mUltimate Chopin

Op. 44, Polonaise in F♯ minor

Text Compare Notes Sources Description

GE - German edition

German edition

Pietro Mechetti, qm Carlo, Vienna, plate number P. M. No 3577.
GE1 ‒ First German edition, January 1842,
GE2 – Second German edition, ca 1868.

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FE - French edition

French edition

Maurice Schlesinger, Paris, plate number M.S.3477.
FE1 – First French edition, December 1841.
FE2 ‒ Second French edition, early 1842,
#FEJ ‒ Jane Stirling's copy with pencil annotations coming from Chopin.

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EE - English edition

English edition

Wessel & Stapleton, London:
EE1 – First English edition, I-II 1842, plate number (W & S. No. 5226.),
EE2 – Modified impression of EE1, 1851, plate number (W & S. No. 5296.).
EE3 – Revised impression of EE2, ca 1868

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Filiation of the sources

                    

Additional source

AImaz – the working autograph of the middle part of the Polonaise, tempo di Mazourka (Fryderyk Chopin Museum, Warsaw, call no. MC/4). This is a thirty-bar whole, meant most probably as the first sketch of an independent mazurka in E major, corresponding to bars 200-205 (with the first quaver of bar 206) and from the 2nd quaver of bar 220 to bar 243 of the complete Polo­naise. Apart from the key, it differs from the definitive version in many textural and melodic details, as well as containing a number of corrections (we comment on them in notes to bars from the above-mentioned range). It affects the version of the variant in bar 168.

image                    transcript                    edited text

Principles behind the main text
of the Pollonaise Op. 44

As our basis we take FE as the last authentic source, compared with GE which was based directly on more carefully prepared [A]. In particular the pedalling, missing in FE, of the outer sections of the Polonaise (bars 8-124 and 268-326) comes from GE.