Earlier this fall, Arts Online music theory faculty Robinson McClellan made headlines by making a rare discovery: a previously unknown waltz by none other than Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849).
NPR, The New York Times, and other major media outlets have been feverishly reporting on McClellan‘s discovery.
In McClellan’s position as associate curator of music at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, he mounts exhibitions, acquires items for the Morgan’s collection of printed music manuscripts and printed music, and organizes the existing collections.
It was in this last capacity that McClellan was sifting through items from a bequest that had come to the Morgan from arts education leader Arthur Satz when he came upon some music with Chopin’s name on it, written in the Polish composer and pianist’s distinctive handwriting.
“To be honest, it was a bit of a back-burner project delayed by the pandemic and my work on [an] exhibition,” he admits. “I didn’t expect something this exciting to be in there. So I opened the Satz Collection and there it was.”
But this was not the “aha” moment—not yet.
“I didn’t recognize the music, so I assumed it was just a copy of a Chopin work I didn’t know,” McClellan says. He sorted through Chopin’s A-minor waltzes, including a list of works that are known but lost, figuring maybe the piece in front of him was one of those. Finally, he snapped a photo of the manuscript and sent it to prominent Chopin scholar Jeffrey Kallberg.
Kallberg confirmed it: “He wrote back almost immediately saying it appeared to be a completely unknown work, and that the handwriting looked authentic,” McClellan says.
“My jaw dropped,” Kallberg told The New York Times last month. “I knew I had never seen this before.”
They inspected the manuscript together, in person, alongside the Morgan’s conservators who said that the paper and ink matched the period in which Chopin would have been writing, around 1830–35.
“We determined that to the best of our knowledge, it is an authentic manuscript written by Chopin,” McClellan says. “What we can’t know for certain is whether this is music he composed, but there seems to be a growing consensus that it sounds and feels like genuine Chopin.”
Pianist Lang Lang made a recording of the waltz for The Times at Steinway Hall in New York City, which premiered as a digital single on November 8.
But he’s not the only one.
“People have even written their own ‘completions,’ adding to the existing waltz with newly composed music in Chopin’s style,” McClellan says. “In addition to the scholarly value in adding a new layer to our understanding of Chopin, all this creativity is the best part.”
And McClellan says these reactions—not just from music scholars but from ordinary people all across the globe—have meant the most to him.
“I have been overwhelmed, and moved, by the response from the world,” McClellan says. “I thought it would run in a few news outlets and people would say ‘Oh, cool!’ and move on. Instead, there has been an outpouring of what I can only describe as love and joy.”
Listen to Lang Lang‘s world-premiere recording of Waltz in A Minor “Found in New York.”
Manuscript image credit: Courtesy of the Morgan Library & Museum; Headshot of McClellan courtesy of Robinson McClellan.