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CHOPIN, Frédéric, 1810-1849
Trois Fugues de Luigi Cherubini, Mises en Partition de Piano
Commentaire de Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger
[Fugues, by Cherubini, arr.]
Beginning of first page of Chopin's piano transcription
(4 pages of Chopin's dense autograph yields 18 pages of modern transcription!)
Publications de la Société Française de Musicologie, I/29. Bourg-la-Reine, 2017. Oblong, 29 x 23 cm, xxxi, 36 pp. Chopin paid conspicuous attention to the art of counterpoint. In the early 1840s he went so far as to immerse himself in Luigi Cherubini’s Cours de contrepoint et de fugue (1832) and transcribed for piano 3 of the master’s vocal fugues. The autograph manuscript of this transcription—published for the first time in this volume—was long preserved, unknown, in a private collection; it is to be counted among the relatively rare manuscripts that Chopin set down with special attention in regard calligraphy. In the introduction, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger traces the curious history of the manuscript and considers anew the importance of counterpoint to Chopin, who was immediately intrigued by the subject as a boy, in Warsaw, where his first teachers, Żywny and Elsner, inculcated in their pupil a fascination with J.S. Bach and with the Well-Tempered Clavier. The volume also features a number musical examples, illustrations (including portraits of Cherubini and of Chopin at his desk), facsimiles, and transcriptions of further rare contrapuntal studies by Chopin (including counterpoint exercises on given melodies of Cherubini and a fragment of a canon at the octave made in preparation for the Sonata, op. 65, for violoncello and piano). The excerpts from Cherubini’s Cours de Contrepoint that served as Chopin’s models are presented in the appendix. Hardbound. $51
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