, our alternative, variant suggestionIn all sources of the orchestral part – AsI and GEorch (→FEorch) – the tutti begins (like all the other tuttis following the subsequent variations) from a trilled f1 quaver (in Violin I). Nevertheless, this upbeat is absent both in A (→GE1) and FE (proofread by Chopin), which makes us ponder what the reason for such a striking discrepancy could be.
Taking into account the aforementioned analogous beginnings of the tuttis following the first four variations, but also the upbeats launching the theme and the subsequent variations in the solo part, we consider the following issues the most important:
- could Chopin have a musical reason to depart from the ubiquitous, as it seems, rhythmic scheme in this very place?
- is it possible to determine the factor that could have provoked the composer's mistake?
According to us, the answer to both questions is in the affirmative:
- Having presented the Theme with its upbeats, Chopin could have wanted to refer to the Introduction, in which it was only the main motif of the theme that was used, without the upbeat – cf. particularly b. 1-8 and 63.
- In AsI entire b. 95 is at the end of the page and the actual tutti – first in the Variations – fills the next page. Transitions between the lines and between the pages (to an even greater extent) are particularly vulnerable to oversights and inaccuracies due to the break in the visual link and, consequently, in the continuity of thought. However, the above does not justify this perhaps defect version having been copied into A.
According to us, the presented arguments do not allow us to exclude Chopin's inadvertence when writing the version for 1 piano; however, we should be extremely cautious when assessing the likelihood of such a mistake.
Compare the passage in the sources »
category imprint: Editorial revisions
issues: Changed phrase length
notation: Pitch