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Mark R. Offline OP
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Dear pianists,

Abovementioned no. 20 from Chopin's 24 preludes refers (sometimes called the funeral march).

From my earliest childhood memories, I recall that the third bar of this piece ends with an e-flat in the treble melody. That's the way I always heard it played, without ever having seen a score.

Now, the second melody note in the third bar is an e-natural ((secondary) dominant-seventh of the sub-dominant). None of the scores that I've looked at, explicitly notes the e-flat on the last note. Technically, the natural should be valid for the whole measure.

And lo-and-behold: lately, I've heard a few recordings where this last note is actually played as an e-natural. It sounds horribly wrong to me - but according to the score, assuming that a natural is valid for the whole measure, it's correct!

Can anyone enlighten me whether this should be an e-flat or e-natural? Youtube, for example, features both...


Autodidact interested in piano technology.
1970 44" Ibach, daily music maker.
1977 "Ortega" 8' + 8' harpsichord (Rainer Schütze, Heidelberg)
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I normally have Henle or Wiener Urtext editions, but for the Preludes I have the ABRSM Fielden/Craxton edition. To quote:

" There has always been a controversy about the last crotchet of bar 3, whether it should be E flat or E natural."

Then to paraphrase the rest - to save my typing - Oxford, Tellefsen and Paderewski's editions have E flat. Chopin's last pupil Mikuli keeps the E natural in his edition. F/C consider this "authentic".
HTH

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Mark R. Offline OP
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Yes, thanks, this helps indeed, because for a moment I doubted whether it's legitimate at all to play an E flat. Having read what I read, I'll stick not only to my childhood memories, but to my ear, and continue to play E flat.

(By the way, I cross-posted this in a German sister forum, and read in an answer that Henle also has an E flat, although the controversy is mentioned in an appendix.)


Autodidact interested in piano technology.
1970 44" Ibach, daily music maker.
1977 "Ortega" 8' + 8' harpsichord (Rainer Schütze, Heidelberg)

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