Annotated Catalogue of Chopin’s First Editions (review)

The first editions of Fryderyk Chopin’s music pose a particularly acute challenge to music bibliographers. Chopin excelled in the intimate genres of solo piano music such as the waltz, mazurka, and nocturne, which were highly marketable and attractive to music publishers in the nineteenth century. The composer himself exploited various opportunities for the sale and distribution of his works in different countries simultaneously — most notably France, England, and Germany — with the result that multiple editions were produced with texts deriving from the composer that have equal claim to authenticity. It was in the nature of Chopin’s compositional practice that the manuscripts for a particular work sent to various publishers were not textually identical. The very act of copying out a work could lead to changes in notation or articulation, as Chopin sought to mould the text to meet his creative intentions. In some cases he assiduously corrected the proof sheets of an edition; in other cases the opportunity to correct an edition may not have been open to him. As if this set of circumstances was not already complex enough, the editions themselves changed and developed as publishers reprinted them in response to demand and changing circumstances, altering the texts in various ways over time. As a consequence the task of determining the priority of one text over another is fraught with difficulty. Only a thorough understanding of the bibliographical and commercial contexts in which an edition was produced, allied to an appraisal of all surviving copies, can bring us close to understanding why any single edition embodies a particular text.

Grabowski’s and Rink’s new catalogue represents a major advance in knowledge of the printed sources for Chopin’s music. The product of detailed study of extant copies held by libraries around the world, the catalogue complements the website Chopin’s First Editions Online (http://www.cfeo.org.uk), which provides access to digital facsimiles of many of these copies to facilitate detailed comparisons between them. A substantial introduction consists of an historical overview followed by a sum mary of the bibliographical principles applied in the catalogue. This provides the framework for the study and outlines the influence of various ‘external’ historical factors on the editions as they were reprinted, including the legal context, currency fluctuations, changes in the location and ownership of particular firms, and developments in printing methods. The catalogue itself rigorously distinguishes between the different states of each edition, documenting manifold changes to the musical text, title-pages, imprints, plate numbers, advertisements, caption titles, dedications, and various non-textual aspects of presentation (such as the presence of wrappers and the use of colour). Each entry includes a title-page transcription, a contents summary, the date of advertisement or registration (where available), description of a ‘distinguishing musical feature’ (used to signal textual changes in the sequence of impressions), and brief descriptions of copy-specific attributes such as ownership marks and the presence of dealers’ stamps. The dimensions of each copy are also recorded to the nearest millimetre, although the value of this information is minimal in most cases given that many surviving copies have been trimmed to fit within volumes over the years. The generous inclusion of 222 plates provides the rare luxury of being able to compare title-page transcriptions with photographs of the original editions, which embody facets of presentation such as spacing and variable text sizes that are impossible to transcribe faithfully. Where possible the authors have also established each edition’s shelf life — the chronological span of their availability from first till last impression — helping to evaluate their significance as documents in the reception of Chopin’s music.

In using this catalogue readers should be aware that, with a few notable exceptions, copies held in the University of Chicago’s Chopin collection — that counts among the most comprehensive in the world — are not included. This was clearly a pragmatic decision taken in...