Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Chopin first ballade, measure 170 - weird stem

What is this weird stem? The whole set of notes prior to the grace is notated in a group of 5 but there are six note values.

?

What's weird about it?

I mean, don't get me wrong -- it is a little weird.

But what's weird about it?

It's just like any other whatever-let figure -- y'know like "triplet" or whatever. This is just a quintuplet.

It's to notate that you play an B flat and an B natural simultaneously. It's not really an additional stem, it's just that without it you can't notate the two at the same time.

Oh -- so that's what he meant!

Ah okay. Thanks! Couldn't he just have used a double accidental though?

Actually upon second look -- I don't see anything resembling an additional stem at all. That's why I didn't get it in the first place -- and I still don't.

Joel and Kuan: I wonder if maybe you're seeing the vertical-line portion of the flat sign as a stem-looking thing?

And Joel: I have no idea what you mean by "double accidental"! But anyway -- how about saying what "stem" thing you're talking about? I see nothing.

I'm guessing he's looking at the thing that looks like
B Bb
\ /
|

Where one of those arms is a stem.

You can't double notate it, because you can't have two accidentals on the same note. So in this case (and in a lot of 20th century music when this happens more often) is that you just notate it like two notes, then join them with a single (forked) stem.

edit: the forum is not letting me play with whitespace so looks weird..

OK -- what confused me was when you talked about something not being an extra stem, which made it seem like the issue was that something seemed like one.

I'm still not sure what he thinks is weird. Yeah, a bit unusual, but I wouldn't think it's weird or unclear.

However, it is hard.

I meant double flat or double sharp.. but on second look he, to my not-so-advanced understanding of theory, could have just made the flat a sharp and bunch them up into a chord together.

Mark, in my Henle edition the chord is notated like this:

Why didn't I just think of this...

Don't forget the notation is consistent with the

C - Bb - E - Bf - E
D - Ab - D - Ab - D
C - Eb - C - Eb - C

sequence he has going on in the inner voices for that phrase.

Yes. I'm sitting at my piano right now working it out. It's pretty awkward. Comparable to that segment at the end of the fourth scherzo IMO.

If I understand what you are asking - and I'm not sure that I do - how would a double flat or a double sharp solve the issue of having to play a B-flat and a B-natural (measure 170) and an A-flat and an A-natural (measure 171) at the same time?

An A-sharp and a G-sharp are not in accord with the harmonic "vocabulary" of the key in question. Chopin, it appears, knew his theory.

Regards,

Don't you mean old?

(Sorry Bruce, couldn't resist.)

If you have 1 notehead and a flat and a natural together it means something else: It means that you are going from a double flat to a single flat.

In this case Chopin wants YOU to play both Bb and B natural. And there's no other way to write that, unless you misspell the B natural into a Cb and get it over with!

Why does a Bb and an A double sharp not work?

First of all you'd have a clash of TOO MANY ACCIDENTALS. And secondly it would be off theoretically. and thirdly (just thought about it) you would confuse the heck out of the pianists: the A would actually sound higher than the Bb which is as confusing as it can get.

A bad idea!

Haha

Yes. I think some people will think this is nuts, and will wonder what you're talking about at all -- but in a pure sense it is so. Not, of course, in how they sound on the piano but in a pure sense.

Which, by the way, is actually part of what you had said just before that:


Chopin was into the theory of the music and of the voice leading as much as anybody, I think even including Bach. He wouldn't have been caught dead writing it as an A#, because, in terms of what's going on in the line of that voice, it's not an A-sharp and can't be an A-sharp.

What this demonstrates is the flexibility and universality of the notation system. Although this is unconventional, it should be immediately obvious what it means and how it is played, even to one who has never seen something like this before.