The chord on the last beat has three elements in the sources in bar 185, whereas in analogous bar 540, there are four elements. According to us, it does not provide any guarantee that Chopin indeed wanted to diversify this detail. Both versions sound good, hence the composer could have hesitated at the time of choosing one of them. This, in turn, could have resulted in deletions impeding the interpretation of [A] or in an accidental oversight of a proofreading of one of these places, which would happen to Chopin quite frequently (cf. e.g. the Sonata in B minor, op. 35, the 2nd mov., bars 10-11 or the Mazurka in G minor, op. 24, no. 1, bars 26-27). In this situation, we suggest the four-note version of this chord as an acceptable variant, enabling the performance of the same text in both places.
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category imprint: Editorial revisions
notation: Pitch