Fryderyk Chopin — 24 Preludes (Majorca, 1838–39) — Notebook

The twenty-four preludes, in Chopin's hand. Then pages of your own.

The document

Chopin finished the Preludes on Majorca in the winter of 1838–39, on a small piano Pleyel had shipped to the island. This is his fair copy of all twenty-four, with many corrections in his own hand, some passages covered in dense crossed lines of ink, and it is the manuscript from which the first Paris edition was engraved in 1839. It is kept at the Biblioteka Narodowa in Warsaw, and this notebook reproduces it complete.

Inside the notebook

First, a short guide: the winter on Majorca and the letter that sent the Preludes to Pleyel; the twenty-four, and where each one begins in the manuscript; the two first editions and their two dedications, with Chopin's own words, Kesslerowi nic, nothing for Kessler; a letter from Marseille in April 1839, translated; what he crossed out; and a drawing of him at the piano.

Then the manuscript: all forty-four pages, in order, at about 88% of actual size, with the three notes he left for the engraver and the publisher.

On its last page, his own blank staff paper faces the first of yours: 66 pages of staff paper, ruled after his.

A4, spiral-bound, it lies flat. The manuscript is oblong, and so is the notebook: it opens the way it does.

Fryderyk Chopin · 24 Preludes, op. 28 · autograph · 1838–39 · Biblioteka Narodowa, Warsaw, Mus. 93 Cim.