GE1
Main text
AsI - Working autograph of score
A - Autograph fair copy
GE - German edition
GE1 - First German edition
GE2 - Corrected impression of GE1
GE3 - Second German edition
FE - French edition
FE1 - First French edition
FE2 - Corrected impression of FE1
FESB - Later French edition
EE - English edition
EE1 - First English edition
EE2 - Corrected impression of EE1
EE3 - Revised impression of EE2
compare
  b. 95

Rest in #ApI & A (→GEFE,EE,FESB)

Quaver f1 & , our alternative, variant suggestion

In 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:

  1. could Chopin have a musical reason to depart from the ubiquitous, as it seems, rhythmic scheme in this very place?
  2. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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

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