For those who love classical music, the name Frédéric Chopin is quite familiar, and perhaps it evokes certain associations—smooth melodies, dramatic chord progressions, and arguably the most palpable piano pieces of the Romantic period. On Monday, The New York Times released an article which revealed the discovery of a previously lost waltz by Chopin. The uncovered piece for piano was found by Robinson McClellan in the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan, New York. McClellan had been sifting through a mass of documents in the library’s vault when he happened upon this historic discovery.
Famous concert pianist Lang Lang performed Chopin’s newfound waltz for The New York Times, a video of which they include in their article on the matter. The piece is written in the key of A minor and is about 1:18 in length, including a repeat. Chopin’s composition style is so distinctive that, within moments of Lang Lang’s performance of the new waltz, anyone familiar with Chopin’s work would recognize the piece as his.
Chopin himself was a complex individual. Born in Poland in 1810, Chopin lived through a period of unrest in his homeland, particular in the city of Warsaw where he grew up. After leaving Poland around age 20, Chopin captured his layered emotions regarding war, death, and longing through music composition. Chopin’s works have remained famous for centuries due to their timeless propensity to convey what it means to be human in a changing and complicated world.
The waltz discovered this week is dated to the 1830s when the Kingdom of Poland was in conflict with the Russian Empire. This historical context is important to our understanding of Chopin’s emotional state at the time, which inspired the distinctive style with which he composed music. Chopin’s famous Waltz in A Minor (not to be confused with the recently discovered waltz also written in A minor is the best example of how Chopin’s waltzes do not fit the same style as most other composers’ waltzes from the Romantic era. Many waltzes are upbeat and full of joy, but Chopin’s most notable pieces of the same type adopt the bouncy flow of a waltz to create something entirely unique—something melancholy yet hopeful, as the composer himself may have felt about his abandoned homeland.
Chopin’s new waltz flows similarly to his others, combining striking chords with unexpectedly emphatic notes out of key. The dissonance that Chopin’s music creates makes it easy to identify the manuscript as his, along with the handwriting matching other manuscripts attributed to him and his signature doodles being found on the page.
The discovery of a Chopin waltz nearly 200 years after his death is a historic moment in the field of classical music. For many, this find carries with it much more cultural and historical significance than just 78 seconds of entertainment. To those of us who love his work, Chopin has reached out from his grave and touched our hearts with all the weight of his emotional journey immortalized through classical composition.
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