b. 77

g in A

B-g in GE (→FEEE)

B in FES

The sixth in GE (→FEEE) is almost certainly a result of a misinterpretation of A: the engraver of GE1 mistook the characteristic "hook," resulting from moving the quill hastily to another place, for a B note (the stem of the g quaver, written at first, ended exactly at the pitch of B; only later did Chopin drag it to the beam running below). There are hundreds of this type of "hooks" in A, particularly in the 3rd movement of the Concerto, written in the greatest hurry. Even in the discussed bar, a second clear "hook" is visible at the bottom of the natural next to the adjacent chord, and a few others are on the same page of A, in bar 75. (Such hooks can be found in abundance in other Chopin's autographs as well. Some resulted in errors in the editions, cf. e.g. Etude in A, Op. 10 no. 10, bar 5.)

According to us, the version of FES is also erroneous. It is difficult to imagine why Chopin would have deleted a note written by himself in A, co-creating a regular and perfectly sounding sequence of the accompanying part, and left another, which he never wrote and which deforms the sequence. Whoever deleted g in this place – such a small entry does not give grounds for an unequivocal identification – most probably committed a mistake, deleting the note that was supposed to stay.

In the main text we give the version of A, the only authentic one, according to us.

category imprint: Interpretations within context; Differences between sources

issues: Annotations in teaching copies, Errors resulting from corrections, Errors in GE, Annotations in FES

notation: Pitch

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