Talk:Nocturnes, Op. 32 (Chopin)

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A fact from Nocturnes, Op. 32 (Chopin) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 April 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in A-flat major, Op. 32, No. 2, originally written for piano, was orchestrated in the ballet Les Sylphides?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/April.

Wikipedia

Ambiguous points - created by editors, or in original M.S.? edit

Latest comment: 14 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I refer to this passage from the article:

The piece is 65 measures long and, unusually, ends in the tonic minor key, B minor. There has been confusion over a key in the first bar of the last line: Theodor Kullak and Karl Klindworth use a G, while Julian Fontana used an F-sharp.

There's a lot more that's confused than just the G vs. F-sharp thing. (I've always understood G to be the accepted version, although I don't know for sure.)

There is doubt about whether the last chord is B major or B minor - I've seen both in different editions. Does anyone know which is correct, and whether the incorrect version resulted from an editor "correcting" something he thought wrong, or whether the uncertainty is in Chopin's manuscript? (The manuscript might be unclear, or there might be two or more manuscripts which disagree on this.) Whatever the case, perhaps it could be mentioned in the article. It makes a huge difference to the overall effect of this strange ending whether the last chord is major or minor. (I've always understood the minor chord to be correct, but again I don't know for sure.)

Also, in the edition on I.M.S.L.P. (http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/5/56/IMSLP00464-Chopin_-_2_Nocturnes__Op_32.pdf) the final D-natural octave in the right and left hands is shown to be simultaneous with the chord F-sharp, E, G-natural, A-sharp - yet I always understood that the D sounded a crotchet before the chord came in, thus adding the value of a crotchet to the passage. The version shown in that edition (which I've never seen before) looks to me like an editor tinkered with it to shoehorn the notes into a 4/4 straitjacket.

Finally, there seem to be at least two different versions of the rhythm of the entire last two lines of music (beginning with the repeated E-sharps in the bass - which I think I've seen notated as F-naturals). The edition on I.M.S.L.P. puts bars throughout in dotted lines to make the passage conform to 4/4 metre, and also imposes a particular rhythm on the octave recitative in the second half of the penultimate line; yet other editions have no bar-lines at all (except for the last two), and the recitative is notated all in quavers, joined together.

Does anyone know about these points, and which versions are authentically from Chopin? I think the last two lines of this Nocturne are one of the most disputed passages in Chopin's entire output. M.J.E. (talk) 20:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

F minor section edit

In the article Op.32 No.1, Wiki states:

James Huneker found the F-minor section to "[broaden] out to dramatic reaches" though he still viewed the overall piece negatively.

In the nocturne, there's no f-minor section, so this fact is obviously false. Wikipedia could have meant F-sharp minor, a closely related key to B major (parallel minor to Dominant), but there's no F-sharp minor in the nocturne. This sentence will be deleted from the article until I have realized the contributors were trying to say. Kevon kevono(talk) 20:36, 14 April 2016 (PT)

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