Op. 2, Variations, complete

Autograph fair copy of the version for one piano, used as the basis for the first German edition. The notation is extremely careful, with numerous erasures so that possible deletions do not hamper the interpretation; the copy impresses with rich and precise performance markings. Nevertheless, it contains a few patent, serious mistakes:

• a Terzverschreibung in bar 4 – A instead of F;
• missing note in the run in bar 56;
• no  restoring e¹ in bar 70;
• no naturals restoring d²-g² in bar 121,
• no quaver flags in bars 125-126;
• missing text on the top stave in bar 251;
• no  lowering g to g in bar 253;
• missing octave sign in bar 263 and 356;
• swapped rhythm of adjacent figures in bar 305;
• g¹ instead of e¹ in bar 329.

Some of these mistakes were repeated in all subsequent editions, e.g. the oversight of  in bar 70. One can wonder why so many mistakes were committed and left in an otherwise carefully developed manuscript. The following fragment of a letter by Chopin, if it concerns the creation of A, sheds light on this issue: "As the weather is bad right now, I would be glad to write a fair copy of the piano part for the Variations. In order to do that, I need your copy, so could you be so kind and bring it to me tomorrow? The day after tomorrow you will get both”.* If Chopin indeed dedicated only one day to complete this task, the presence of the aforementioned mistakes becomes perfectly understandable, particularly since the composer was most probably focused on specifying the details of notation while writing a fair copy, and not on controlling the correctness of the elemental text. The later, essential corrections (the most significant being the change of texture in Variation IV) did not provide an opportunity to comprehensively proofread the text either, since they did not require Chopin to review the entire manuscript.

The number of inaccuracies concerning accidentals is also quite significant; Chopin would generally consider them to be valid in all octaves – cf., e.g. bar 255 and 256.

The photographs in our system are arranged according to the order of the text of the final version. In the original, between Variation III and Variation V, there is the initial, crossed-out version of Variation IV, the final text of which was added at the end of the manuscript. Consequently, the actual order of pages expressed by the numbering system adopted at mUltimate Chopin is as follows: pp. 1-11, 22-23, 13-21, 12, 24. All pages of the manuscript have pencil foliation, from 1 to 12', inscribed in the outer, upper corners; also visible on most pages is pagination, running through music and end pages (from 1 to 22).

Fragment of an autograph of a non-final edition of the version for one piano, probably the first attempt at preparing a fair copy of the entire Variations, which could serve as the basis for the publisher. It consists of one sheet, on which there are 17 bars of the ending of Variation III on one leaf (bars 191-207) and the beginning of Variation V on the other leaf (bars 255-267).

^* From a letter by F. Chopin to Jan Matuszyński in Warsaw, Warsaw, winter 1827/1828.