The story, in case you haven’t heard it already:
Back in 2019, someone donated a box of papers to the Morgan Museum in New York. Then COVID happened. They finally got around to opening the box earlier this year. One of the papers was a single page of music in Chopin’s handwriting. It turns out to be an unpublished waltz, some music that’s not been heard since the 1840s. They’ve spent the last few months bringing in the experts to check that it’s genuine, and they announced it just a few days ago. Since a few days ago, you can download the music from the Morgan library web site. You can read more of the back story on the ARTnews web site.
A friend tipped me off on 30th October. As luck would have it, I was already scheduled to play in the Corinthian Singers concert that weekend. So I asked the Corinthians if they could fit in an extra 90 seconds of piano music, they said yes, and I had four days to get ready.
I haven’t heard of any other live performances yet, so I’m claiming this as the Australian première performance. Please leave a comment if you think someone else got there first!
So, are we sure it’s really by Chopin? Of course there are some lively debates online. We can dispense with one of the conspiracy theories: someone asked generative AI to write a waltz in the style of Chopin, printed it out and snuck it into the box? No, they’ve examined the paper and ink with ultraviolet light, microscopes and whatever else they do in museums, and it’s from Chopin’s lifetime. And the experts say it’s in Chopin’s handwriting too, except for the words “Chopin” and “Valse” (French for “Waltz”) which were added by someone else.
Of course it might have been a forgery by someone else during Chopin’s lifetime. If so, they’ve done a pretty convincing job if you ask me. Or Chopin might for some reason have written down a waltz that he’d heard somewhere else. People have suggested his friend and publisher Fontana as a possibility.
Greg Niemczuk hints but doesn’t say outright that it might be by Liszt. He points out the bare octaves at the beginning, and the somewhat experimental character of the first eight bars, which don’t entirely fit in with the rest.
But look at the mazurkas! Opus 7 number 5 starts with bare octaves, and opus 17 number 4 has a very mysterious introduction. There are several other places where the mazurkas have an experimental character that didn’t creep into his other works. Except the ballades. And the nocturnes. And … once you get past the pretty tunes, Chopin’s music is actually a bit more varied and a bit more experimental than he’s usually given credit for.
There’s another experiment that hasn’t been commented on as far as I’m aware. The piece is 24 bars long: it falls neatly into three 8-bar phrases. Except that it doesn’t! If you try to feel the pulse on a large scale, taking two or four bars at a time as a unit, as feels natural for so many waltzes — in this case you’ll be slightly off balance. Because the phrase lengths are actually 9 then 8 then 7 bars, but joined up so neatly you might not realise at a first hearing. Who else was famous for this sort of trick? Haydn!
Looking at the mazurkas suggests a creative solution to another mystery. Why did Chopin write just 24 bars and then stop? Was he planning to add a B section and work it up into a longer piece? Or was it just a little throwaway gesture, something he wrote out as a gift for someone? Look again at that mazurka opus 7 number 5. It’s even shorter, just 20 bars, and published with the words “dal segno senza Fine”: go back to the sign [bar 5] without end. He never intended to write an ending for it. It’s up to the performer: once you’ve started, how do you finish? Did he think it was a good enough joke to be worth repeating in waltz form?