2 - Genesis and reception

Summary

Sources

Like many pianist-composers, Chopin allowed his first thoughts about a work to take shape at the piano. George Sand described the process vividly – and in a manner which emphasises its links with improvisation – when she remarked that ‘invention came to his piano, sudden, complete, sublime’. As a result the larger structure and much of the detailed working of a piece would usually be in place and held in intellectu before he ever put pen to paper. When he finally did so, it might be to sketch some of the basic ideas as a preliminary to making a fair copy. This represents Stage I of a source-chain for several Chopin works. It was often by-passed, however, and it should be noted that there are no extant sketches for any of the ballades. Manuscript sources so described in the literature have been incorrectly classified.

Next Chopin would prepare a fair copy, which usually functioned as a Stichvorlage or engraver's manuscript. These are often ‘dirty’, with changes made either at the time of writing or later (sometimes in a different pen), involving heavy tessellations and revisions on the third staff above or below the main text. In some instances Chopin abandoned the manuscript to begin again, and such ‘rejected public manuscripts’, strictly speaking Stage II of a source-chain, are often valuable documents. There is one such abandoned manuscript for the Fourth Ballade. The other main autograph sources for the ballades served as the Stichvorlagen (Stage III) for at least one of the original editions. Due mainly to the length of the works, there are no presentation manuscripts, Stage IV for some shorter pieces.