This presentation, part of a series of musical manuscript shows, presents small sketches by Fryderyk Chopin. In these single notes, hastily scribbled down in a flurry of creative inspiration so as not to escape, often with musical markings omitted and in careless handwriting, we find the seeds of a composition. Although at first glance the notation appears enigmatic, these sketches reflect a unique moment - an attempt to materialise a newborn musical thought. Here Chopin was aided by the piano, on which the composer tested the sound of an idea and briefly noted it down on paper. These inconspicuous notes represent an important link in the work of Fryderyk Chopin - we are looking at the first, written, spontaneous phase of the creative process, after which the composer made countless attempts to refine the score of the original thought.

Bearing in mind the complex work that Frédéric Chopin did in attempting to put his musical genius on paper by means of simple notes, and also how much of his legacy we have lost, the small sketches presented during this series encourage us to reflect on the pricelessness of each Chopin note.

In the current show, we see a sketch of the seven, most likely, final bars of an unidentified composition by Frédéric Chopin.

On staves 2-3, the composer wrote in ink the musical text in the arrangement for piano. In addition, on the 4th stave he noted the notes of the bass base, which he then blurred. In bars 1-3 Chopin used numerous abbreviations. The musical text lacks keys and key marks, as well as metre. The last chord is marked with a fermata.

There is a rubbed annotation in the upper right-hand corner of the page: '14'[?] written in pencil in the hand of an undetermined person.

The time of composition of this sketch is unknown. On the basis of an analysis of the paper used by the composer with 12 staves per page, drawn in rastral, Professor Jeffrey Kallberg proposed a hypothetical dating of the manuscript between autumn 1843 and summer 1846.

The manuscript was originally in the collection of the French cellist Auguste Franchomme, a friend of Fryderyk Chopin, and his heirs. In 1958, it was purchased by the Fryderyk Chopin Society from the collector Marc Loliée in Paris. Since 2005, the object has been deposited by the Fryderyk Chopin Society at the Fryderyk Chopin National Institute in Warsaw.

With these final bars, we conclude our series of screenings of small sketches of Fryderyk Chopin. Although these musical crumbs seem inconspicuous and pose many question marks, they also open up further spaces for lovers and researchers of Chopin's music to reflect on his extraordinary oeuvre.
[Anna Adamusińska-Tasak]