Beschreibung:

(Music & Performing Arts) 1 Piece. Document Signed. Chopin, Frederic. London, May, 1840. 1 page, 5 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches; 138 x 239 mm; some smudging at edges, light creases along old folds. Partly printed receipt, completed and signed in manuscript, for 24 pounds for the sale of the copyright and interest present and future in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland of Chopin's Sonata Opus 35, Impromptu Opus 36, and Nocturnes Opus 37. Strong, dark signature. This receipt, rediscovered in 1979, derives from a larger collection of 17 contracts signed by Chopin; these documents were, to that time, part of an archive owned by Edwin Ashdown, a distant relative of Christian Wessel, Chopin's English publisher. It has been established that the receipt at hand was one-third of a contract which was, like most others in Ashdown's collection, cut up and parted out from its original context at the time of its first appearance at auction. See Jeffrey Kallberg, 'The Chopin Sources: Variants and Versions in Later Manuscripts and Printed Editions' (Ph.D. diss., The University of Chicago, 1982), p. 363.