Chopin Online

Review Article

Introduction

This article reviews some of the most significant digital resources for Chopin scholarship currently available on the web, focusing on The Online Chopin Variorum Edition, Chopin's First Editions Online and The Chopin Early Editions collection. Readily accessible websites such as these have opened up new possibilities for researchers and offer unprecedented opportunities for performers to take ownership of editorial decisions, building their own interpretations based on authentic, original sources. The following investigation tests the search functions and capabilities of these websites while exploring any unique features and assessing their potential use and value as a research tool for scholars and performers.

The Online Chopin Variorum Edition (OCVE)¹

The updated Online Chopin Variorum Edition was launched in 2015, correcting many technical issues from the earlier iteration (http://www.ocve.org.uk). This new website also hosts Chopin's First Editions Online (CFEO) and the Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions (AC Online) under the same portal - an impressive amount of material now in one integrated place, providing an invaluable resource for Chopin scholarship. The OCVE has been described as 'An online, collaborative edition of Frédéric Chopin's works, built to allow comparative analysis and annotation of manuscripts and early editions'. ²It currently hosts primary source materials for the Ballades, the Preludes (opp. 28 and 45), the Nocturnes, the Mazurkas, the Scherzos, the Sonatas, the Fantasy op. 49 and the Polonaise-Fantasy op. 61.

The 'Browsing the Edition' section of the user guide has practical technical guidelines that include search capabilities and simple explanations for the various icons. The user can search using four filters: work, genre, publisher or source type, and the book icon beside each of the works provides a link to general information about that work. There are four subsections (Getting started, Source-level views, Bar view and Notes view) that are currently unpopulated. ³

The earlier edition of this website explained that it was not necessary to register to use the site, but there were increased possibilities to create and save your own annotations if you did, which you could then choose to share publicly. The latest version of the site (2015) makes no explicit reference to this feature but there is a login button on the landing page and, on accessing the works,...