Types and Categories of Textual Differences in Chopin Sources. The discrepancies in the text of a work by Chopin between different original sources are of varying character, depending on the stage in the creative process. Generally speaking, we can point to two basic categories: aspects crucial to the work’s structure and phenomena of local significance. Differences of the first order appear between sketches, rejected autographs and the text which the composer intended for publication, so they occur as the work is being created. Once a work is completed, and the composer has decided to have it published, further changes do not violate the established structure, but concern solely phenomena of local significance. Thus the composer allows different versions of details while the structure remains the same. This shows that Chopin’s creative process differed from that of many other nineteenth-century composers (e.g. Liszt, Bruckner), who sometimes made fundamental changes even to works already published.
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