Reimagining Chopin: In Pursuit of Alternatives

Evidence of Fryderyk Chopin’s irrepressible imagination can be discerned from the abundant variants that distinguish the autograph and printed sources of most of his works. Chopin’s continual changes of mind arose not so much from indecision but because he kept hearing his music in different ways, both when notating it initially and when engaging with it in teaching and performance contexts thereafter. Along with multiple versions of “the same” music, Chopin’s reimaginings took the form of “alternatives” or ossias, in most cases pencilled by him into the scores of his students and associates, apparently for use in performance at their discretion. This essay focuses on such alternatives, which to date have not been systematically studied. I first present an inventory of these ossias, suggesting how Chopin might have riffed when playing his music. Not only does the discussion shed light on his own musical practices, but it helps to define a “rhetoric of variation” that potentially could be employed by other pianists keen to put their individual stamp on Chopin’s music. Such an approach would enable one to transcend the letter of the score and conceivably to channel the improvisatory spirit for which Chopin’s music-making was universally celebrated.