kind of errors and inaccuracies, among others:
- oversights of various elements, as, e.g., the slur in the R.H. in bars 9-10 or the beginning of the slur in the R.H. in bar 58;
-
an erroneous D instead of B1 in bar 31;
- placing fingering numerals at the beginning of bar 45 next to the wrong notes;
- inaccurate, often too far reaching slurs, e.g., in bar 20 (deleted by Chopin) or in bar 9.
In this Etude we consider GC to be the base text.
| Original in: | Biblioteka Narodowa, Warsaw |
| Shelf-mark: | Mus 217 |
