It's a short work, and to my ear a very beautiful melody. But I can't find it in my Chopin guide. The closest I can find is a no 19 in E flat which she dismisses on the grounds of doubtful authenticity and a lumpy RH..

Can anyone enlighten me?

If I know the one you're talking about (I played it), it was published posthumously, and it is little known, but it is very beautiful.

In my copy of Eleanor Bailie's Chopin: A Graded Practical Guide, the posthumous waltz in a minor is referred to as no. 17.

For Chopin's posthumous works without opus numbers, numbers have been applied without uniformity and are used inconsistently among various sources.

Steven

It is No. 17 in the Henle edition, as well.

Regards,

and here's the PD score

http://icking-music-archive.org/scores/chopin/walzamin.pdf

thanks Bunneh, that's a lovely little piece, the opening melody is so simple and pretty, and i like the way that it always returns piano. Do you play it?

Definitely not lumpy cardguy I hope you enjoy playing it. Thinking of playing it myself, except my printers not working, again.. grrrr.

Thanks so much gang. Valuable information and the score to boot! Now I just need someone to come over and play if for me :>)

And you're right Canonie, far from lumpy!

And thank goodness it's only written on two staves!

No.18 is in E flat:

http://www.vkgfx.com/scores/chopin/posthumous/

Nothing lumpy about the right hand at all.


Mel

hehe
Noice one.

There are two posthumous waltzes without opus numbers in E-flat. The one that Bailie calls no. 19 and describes as lumpy and possibly spurious is assigned no. 17 at the site in that link.

The "lumpy" one of questionable provenance bears no tempo marking; according to Alan Walker, it was composed as early as 1829 and first published in 1902.

The other one is marked Sostenuto, was written in 1840 and not published until 1955.

Steven

Thanks Berlin Bunneh for the score to the posthumous Chopin Waltz in A minor ... and glad to see that Frederic only needed 2-staves ... stop chortling PJ, Aussie Sheila and other reprehensible colleagues ! ... I’m steadily working through BruceD’s list of nefarious triple-stave garbage and am building up to a summation which should provide a laugh.

But back to the Waltz in A minor (2 pages) which I’m busy analysing and playing at this very moment ... knowing that Chopin was hyper-fussy about the publication of his music and had a deathbed promise that none but his authorized works would be released ... the "posthumous" tag should always be read with some circumspection, whether or not intended for the waste-paper basket.

Somehow the familiar melody rattles around in my noggin to suggest ready acceptance ... but then close analysis finds that the repetitive internal chords are all too regular (same) ... a format which Chopin never used in his published works (my ABRSM Edition lists but 14) ... the internal chords are always spiced with the occasional variation tweak of the second chord.

IMHO This Waltz was not intended for publication, being considered too "straight up and down" by Chopin ... but aren’t we lucky, like MacDowell’s "To a Wild Rose", somebody saved gold.

Promised you chaps a laugh.

Having excluded the transcriptions of Liszt from the reckoning ... here is a pruned list of the principal actors mentioned by Bruce D ... with sketchy 3-stave measures to portions of their works ... having played the first page of each to get the flavour and deduce some rationale to the "strange notation” ... here are some wacky conclusions ...

1. The vast majority are scored in 6# keys ...
2 x 4#, 1 x 6b and 4 x 6# ... perhaps someone can deduce the connection.
2. Notation struggles to support 2-stave note patterns, when
(a) squeezed into the nether octaves (Debussy)
(b) hyper close-coupling (Schumann)
(c) sustained (held) octaves needing the chatter of dual handed chords (Grieg)
(d) as for Grieg the need for rhythmic percussive bass chords (MacDowell)
(e) use of over-lengthy symmetrical arpeggiated LH note patterns (Granados)
(f) youthful showmanship in the use of jumped octave chords (Rachmaninoff)

Debussy : "Berceuse héroïque' ... 6b
Schumann : "Romance in F-sharp major," Op 28, No 2* ... 4#
Grieg : "To Spring" (Lyric pieces, Op 43, No 6) ... 6#
MacDowell : "To a Water Lily" Op 51, No 6 ... 6#
Albeniz : "El Corpus en Sevilla" (from Iberia) ... 161 pages?
Granados : "Quejas o La Maja y el Ruisenor" (from Goyescas) 68 pages 6#
Rachmaninoff : "Prelude in C-sharp minor," Op 3, No 2 ... 4#
- "Nocturne No 3 in C minor" ... incorrect info given ... no 3-stave score

Anybody want to join the 2-stave brigade ... to avoid the 6# inquisition?

Here's MacDowell's To A Water Lily (page 1... thanks IMSLP)

Why do you call the works of these composers "garbage"?

1. F-sharp major is 6 sharps, not four.
2. My copy of the Rachmaninoff Nocturnes (Edward B. Marks/Belwin Mills) does have three staves for 23 measures of the piece, starting at the Moderato section. I don't see why you'd assume that "incorrect info [was] given ..." just because your source has the score printed differently.

With dense works, the printing distribution is sometimes an editor's choice. For example, I have two versions of the Schumann Romance in F-sharp major, one with two staves (G. Schirmer), one with three (Henle).

wow

I'm curious how the discussion drifted to triple-staff notation. Did the topic arise in a different thread and is now being continued here?

Steven

Yes, Steven, it started part way through this thread :

Strange notation

Ask btb. Perhaps he knows why he diverted the three-stave discussion of "garbage" to this thread. The discussion - if discussion it was - does lose its points of reference and any sense of continuity it may have had by being revived in a different thread.

Regards,

A fool uses humour, wit, and wisdom to spark laughter and even enlightenment. An idiot thinks himself a fool, but in truth he is being laughed at.

That's very good.

The waltz originally mentioned is the first piece in the 'Chopin Keyboard Classics' book (Basix series w/cd, published by Alfred. Also in 2 similar Alfred editions w/ cds- Chopin, an introduction to his piano works' and Chopin, 14 of his easiest piano pieces. So maybe not so little known.

Pianojerome brought it up. I have no clue why.

Can anybody batten down the date of composition of the Waltz in A minor (post)?

According to the catalogue in back of Alan Walker's The Chopin Companion, it's 1843 (though there's a question mark after the year in the chronological listing).

In Chopin: A Graded Practical Guide, Eleanor Bailie says it's "thought to have been written about 1847."

Steven

As we are all guessing ... my guess is
1827 ... Chopin at the age of 17 years ... 1843 and 1847 are too late in the day
for FC to have suddenly regressed ... after his early mastery of the waltz format.

Dang, I'd known you wanted a guess, I wouldn't have needed to look it up.

But since I did, here's another one: Jim Samson says 1847-9 in The Music of Chopin.

I'm sure that musicologists have a basis for placing this waltz within Chopin's most mature period. Despite its apparent simplicity, I defer to their educated guesses.

Steven