Composing with Chopin: Etude Op. 10 No. 3

Let's explore one of Chopin's most lyrical and wistful etudes, sometimes called the "Tristesse" (Sadness) or "L'Adieu" (Farewell).

We'll look at Chopin's original manuscript, handwritten in August 1832, in the Robert Owen Lehman Collection held on deposit at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. 

Let's hear those first two bars again. We'll be listening now with computer-generated audio, which lets us change the notes back to what they were in Chopin's manuscript, so we can hear the differences as compared with the published version.

Scroll to hear the next two bars.

In these next two bars, the manuscript continues to match the published score.

But then... an X! Chopin has crossed out the next two bars, and the X shows that he wrote an alternate version somewhere else. Let's zoom back out to find it.

As we suspected, the X that Chopin wrote on the top line leads us to a matching X at the lower left corner of the page, where he tries out a different musical idea. Let's hear it.

Here's the alternate version of bars 5 and 6 that Chopin tries out at the lower left corner of the page. The audio cuts off abruptly, just like these two measures in the manuscript.

Next, let's jump back to the top of the page to see where he goes from here.

At five seconds into this audio excerpt you'll hear the downward leap in the melody that you can see in the manuscript at the upper right, just after the crossed-out music.

Then we hear the music continue to the next line of the manuscript, which we can't see here.

Here's the next line of music. Instead of pausing on the high note (B, middle line of the staff), as in the later more familiar published version, here the moving notes continue into the following bar, where the melody starts again on the note E (bottom line of the staff).

Here we see two versions of that bar we just heard (bar 8, beginning of the second line of music). The manuscript (left) has the moving sixteenth notes after the B, whereas the published score has the held quarter note B (above the word "Ritenuto").

But we don't see that change anywhere else in this manuscript. It turns out that Chopin made the change in another manuscript, which is housed at the Fryderyk Chopin Institut in Warsaw.

Let's continue through this next line of music. Warning: more Xs coming up.

At the second bar of this line (bar 9), Chopin repeats the opening melody, starting from the note E on the bottom line of the staff.

Scroll to hear the next bars.

On to bars 11 through 13.

Now we come to the next X, at bar 14. This time, a *double* X. This was evidently what Chopin wrote down first, before scribbling over it. So let's hear it first (the audio continues briefly into the first half of the next bar).

I guess Chopin wasn't happy with that, because he went back to the bottom of the page to try an alternative. Note the double-X on the upper right matching the double-X at bottom middle.

In these two added bars, we have the music we know and love today.

...except for that little beginning of another new measure on the right, which Chopin evidently decided not to use.

And now, let's take it over the finish line. The third line (each line is two staves joined with a bracket) starts at 9 seconds in this audio excerpt. 

We are still only in the first section of the piece, but this next part is just so beautiful, it feels like we have arrived.