FES
Main text
½A - Semi-autograph
A - Autograph of the piano part
Morch - Manuscript of the orchestra part
GE - German edition
GE1 - First German edition
GE1a - Retouched impression of GE1
GE2 - Second German edition
FE - French edition
FE1 - First French edition
FE2 - Corrected impression of FE1
FED - Dubois copy
FEJ - Jędrzejewicz copy
FES - Stirling copy
EE - English edition
EE1 - First English edition
EE2 - Revised impression of EE1
EE3 - Corrected impression of EE2
compare
  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.

Compare the passage in the sources »

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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