Chopin’s last Nocturne

[tinctoria88]

Does anyone know the currently agreed on compositional date of Chopin’s last Nocturne?  I’ve found 1848 and 1837 referring to the Nocturne in C minor.  That’s a big gap of years dating that c-minor Nocturne!  It’s a strikingly singular Nocturne-being only two pages long .   Does anyone have advice on where to look  for current info about date of composition ?

[mjames]

Maurice Brown and Jozef Chominski are musicologists that wrote popular indexes of Chopin's compositions in chronological order. Read Jozef Chominski's from my library but I can't remember anything about the no. 21 nocturne. I think the Polish Chopin foundation website uses his work as citations.


https://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/composition/detail/name/nocturne/id/136

They're also confused so IDK  

If I were to go for my "gut feeling", I'd pick late 1830s. It sounds nothing like what he was composing in his final years.


Edit: I read an excerpt from Maurice Brown (not sure if it's from the "Chopin" index)  awhile back about it being originally intended for the op. 32 set, but apparently Chopin changed his mind. It fits with the style of those nocturnes so I'm going with Maurice Brown. I'll try to find the pdf link I read when I have time.

Edit 2:

https://www.ourchopin.com/list/listidx.html

Not about the nocturne itself, but it seems in the two last years of his life Chopin had trouble working in new compositions so he spent more of his time re-working on old drafts of uncompleted works. The nocturne was one of those drafts, alongside a waltz ( probably the a minor one, not sure).

[tinctoria88]

Thanks for all your insightful responses, mjames,  I'm tending towards your last "Edit 2" observation about this nocturne.
I just finished reading Adam Zamoyski's biography of Chopin, which I'm very greatful to this forum for recommending.  His list of compositions dates this nocturne 1837.   Here's a link to where I found the date 1848.  I have not yet pursued reading how the professor of piano Arthur Green attributed that date to the nocturne he refers to as KK1233-5 in c minor.

https://www.chopinproject.com/2008/08/27/nocturne-in-c-minor-kk-1233-5-1847-chopins-last-nocturne/

Thanks again for any other observations regarding this particular nocturne.

[tinctoria88]

Hmmmmmm....these 2 dates get curiouser and curiouser.  The first link mjames offerred gives both dates for this c minor Nocturne.  The 2nds link mentions this nocturne was composed 1837, then published 1838....??  Then the quote from Liszt dated 1852 refers to this c minor Nocturne as being worked on in the last 2 years of Chopin's life and also refers to it and a waltz as "the last" pieces.
By now I'm just going to learn the piece and not worry about date of composition.

[mjames]

I'm quite sure it's a typo, it's 1938 and not 1838.

To add even more confusion, the first actual publication of the piece was during the 1860s but under the name of Charlotte de Rothschild (yup, the Rothschild) alongside the posthumous a minor waltz and two other pieces. The two pieces were later republished under Chopin's name in 1938.

[tinctoria88]

Didn't Chopin's sister take charge of all his papers & manuscripts?  How could the 1837 c minor Nocturne get nto the hands of Charlotte de Rothschild?  How did you unearth this info?  I'm considering reading various collections of letters written by Chopin and others.  Any recommendations which ppublications of letters?
Thanks for your responses--totally perplexing about this piece's birth year & publication.

[mjames]

Not all I believe. The manuscripts that were in possession of Chopin's sister and Fontana were all published a few years after his death. Chopin had the habit of composing little works and gifting them to his pupils, acquaintances, friends, and patrons. Some were published by the recipients or Chopin (Mazurka in a minor a la Emile Gallaird) and others remained in the private possession of its recipients and their estate. Chopin would sometimes give them a handwritten copy of his (leading to several estates owning the same composition) or give them an original manuscript, he wasn't entirely consistent.
 
For example a prelude in ab published posthumously "presto con leggierezza" was originally a gift to Piere Wolf and the piece remained in the possession of his estate for decades. They had the only existing copy of the work. In the case of waltz no. 19 in a minor, the handwritten copy and original draft ended up in the hands of different estates, so Fontana and Chopin's sister were of unaware of its existence. Chopin handing out his unpublished works like candy to friends and stuff is the main reason why we still have Chopin pieces being published almost 200 years after his birth!

Chopin had a close relationship with the Rothschild family, Betty de Rothschild (Charlotte's mother) was one of his first pupils in Paris back in 1832 and also a patron of Chopin. This led to him forming relationships with other members of their family Nathaniel and Charlotte de Rothschild, Charlotte later became Chopin's pupil in 1841 (several of his pieces are dedicated to her, for example op. 52) or so. Since there are 3 draft versions of the c minor Nocturne available, I wouldn't find it hard to believe an extra one ended up in the possession of the Rothschild estate. Charlotte probably believed she had the only existing copy, since it wasn't published by Fontana.

Since Charlotte wasn't an accomplished musician, her publication of the piece under her name didn't circulate well and was lost in history. So when the nocturne was published in 1938, the source was unrelated to Charlotte. Charlotte's "compositions" were only recently discovered, this decade I believe, by a Chopin enthusiast - it was apparently collecting dust in some old section of a library.

https://imslp.org/wiki/4_Pi%C3%A8ces_pour_piano_(Rothschild,_Charlotte_de)


You can his letters here:

https://archive.org/details/chopinsletters00chop

[tinctoria88]

mjames, thanks very much for all your reports of the history behind this beautiful c mi. Nocturne.  As I'm just now picking up Jim Samson's "The Music of Chopin,"  I turned to the back to see what he offerred for chronological lists of compositions--3 lists!  This nocturne was within a listing by Kobylanska with the KK no. 1233-5, year of somposition 1847, date of publication 1938.  In Samson's Prologue to his book, he highly regards the Kobylanska Katalog as it focuses on exmining manuscripts.  Hmmmm....more clues?

I'm wondering how did you find info about Charlotte de Rothschild publishing this nocturne with her name as composer?  Would you mind sharing your sources of information that described this (rather unwise) maneuver?

My curiousity about the plac among Chopin's years of compostion is to understand this piece.

Thanks for your insights!

[mjames]

It's in the IMSLP link, the nocturne along with a Chopin waltz is one of the four pieces in the PDF. According to IMSLP it was published in the 1860s.

https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/authenticity-of-chopin-pieces-called-into-question/

Not a lot of info out there, you should contact Sears for more detailed stuff!

In the Chopin institute site, there seems to be a book specifically dedicated to this topic; however I haven't read it.

https://en.chopin.nifc.pl/institute/publications/other/id/4094

The history of Chopin’s relations with the Rothschild family in Paris has been a chapter that still remained to be explored in the master’s biography. Now a double discovery has given us an opportunity to do just that: the first edition (c.1870), attached to the Rothschild name, of the Nocturne in C minor and the Waltz in A minor without opus number, and a previously unknown version of the Mazurka, Op. posth. 67 No. 4, inscribed by the composer in a family album.

The account of a meeting between a forlorn Chopin, wandering aimlessly along the Parisian boulevards, and his compatriot Walenty Radziwiłł, who supposedly took him that very evening to the Rothschilds, thereby launching his lightning success in high society – that account, first related by Karasowski around a century and a half ago and a fixture ever since in most of the composer’s biographies, seems attributable to the category of myths, at least in that form: Walenty was not in Paris at the time. We can accept, meanwhile, that Chopin began giving piano lessons to Betty de Rothschild from 1832–1833, the period of his first steps in the grand monde.’

Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger

Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger is one of the world’s leading experts on the life and work of Fryderyk Chopin. He brings to this field, largely dominated by Poles and Anglo-Saxons, a depth of Francophone erudition and a personal humanistic esprit. These features permeate his profound and excellently crafted study of Chopin’s relations with the Rothschild family and of two works shrouded in mystery: the Nocturne in C minor and the Waltz in A minor.