Main text
Main text
A - Autograph
FC - Fontana's copy
FE - French edition
FE1 - First French edition
FE2 - Corrected impression of FE1
FED - Dubois copy
FEJ - Jędrzejewicz Copy
FES - Stirling copy
FESch - Scherbatoff copy
GE - German edition
GE1 - First German edition
GE2 - Revised impression of GE1
GE3 - Corrected impression of GE2
EE - English edition
EE1 - First English edition
EE1a - Corrected impression of EE1
EE2 - Revised impression of EE1a
compare
  b. 1-2

Long accents in A (→FC), contextual interpretation

4 short accents in FE

No marks in GE 

3 vertical accents in EE

The long accents written in A (→FC) were not reproduced correctly in any of the editions. Both the shorter marks in FE and their omission in GE could have been related to a very dense and not always rational vertical text layout. The change of the accents' font in EE is a revision, typical of that edition, while the omission of the third mark – an oversight.
In the main text we also include – unlike FE – the accents in b. 2, marked in the manuscripts as a repetition of b. 1. This issue is generally ambiguous, e.g. tempo/character indications are certainly not to be repeated, but slurs and pedalling marks continued in the next bars should definitely be repeated. In the case of accents, both possibilities are actually equivalent in this context – the marks are given here as a pattern and should be applied also in the next bars, hence the number of explicitly given accents (4 or 8) is insignificant (cf., e.g. the accents at the beginning of the Prelude No. 6 in B Minor or the Etude in C Major, Op. 10 No. 1). 

Compare the passage in the sources »

category imprint: Interpretations within context; Differences between sources

issues: Long accents, EE revisions, Inaccuracies in FE, Errors in EE, Errors in GE

notation: Articulation, Accents, Hairpins

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