Many are the editions of Chopin’s studies, but after going over the ground, one finds only about a dozen worthy of study and consultation.  Karasowski gives the date of the first complete edition of the Chopin works as 1846, with Gebethner & Wolff, Warsaw, as publishers.  Then, according to Niecks, followed Tellefsen, Klindworth—­Bote & Bock—­Scholtz—­Peters—­Breitkopf & Hartel, Mikuli, Schuberth, Kahnt, Steingraber—­better known as Mertke’s—­and Schlesinger, edited by the great pedagogue Theodor Kullak.  Xaver Scharwenka has edited Klindworth for the London edition of Augener & Co.  Mikuli criticised the Tellefsen edition, yet both men had been Chopin pupils.  This is a significant fact and shows that little reliance can be placed on the brave talk about tradition.  Yet Mikuli had the assistance of a half dozen of Chopin’s “favorite” pupils, and, in addition, Ferdinand Hiller.  Herman Scholtz, who edited the works for Peters, based his results on careful inspection of original French, German and English editions, besides consulting M. Georges Mathias, a pupil of Chopin.  If Fontana, Wolff, Gutmann, Mikuli and Tellefsen, who copied from the original Chopin manuscripts under the supervision of the composer, cannot agree, then upon what foundation are reared the structures of the modern critical editions?  The early French, German and Polish editions are faulty, indeed useless, because of misprints and errata of all kinds.  Every succeeding edition has cleared away some of these errors, but only in Karl Klindworth has Chopin found a worthy, though not faultless, editor.  His edition is a work of genius and was called by Von Bulow “the only model edition.”  In a few sections others, such as Kullak, Dr. Hugo Riemann and Hans von Bulow, may have outstripped him, but as a whole his editing is amazing for its exactitude, scholarship, fertility in novel fingerings and sympathetic insight in phrasing.  This edition appeared at Moscow from 1873 to 1876.

The twenty-seven studies of Chopin have been separately edited by Riemann and Von Bulow.

Let us narrow our investigations and critical comparisons to Klindworth, Von Bulow, Kullak and Riemann.  Carl Reinecke’s edition of the studies in Breitkopf & Hartel’s collection offers nothing new, neither do Mertke, Scholtz and Mikuli.  The latter one should keep at hand because of the possible freedom from impurities in his text, but of phrasing or fingering he contributes little.  It must be remembered that with the studies, while they completely exhibit the entire range of Chopin’s genius, the play’s the thing after all.  The poetry, the passion of the Ballades and Scherzi wind throughout these technical problems like a flaming skein.  With the modern avidity for exterior as well as interior analysis, Mikuli, Reinecke, Mertke and Scholtz evidence little sympathy.  It is then from the masterly editing of Kullak, Von Bulow, Riemann and Klindworth that I shall draw copiously.  They have, in their various