How do you authenticate a long-lost Chopin waltz

Jeffrey Kallberg was partway through a 10-day research trip in Europe when he received an intriguing inquiry from the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City: Could he help them authenticate what they believed was a never-before-seen Chopin waltz?

"It's my business to know what Chopin manuscripts are out there," says Kallberg, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music and Interim Dean of Penn's School Arts & Sciences. Kallberg has studied the composer's works for the better part of five decades. "There are some in private collections that I haven't seen, but for the most part, a handful keep popping up. I'm not accustomed to looking at a photo of one of these and not having a clue, so that was pretty exciting."

"When I sat down and played it," says Kallberg, "it confirmed in my mind, at least, what I thought was the case: Here was a piece by Chopin that we had not known of before."

"It's an ongoing process. It's going to take a long time. I don't pretend that I'm going to have this sorted out anytime soon or that Chopin scholars in general will have this sorted out," he says. "There's skepticism out there. There should be skepticism out there. I like hearing the skepticism because it challenges me to think about things I haven't thought about before, and that's what this process is really about."

In solving a puzzle such as this, the objective evidence is, objectively, easier to parse. Was the ink appropriate to the time period in question? Does the handwriting match that of the study subject? They're tangible, testable aspects that can generate (relatively) concrete answers. Understanding the musical evidence-the "stylistic fingerprints" as Kallberg calls them-can be much harder.

In this case, that began with the length of the composition. It's 24 measures, which Chopin asks the musician to repeat once, for a total of 48 measures. It takes just over one minute to play. "Chopin loved short pieces. It's kind of what he's known for. He wrote a prelude that was just nine measures long," Kallberg says. "It's true we don't have any other short Chopin waltzes, but we have a lot of short pieces in other genres."

Then there was the piece's progression. "Two thirds of this waltz do what we think a Chopin waltz should do, but one third doesn't, and that's the way it begins," Kallberg says. "The first third is very odd." Specifically, at measure seven, Chopin asks for triple forte, denoted with three lowercase "fs" and indicating maximum volume, a stark contrast to the quieter sounds he generally used. What follows the loud dissonance is melancholy and subtle-an evolution that leads to the question arguably hardest to answer: Why might Chopin have written this piece?

"The objective evidence adds up, the musical evidence adds up, and that's why I'm confident that this is really Chopin," he says.

Of course, that's not where the story ends. "The next question to ask is, what does this tell us about Chopin and the waltz? It seems to me like it gives us food for thought about his style and his approach to gift giving and interacting in society and so much more."

Read more at Omnia.