In another shocking moment for fans of classical music all around the world, a rare and unknown waltz that may have been composed by Chopin has been unearthed in New York City.
Frédéric Chopin was a 19th-century Polish composer whose “poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation.” Known worldwide for being one of the leading musicians of his time, Chopin wrote mostly piano solos, one of which may have been rediscovered very recently.
Robinson McClellan, an American composer and curator at the Morgan Library and Museum, stumbled upon the waltz while cataloging different items from a collection the museum had been given in 2019. The composition had been written on a small piece of paper no larger than an index card and the name “Chopin” had been printed at the top of the work. But when the piece couldn’t be matched to any of the composer’s other works, McClellan realized he might have something special on his hands.
“I thought, ‘What’s going on here? What could this be?’” McClellan told The New York Times. “I didn’t recognize the music.”
After trying to play the piece at home on a digital piano, McClellan had doubts about the piece’s authenticity, stating that it was unusually volcanic. Still, he was unsure and decided to send a photo to Jeffrey Kallberg who is a leading Chopin scholar.
Kallberg, upon seeing the piece, said his “jaw dropped… I knew I had never seen this [composition] before.”
This discovery comes just weeks after researchers in Salzburg announced that they had uncovered a previously unheard work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s in their collection. Findings such as these are often greeted with skepticism in the classical music community where it’s not uncommon for unearthed “masterpieces” turning out to be fake.
In an attempt to dispel concerns about the composition’s authenticity, McClellan and Kallberg enlisted the help of other Chopin experts. During this process of authentication, the two encountered some problems.
The first problem was the composer himself had not signed his name on the document as the printing belonged to someone else, a fact that was revealed by a handwriting analysis. And secondly, the piece was much shorter than Chopin’s normal compositions and its structure was strange. “Several moody, dissonant measures culminate in a loud outburst before a melancholy melody begins,” the museum said. “None of his known waltzes start this way.”
Furthermore, while it is believed that Chopin has written dozens of waltzes, only 17 were published, meaning that any new findings attributed to him are quite rare.
Still, after testing the paper and ink used to note down the composition and analyzing the handwriting and musical style, the Morgan Library and Museum strongly believe that the piece was composed by Chopin. As the piece dates to the 1830s when Chopin was in his 20s, the strange and unusual style could be the result of an early period of his life during which the composer was experimenting.
“There’s quite a bit of juvenilia which Chopin kept in his drawer and never intended to publish,” classical pianist Sir Stephan Hough told the BBC, “and this [piece] probably belongs in that drawer.”