The Warsaw Chopin Institute has acquired yet another Chopin autograph

Thursday, February 13, 2025

The National Frédéric Chopin Institute (in Polish: Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, abbreviated as NIFC) has acquired a Chopin autograph from the collection of the late Rudolf F. Kallir (1895–1987). The purchase was made possible by the generous support of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The acquired source is an autograph manuscript of the Ballade in F minor, op. 52, the last one of Chopin’s four contributions to this genre. He composed it in 1842/43 on George Sand’s country estate in Nohant-Vic, and in Paris, dedicating the work to Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild. The first printed editions appeared in Leipzig, London, and Paris in 1843/44. Chopin’s in some respects unusual autograph was presented at a press conference at the Chopin Museum on 23 January and remained on exhibit there for several days.

The press conference was attended by the Polish Minister of Culture, Hanna Wróblewska, and the Director of the Chopin Institute, Artur Szklener, both of whom emphasized the importance of this autograph for the cultural and musical history of Poland. The work itself is considered a masterpiece of 19th-century piano music. A recording of the press conference is available here.

Artur Szklener pointed out a few special features of the autograph. The 79-bar fragment is notated with a time signature of 6/4 and is one of two autograph sources for this work to survive. The longer, but also fragmentary manuscript kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford presents a fair copy, breaking off at measure 136. The composer decided to make some significant changes, arguably after completing the work. Among other things, he turned the original 6/4 meter into 6/8. Chopin thereby reinforced the tempo instruction Andante con moto, but was forced to produce a new fair copy for the printing of the final version. Thus, the 79-bar autograph fragment, which contains Chopin’s changes and deletions, provides an invaluable insight into the development of his musical ideas and his creative decisions during the compositional process.

After Chopin’s death in Paris in 1849, his sister Ludwika gave the autograph to Joseph Dessauer, a close friend of the composer. In 1933, it resurfaced in an antiquarian bookshop in Lucerne, where it was acquired by the art and autograph collector Rudolf F. Kallir. Finally, after several years of negotiations, the Chopin Institute acquired the autograph from Kallir’s heirs. In the RISM database, the record for the autograph can be found under ID number 1001326182 (in RISM Online and, in a few weeks’ time, also in the RISM Catalog).

Category: Library collections