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Hello everyone,

I've got pretty much numerous copies of each of Chopin's main works. However, I recently came across a beautiful posthumously published Waltz in E major (B.44) which I fell in love with. So I was wondering, are there any collections/books of his Posth or 'rare' works, such as the Waltzes, Mazurka's etc? I mainly buy the ABRSM editions of his works which often include one or two of the Posth works - but not all.

Regards,

Sam

If you don't mind online sheet music, this is a good site.

It would be a good idea, but I've never been aware of any such collection. The only ways I've ever found stuff like that:

-- Complete collections of the particular type of piece (e.g. "waltzes") which are more 'complete' than most complete collections.

-- Occasional little collections of stray stuff. The way I discovered a couple of other posthumous Chopin waltzes was in a score that just contained those two. I came across it by accident in the "Chopin" section at a local music store (Patelson's).

-- I've discovered some Chopin pieces that were previously unknown to me from collections of "midi" performances on internet sites. I found two polonaises this way -- and immediately got the scores (in a "complete" edition of the polonaises that was more complete than any I had known) and enthusiastically learned them.

Following on Mark_C's advice, let me add :

The new Polish National Edition publishes the posthumous works of Chopin (Series B) separate from the works published during his lifetime (Series A), but, unfortunately for us, they publish each genre in a separate volume. For example :
- Vol. 25 - the 12 posthumous Mazurkas
- Vol. 26 - the 9 posthumous Polonaises
- Vol. 27 - the 9 posthumous Waltzes
- Vol. 28 - Variations in E, Sonata in c minor, Op. 4
- Vol. 29 - Various compositions, including the Ecossaises, the Nocturne in C-sharp minor (Lento con gran espressione}, the Fantaisie-Impromptu and a few other pieces.

As each volume is not cheap, purchasing these can be an expensive proposition.

I would opt for something like - but not necessarily limited to - the Henle edition which publishes the posthumous works along with those published during Chopin's lifetime, but you still have to buy each "genre" separately.

Regards,

That's still great to know! I'm sure many people will find it useful.

And besides, maybe someone from that publishing house will see this thread and it'll help them decide to come out with a complete volume of the posthumous works! (Stranger things have happened.....)

The ABRSM Mazurkas has 9 post. pieces, the Waltzes 6. I guess that's more than a few but probably not all. Pardon my ignorance of Chopin, but how many post. works are we expecting?

AFAIK these info in these two Wikipedia articles is complete:

Chopin's Compositions by Musical Form

Chopin's Compositions by Opus Number

The lists in both articles distinguish the posthumous pieces without opus numbers from the ones numbered Op. 66 to Op. 74 by Fontana ... which can be helpful in tallying the totals for each category of pieces.

The following document:

www.chopin-nationaledition.com/uploaded/numeracja_serii_B.doc

lists all Chopin's posthumous works with their catalog numbers (WN numbers), including those with opus numbers given by Fontana (identified in the fourth column of the table). The second column lists the old (obsolete) WN numbers. Titles in double quotes (e.g. „Czary”) are songs, other genres should be obvious also for those who don't know Polish.

Edited to add: In Poland, the German system of key (tonality) designation is used,
i.e. translate B -> B flat, H -> B, As -> A flat, gis -> G sharp, g = G minor, G = G major.