


A short waltz likely written by Frédéric Chopin has been discovered, according to the New York Times. A curator at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan found it in the museum’s archives. It was part of a personal collection donated to the museum in 2019.
The waltz was written on a 4-by-5-inch scrap of paper, and analysis of the paper and ink traces it to the early 1830s. (Chopin lived from 1810 to 1849.) It contains some of Chopin’s known tics when writing music, such as small notation and an unusually drawn bass clef.
Many of Chopin’s works have been lost. “While experts believe Chopin wrote as many as 28 waltzes, only eight were published in his lifetime, and nine after his death,” Javier Hernández writes for the Times. This could be the recovery of one of the lost ones. It’s the first discovery of a new Chopin work in nearly a hundred years.
It’s impossible to say for sure whether it’s really Chopin, but the evidence from the analysis of the document is compelling, and the sound is even more so. The New York Times had pianist Lang Lang play the 1:18 piece, and he said, “It is one of the most authentic Chopin styles that you can imagine.”
It really does sound like Chopin. Listen for yourself: