The New Edition of Chopin’s Correspondence

Some of Fryderyk Chopin’s letters were published individually or in groups already in the 2^nd half of the 19^th century. With the passage of time, more letters from and to Chopin were printed in monographs dedicated to his life and work. The first editions of Chopin’s collected letters come from the 1^st half of the 20^th century (by Scharlitt and von Guttry in Germany, Henryk Opieński – in Poland). B.E. Sydow’s Fryderyk Chopin’s Correspondence of 1955 continues to be used as the basic source edition by Chopin biographers. It has many strong points, but has become largely outdated.

The research project dedicated to the new source edition of Chopin’s correspondence is implemented at the Institute of Musicology, University of Warsaw by Zofia Helman, Zbigniew Skowron and Hanna Wróblewska-Straus. It aims to edit and publish all the preserved letters written to and from Chopin. As a result of many historical cataclysms in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, some of Chopin’s letters have been lost or dispersed. Our edition consists of 3 volumes (Vol. I – Warszawa 2009, Vol. II – in print, Vol. III – in preparation). All the letters have been edited from sources: the preserved autographs by Chopin and other persons, autograph reproductions in various publications (if the original is now lost or inaccessible), and if reproductions are also unavailable – on the basis of a selected edition (not necessarily the first). Our edition is also the first to include summaries of lost letters to Chopin (based on Karłowicz’s publication of 1904). In comparison with earlier editions, the number of published letters has increased, and we added descriptions of the autograph sources that we used as the basis for our edition. Earlier dating of letters which contain no date in the manuscript has been verified, and some dates – changed or established for the first time. Commentaries and notes accompanying the letters are significantly more extensive in this edition than in any previous one, and they include: remarks on text edition, biographical notes for persons mentioned in the letters, explanations concerning places, identification of musical and literary works, theatrical plays and other works of art referred to in the letters; historical commentary on the events described; information concerning cultural life (concerts, opera and theatre performances). We have frequently had to confront confabulated material repeated for many years in musicological studies and deeply rooted in collective awareness. We have also corrected numerous misspelt surnames and thus pointed to the true identity of many hitherto unidentified figures.

Our research on the letters has made it possible to establish or confirm some facts from Chopin’s life, such as new details of his stays in Munich and Stuttgart on the way to Paris in 1831, the exact date of his arrival in Paris (5^th October 1831), details of Chopin and Hiller’s trip to Aachen to the music festival of the Lower Rhine, to Düsseldorf (in May 1834), as well as the definite date of the Polish concert in the Parisian Théâtre-Italien (4^th April 1835).