The interpretation of the slurring of A in these bars, supported by the rhythmic notation (separated semiquavers in bar 120 and minims in bars 121-122), is beyond any doubt. However, at an attempt to interpret the slurs literally, they can seem to be misleading – both separated semiquavers in bar 120 seem to be at the same time the last and first notes of subsequent slurs; the phenomenon is even clearer in bars 121-122. Admittedly, in GE1 the slurs were reproduced correctly, in accordance with the musical sense, yet it is already a result of an intense proofreading – in the entire line of GE1, spanning bars 119-121, one can see traces of correction of slurs, probably more than once (in bar 120 traces indicate deletion of two slurs of a different, yet partially overlapping range). Two phases of proofreading, out of which the first did not yield satisfactory results, may suggest that Chopin, having seen a great number of errors, ordered to perform the proofreading after A in the first phase and it was only in the second phase that he personally marked the still remaining, substantial inaccuracies.
The traces were most probably one of the reasons one decided to engrave again the entire bottom part of the page (more than a half) when preparing GE1a. The makeover spanned bars 119-127 and the bottom most elements in bars 116-118, e.g. the tie of e
in bars 117-118. In spite of a significant volume of work, no mistakes were committed, which would happen in other similar cases – see the characterization of GE1.
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category imprint: Corrections & alterations; Source & stylistic information
issues: Inaccurate slurs in A, Corrected slurs of Op. 21 in GE1
notation: Slurs