Chopin Waltz Rediscovered 200 Years Later

The previously unknown work was recently uncovered at a New York museum alongside collections of cultural memorabilia

A recently uncovered waltz written by the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) nearly 200 years ago was discovered in the Morgan Library & Museum vault in Manhattan. 

Museum curator and composer Robinson McClellan came across the manuscript in A minor while sorting through cultural memorabilia, which included postcards signed by Picasso and letters penned by Brahms and Tchaikovsky.

After playing from a photo of the manuscript on a digital piano, McClellan found that the work was “unusually volcanic, opening with quiet, dissonant notes that erupt into crashing chords,” The New York Times reported. 

McClellan sent the photograph to Jeffrey Kallberg, a leading Chopin scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, who tested the manuscript’s paper and ink, analyzed its handwriting and musical style, and consulted other experts.

Kallberg concluded that the work was likely an unknown waltz by Chopin — making it the first discovery of its kind in more than 50 years. 

The manuscript comprises 48 measures with a repeat, or about 80 seconds in four systems of two staves for piano, supposedly in Chopin’s hand, but unsigned. The work’s place of production is unspecified. 

Thought to be from around 1830 - 1835, the manuscript would have been penned when Chopin was in his early 20s, and is shorter than Chopin’s other waltzes. It includes fingering and unusual dynamic markings, such as a triple forte near the beginning. 

(Image courtesy: Morgan Library & Museum/NYT)

The waltz was found in an album of autographs, letters, portraits, and music manuscripts collected by Augustus Sherrill Whiton Jr., who was director of the New York School of Interior Design until his death in 1972. 

During his lifetime, Chopin wrote about 250 pieces, almost entirely for solo piano. Despite some unusual elements, the rediscovered waltz was verified by Chopin’s penmanship, and use of the paper and ink of his time.

Experts believe Chopin wrote as many as 28 waltzes, but only eight were published in his lifetime, and nine after his death; the others were lost or destroyed, NYT explained. 

Such waltzes were also given as gifts to friends and admirers — it is thought that this new waltz may have been conceived in this context as it was written on a small sheet of paper that was commonly used for gifts. 

“We have total confidence in our conclusion,” McClellan told NYT. “Now it’s time to put it out there for the world to take a look and form its own opinions.”

Pianist Lang Lang, who recently recorded the waltz for NYT at Steinway Hall, said the work felt like Chopin to him — the jarring opening, he said, “evokes the harsh winters of the Polish countryside.”

“This is not the most complicated music by Chopin,” he continued, “but it is one of the most authentic Chopin styles that you can imagine.”

Lang Lang’s performance of the waltz, courtesy of The New York Times, can be viewed below: