GE1a - Album German edition
| Publisher: | Breitkopf & Härtel |
| Date: | XII 1836 |
| Plate number: | 5766 |
| Title: | Ballade sans paroles |
| Dedication: | None |
Chopin's Ballade is the first piece in the album entitled "Album Musical, Sammlung der neuesten Original Compositionen für Piano und Gesang" [Music album, a collection of the latest original compositions for piano and voice], containing works by 8 composers, including Liszt, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Spohr. Technically speaking, this is the second German edition, but the limited time and quantity range – it was a one-time publication, not renewed later – means that it was only a side branch of the mainstream distribution of the Ballade. For this reason, we mark it with the symbol GE1a, which better reflects the character of this edition. In notes to individual passages, where GE1a differs from the concordant version of all impressions of the first German edition (i.e. all other GEs), we treat GE1a as not being part of GE for the sake of simplicity. For example, in a sentence like "GE has version X, and GE1a has Y" the symbol GE denotes GE1 (→GE2→GE3→GE4).
GE1a was based on GE1; however, certain features suggest that the engraver could have had insight into FE as well, e.g.:
- the
hairpin in bar 188 begins in GE1a in the same place as in FE, 3 quavers earlier than in GE1 (however, the coincidence may be accidental).
| Original in: | Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń |
| Shelf-mark: | III 10067 |