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I am swooning at the thought of having access to old manuscripts and being able to examine the actual paper. Nerd dreams....

I think we were trying to differentiate Dr. Jeff from Jeff Clef. My respects to both, and hopes that both feel welcome here and will for a very long time.

OT, here is an article about a highly unusual Polish man, Dr. Alexander Imich, who is about to turn 107 in a few days and is still actively involved in research! Do you suppose it's the bread with lard and onions?? http://metgat.gaia.com/blog (Not my blog, but my friend Michael Tymn's.)

Elene

"Do you suppose it's the bread with lard and onions?"

That's a lot of supposing. However, Julia Child remarked that she ate anything she wanted--- just, not too much of it. She also observed, "It is difficult to imagine a civilization without the onion."

I don't recall her mentioning lard--- not by name. Maybe they call it something else in France.

I just finished Dr. Kallberg's book, Chopin at the Boundaries, after taking a break midway. I especially loved the chapter on his publishing history, with the details of the lost documents discovered in back of a filing cabinet, or tumbling out from between the leaves of a ledger.

Examining the paper on which a document was inscribed was one of the first things Sherlock Holmes did--- and he found out plenty.

Unfortunately, the book was over just as I was getting my second wind... so I read the endnotes. And now, to resume Newman's book (also having benefited from lighter fare for a time--- if you can call a biography of Tchaikovsky lighter ), The Pianist's Problems.

As the old joke goes: call me anything, just don't call me late for dinner.

Speaking of which, time to go cook. Lacking black bread and smalec, I shall settle for salmon and lentils.

Jeff Kallberg

Admirably healthy just the same.

Elene, it's not a nerd dream (if it is, then I'm the King of the Nerds haha!) and you actually CAN do just that. The Ira Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at SJSU (homebase for the American Beethoven Society), houses the largest collection of Beethoven materials in the Western Hemisphere (personal effects, lock of hair, autograph manuscripts, sketches, letters, copyist scores, first editions, etc., etc.) Some of the Center's first editions are on display for anyone to view and there's an incredible collection of autograph facsimiles. You can also arrange to view autograph manuscripts in their collection via, Patricia Stroh, the Center's curator, who, will access said score from their vault for you. There is an online database... Beethoven Gateway...containing the Center's collection. It's there that you can see which manuscripts (or whatever you're interested in seeing) the Center houses. If you ever have the opportunity to visit you should. Spending time with an original document is an experience that is almost impossible to put into words...it's almost like a religious experience. At least, for me, it was. I've caught myself with a tear in my eye on more than one occassion

The website for the Beethoven center is most impressive. It does look like a fascinating place.

The closest I've been to a collection like that is the Biblioteka Polska in Paris, where there are manuscripts, mementos, the death mask, Chopin's 1845 piano, and a chair he owned. I'll never forget my reaction to seeing his hair. Even though I'm so accustomed to him and he's such an everyday part of my life, somehow seeing evidence of his physical existence was rather a shock. I thought, "Oh, my God, he's REAL!"

And I almost fainted when I was allowed to briefly touch the keys of the piano. It occurred to me that there might be a few dessicated cells from his skin, molecules of oil, that sort of thing-- that in a sense I might be actually touching him.

(I think of "nerd" as a compliment.)

Elene

I just found this. It's a video where you can see Chopin's piano and hear how it sounds.

I did, thank you.

Boze moj! I completely forgot Mozart's birthday! He turned 254 last week.

It had also gotten past me that Robert Schumann's bicentennial will be coming up this June. Somehow it always seems to me that he was born a year or two later than he actually was.

The NY Times did an article recently comparing and contrasting Chopin and Schumann, which is probably available online (I was given a hard copy of it). Among other things it contains a picture of a Chopin manuscript that includes both random musical bits and doodled drawings. And a portrait of Schumann when he was young and cuter than you might think.

Elene

Thanks!

I saw the same article. In fact, if I'm not mistaken someone posted part of it here on the forum as well, but I can't remember where now. I seem to recall commenting on it in regard to which composition it was in the manuscript. Shame on you forgetting Wolfie's birthday. tsk tsk =p

Elene is that in Bulgarian? "Boze moj" means oh my god here

That phrase in one form or another seems to be pan-Slavic, Teodor. I was meaning it to be Polish but I didn't go to my word processing program and put in the diacritical marks. It would sound about the same in Slovak or Russian, wouldn't it?

So you're Bulgarian? Would you believe I listen to lots of Bulgarian vocal music because I'm a fan of the choral group Kitka? I only know a very few words of the language, though.

Elene

Chopin.... There are just no words...

200 pages dedicated to Chopin!

Yes! And just in time for his 200th birthday!

And so many people with Chopin in their username. It's amazing how much people love him and his music. That's what makes him immortal.

Edit: I was looking for follow the score while listening and came upon Rachmaninoff's rendition of Nocturne Op.9 No.2, just listen to this beautiful interpretation, it's genius:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj3CHx3TDzw

If we've written 200 pages, there must be words... lots of them....

I received a couple PMs asking if I might expand a bit on the nature of the evidence used to redate the C minor Nocturne. Today's snowy weather (to put it mildly!) gives me the needed time to do so.

Two basic features having to do with the way music paper was made during Chopin's life provide the framework for dating:

1) There were geographical and chronological differences in the ways the paper Chopin used was manufactured during his lifetime. The fundamental shift that took place in his life was from hand-made paper to machine-made paper. This took place across Europe: by the mid- to late-1830s, most music paper was machine-made. So before 1837 or so, we encounter two geographically different kinds of hand-made paper in Chopin's manuscripts: Polish-made and Western European made (Dutch and French being the most common points of origin for Chopin).

Hand-made paper is immediately distinguishable from machine-made paper by virtue of its sturdier build: it has the consistency (roughly) of construction paper, and a slightly grainier texture than machine-made paper. And one can (usually) distinguish Polish paper from Dutch or French hand-made paper by color: Polish paper is usually green or grey, Dutch/French cream-colored.

Hand-made paper almost always includes watermarks (designs weaved into the wire molds that help identify the maker of the paper). For composers like Beethoven, observations of the changes in watermarks plays a huge role in dating paper. For Chopin, though, watermarks tend to be more generally helpful to locate the geographical source of paper, and only occasionally useful for more precise dating.

(Early machine-made paper also can include watermarks, but by the late 1830s, Chopin's paper manufacturers stopped using them.)

2)There are documentable changes in the way the staves were drawn or imprinted on Chopin's papers. The study of "rastrology" (from the Latin "rastra" meaning "rake": early rastra looked like little rakes) was pioneered by Beethoven scholars trying to date that composers's sketches. The basic idea here is that the sizes of the different rastra that manufacturers use change over time. Chopin would buy some quantity of paper in 1840, use it up, then buy some more in 1842: the paper will look the same, but because the size of the rastrum changed, one can tell the difference between the two papers.

So what I did (mostly while doing the research for my dissertation, but I've continued to add data over the years) was to take measurements from nearly all of Chopin's extant manuscripts, the most important being the "total span" (the distance from the top of the top staff to the bottom of the bottom staff) and the length of the staves. Since for some of these manuscripts we have precise dates (either because Chopin wrote them on the manuscript, or because we have reliable external information), we can determine a range of dates that fit particularly coordinates of measurements.

When one combines rastrology with the changes in the manufacture of the paper, and assemble data for the near-entirety of the extant manuscripts, one gets a pretty useful means for determining roughly when Chopin used any particular variety of paper. And occasionally this leads to some surprising dates, the C-minor Nocturne being one, and (perhaps) the date of the so-called last Mazurka in F minor being another (its paper is consistent with what Chopin was using around 1845-46).

That's enough for now: time to go "play" in the snow.

Jeff Kallberg

Incredible information Jeff. Thank you for posting that. I learned quite a lot today! =)