New York’s Morgan Library & Museum announces that it has discovered a previously unknown waltz by the young Frédéric Chopin, found among an assortment of memorabilia in its collection.
The piece, lasting about a minute and a quarter, was written on paper and with ink that matches those in use around 1830, when the waltz is believed to have been composed. Chopin’s name is written at the top of the score, but not in Chopin’s handwriting. Otherwise, “[t]he penmanship matches the composer’s . . . down to the unusual rendering of the bass clef symbols,” Javier C. Hernández reports in The New York Times.
“We have total confidence in our conclusion,” said Morgan curator Robinson McClellan. “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 finds that the little waltz is in “one of the most authentic Chopin styles that you can imagine,” plays the piece in a video attached to The Times article: