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I was looking up various editions of the Chopin Minute Waltz, esp. for the ending. I ran into one on IMSLP with Joan Trescases. Some of the note lines are red, and I'm curious what this might be about.
Great question -- because there's absolutely nothing clear about it.
Usually with such a thing, there'd be some reasonably clear thing about it. But there isn't.
I looked at it with interest, found nothing obvious, took it over to the piano and tried to find something, anything at all, and didn't.
Here's what I would do about it, ultimately: ignore it. (Unless somewhere on there, there's an explanation, in which case I'd read the explanation, and then go back to ignoring it.)
It was pure curiosity. One hunch I had was that maybe this person was grouping notes, since the RH speeds up, and one way of seeing "speed up" is "more notes per second", and there are more notes between each consecutive pairs of lines, and then there are the two, which suggests a slow-down just before the ending part (which would be more like slamming on the brakes just before the ending, so nah).
It looks to me as though the person (Joan Trescases) who "manufactured" this copy just accidentally clicked on the wrong colour for a few of the note stems. Because of their random placement, they don't seem to have any significance.
When I downloaded the imslp file on my phone, some of the stems and bar lines were red and the pic was a bit fuzzy, and then as then turned black and the picture cleared up. On my computer, everything is just black. I think it's just a weird artifact.
Using the Atril pdf viewer program (Linux) the score renders without any red in the last line (or anywhere else in the document).
That suggests that it's just something that the "5D PDF Creator" software did when writing the pdf that makes it render differently depending on what pdf viewer you are using. The black lines are supposed to be just that -- black lines.
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I don't see any read lines in my Chrome "view" view'.
But what did Joan Trescases do? He went to the source and created another version (?) but is it any different and why does he feel the need to do that?
I was looking up various editions of the Chopin Minute Waltz, esp. for the ending. I ran into one on IMSLP with Joan Trescases. Some of the note lines are red, and I'm curious what this might be about.
I don't see any read lines in my Chrome "view" view'.
But what did Joan Trescases do? He went to the source and created another version (?) but is it any different and why does he feel the need to do that?
Well, the mysterious red lines seem to have been a dud due to digital technology. Without the red lines, there is nothing unusual about what Trescases did.
However, I was comparing scores for that last line for a reason. Chopin wrote this long cascading scale that speeds up, like a cadenza sort of, and underneath we have bar lines only in the bass line, with a LH that comes in - disappears - comes in again, and the timing of all that seems to be fuzzy. You'll hear different performers handle it differently. I collected a couple:
Kullak: Shows how Chopin wrote it, where in the 2nd-last measure the LH Ab comes in with the C or around the C. In the red square, he proposes a division into triplets, and our Ab comes in with the A nat.
This resource - someone gave me a link - lets you see the versions of a dozen editions, for any measure. If you click on a measure, it brings up versions (in editions) of that measure.
This is what I was actually exploring. The red lines were a red herring. They didn't make sense because they don't make sense and are probably "not really there" (originally).
Start slow, cascade down to the A-natural (slight pause before that note), last six RH notes with LH, a tempo. Don't blur the bitter end, C into D-flat, clean pedal change. 😆
Start slow, cascade down to the A-natural (slight pause before that note), last six RH notes with LH, a tempo. Don't blur the bitter end, C into D-flat, clean pedal change. 😆
That's last six notes of the run, of course, before the final D-flat.
Start slow, cascade down to the A-natural (slight pause before that note), last six RH notes with LH, a tempo. Don't blur the bitter end, C into D-flat, clean pedal change. 😆
That's last six notes of the run, of course, before the final D-flat.
That's also the way I play it - eventually. Prior to that, I played the whole run unmeasured, until I heard Zimerman....
Almost all concert pianists play it that way, but strictly speaking, that isn't what Chopin wrote (unless someone has an edition that is written that way?)
I think Chrispy referenced a widely respected cultural hero by way of expressing admiration of Chopin in general and this piece in particular rather than trying to incite a religious debate. Insert mythological, legendary, or historical cultural hero of your choice.
Austin Rogers, PhD, ARSM Music Teacher in Cedar Park, TX Baldwin SD-10 Concert Grand "Kuroneko"
No red shows up on my screen either. Maybe those particular lines are narrow enough on the page to selectively illuminate red dots on a lower resolution screen. If that's the case, the colors may shift or disappear if, not using full screen, you could move the score a little to the right or left.
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Dear Marc-André.
