Frédéric Chopin – Waltz in B minor, Op. 69 No. 2 (Analysis)

Symbolic scene in a Polish salon of 1829, with a period piano and a couple turning in a waltz, inspired by Chopin’s Waltz in B minor.
In Chopin’s Waltz in B minor, a steady three-beat pulse supports a freely shaped melodic line that moves into the brighter B-major trio before returning to its opening key.

Chopin’s Waltz in B minor begins before the dance has completed its first measure. The melody enters on an upbeat; only then does the piano settle into its three-beat rhythm. Within moments, the essential relationship of the piece is in place. The left hand maintains the pulse while the right hand shapes its phrases through small changes of emphasis and motion. The accompaniment tells us that this is a waltz. The way the melody moves above it gives the work its particular voice.

Chopin composed the piece in 1829, during his youth in Poland. Its familiar designation, “Op. 69 No. 2,” belongs to its posthumous publication history. The B-minor waltz predates the Waltz in A-flat major with which it was later paired; its position as the “second” waltz identifies its place in an edition rather than the order in which Chopin wrote the two works.

The main section remains in B minor, yet its character changes as phrases return and a more animated idea emerges among them. In the trio, B major alters the music’s colour while preserving the same tonal centre. Near the end of that section, the major-mode brightness gradually recedes and the opening melody returns. Each reappearance therefore matters: the listener recognises a familiar phrase at a new point in the piece’s journey.

The history of the score adds another dimension to that experience. No manuscript in Chopin’s hand survives, and the extant copies and early editions differ in melodic details, accompaniment and the length of the final return. To make clear which music is being described, this analysis follows the later version in the Chopin National Edition. Differences from Julian Fontana’s widely circulated edition are noted where they substantially affect what a listener hears.

Movements / Structure

This is one continuous piano piece. The three regions below provide a listening map rather than a list of separate movements.

Main section — B minor. The opening melody unfolds in phrases that return with small variations. A livelier idea, identified by the marking con anima in widely circulated scores, brings greater momentum before the initial material reappears. The main section thus develops a contrast of its own before the trio begins.

Trio — B major. A new melodic idea accompanies the change from minor to the parallel major key. As the phrase recurs, it grows richer: in the later version, ornaments and pairs of notes gradually thicken the writing. The final measures prepare the return to B minor.

Final return — B minor. In the reference version, only the opening period of the main section comes back. Fontana’s edition extends the reprise, changing the proportions of the piece and the length of its close. Two performances may follow the same broad design, then, yet reach the ending by noticeably different routes.

Musical Analysis

The upbeat that sets the melody in motion

The waltz makes its first impression through a small detail of timing: the melody begins with an upbeat, ahead of the first strong beat of a complete measure. That initial note draws the ear into the phrase. Its exact delivery also varies among the sources. It may be sustained into the following measure or struck again. The National Edition presents these as alternatives in the work’s transmission rather than claiming one unequivocal solution.

Beneath the melody, the left hand establishes the familiar waltz pattern: bass on the first beat, chords on the second and third. Against that steady framework, the right hand can carry notes across the bar line and guide each phrase towards its own small point of arrival. The listener hears the dance pulse and, at the same time, a melody that breathes more freely above it.

The opening idea gathers depth through reappearance. Its direction remains recognisable while its details shift: a different rhythmic division, an ornament, fuller or lighter support from the accompaniment. The surviving versions show Chopin revisiting precisely such details. In the later version, the melodic line is more varied and the bass more carefully shaped.

A more animated side of B minor

The main section changes character well before the major-key trio arrives. In the con anima passage, the melody moves more vigorously and the phrase presses forward with greater energy. B minor remains the tonal centre, so the change is heard first in articulation and momentum. The waltz’s contrasts are already at work within its opening key.

By the time the initial material returns, the listener has heard another way for music in the same three-beat pulse to move. The left hand still sustains the dance, while rests and the placement of its chords can create more space between phrases. Such differences in the later version affect the sense of continuity without altering the accompaniment’s underlying pattern.

The trio and its changing colour

The arrival of B major is striking because the tonal centre stays in place while its mode changes. The new melody has room to establish itself, and the contrast with the preceding section arises from both harmony and the way its phrase returns. The trio has a musical life of its own, extending beyond a brief bright interlude between minor-key passages.

In the later version, repetition leads to a gradual enrichment of the texture. Ornaments enter the melody; later, pairs of notes give it greater weight. The accompaniment continues to make the waltz rhythm clear, allowing these additions to sound like stages in the growth of the same idea. Other surviving versions place or shape some of these details differently, preserving evidence of Chopin’s continuing work on the piece.

The trio’s final measures prepare the return with particular delicacy. In the reference version, the music remains close to B major for a little longer. A note first begins to alter its major-mode colour; then the minor third clearly restores B minor. The ear can follow that change as it happens, just before the opening melody becomes recognisable again.

A brief return with lasting weight

In the version followed here, the opening period alone returns after the trio and brings the waltz to its close. The melody that first set the piece in motion reappears as the music settles back into B minor. Because the reprise is short, the moment of recognition carries much of the ending’s expressive weight.

Fontana’s longer reprise produces a different sense of balance. The distinction belongs to the history of the score: Fontana wrote out repeats in full and combined elements transmitted in different versions. For the later version it places first, the National Edition adopts a return of the opening measures only. When a recording continues considerably further after the trio, the edition used by the pianist is therefore worth considering.

Pulse, rubato and clarity of sound

The 3/4 metre needs to remain perceptible throughout, even when the melody briefly takes more time on its way to a cadence. Within that framework, rubato can clarify the course of a phrase. A little freedom on an upbeat or before a significant note gains meaning because the left hand continues to orient the dance. What matters is the relationship between the hands, rather than a uniform slowing of every beat.

The pedal calls for similar care. Resonance helps the melody sing, while clear harmonic changes allow the passage between tonal regions to be heard. The National Edition’s performance commentary considers pedalling in relation to the accompaniment and its changing harmonies, leaving room for different pedal lengths from one measure to the next. Even this apparently spare piano texture asks the performer to listen closely to the sound it creates.

🪶 A Chapter in the Life of the Work

From manuscript pages to Op. 69

In 1829, nineteen-year-old Chopin was still living in Poland and writing his early waltzes. The B-minor piece belongs to that youthful period, although the music that has reached us cannot be traced to a single surviving score. One early form was even written in 3/8 metre and may not yet have included the B-major trio. Its manuscript has disappeared. We know of that stage through a copy and a brief musical excerpt preserved later within the composer’s family.

The same year offers a more personal thread in the waltz’s history. Chopin presented a manuscript of it to Wilhelm Kolberg. The original is lost, but a copy eventually passed to Wilhelm’s brother Oskar. It preserves an early complete version of the piece. At this stage the waltz travelled in manuscript pages, years before it acquired the printed form and opus number familiar to today’s listeners.

Chopin returned to the music in the years that followed. Copies descended from different lost manuscripts show changes to the melody, ornaments and left-hand writing. In a later version, the bass line is shaped with greater care and the trio gradually gains new detail. These sources let us follow a process of revision, even though they do not provide a date for every individual change.

Another version is associated with 1844. The cover of the subsequent first printed edition states that two waltzes had been entered in the album of a countess identified there by an initial; the editors of the National Edition identify her as Countess Plater. The relevant Chopin manuscript is also lost. Its music nevertheless left a trace in the edition printed by Juliusz Wildt in Kraków in 1852, three years after the composer’s death. There, the Waltz in B minor appeared alongside a waltz in F minor. It was the B-minor work’s first publication, although another edition would become more widely associated with it.

Around 1854, Chopin’s sister Ludwika Jędrzejewicz compiled a list of works from his papers and included the opening notes of the waltz. Her record preserves another glimpse of its early form. In July 1855, Chopin’s friend Julian Fontana published the B-minor waltz together with the Waltz in A-flat major in Paris and Berlin. The German edition assigned the pair the number Op. 69. Fontana helped carry the piece to a wider public in an influential form, but he also supplied performance markings, wrote out repeats and combined details that the surviving sources do not always transmit together.

The Kolberg copy had one more journey to make. On 29 March 1881, Oskar Kolberg presented it to the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków. At the foot of its first page he recorded that the original had been given to his brother Wilhelm in 1829. That short note connects someone who knew the waltz in Chopin’s youth with the place where evidence of its early life was preserved. Through copies, albums and printed editions, the piece reached the modern score carrying more than one stage of its creation.

🎧 Listening Guide

These landmarks follow the course of the waltz. Their exact timing depends on the pianist and the version of the score used.

  • The opening upbeat: The melody begins ahead of the first complete measure. Sustaining or repeating its initial note changes the way the phrase is spoken from the outset.
  • The three-beat step: A bass note establishes the first beat; chords fill the next two. The steadiness of the left hand makes small freedoms in the melody easier to hear.
  • The change of energy within B minor: The more animated idea arrives before the trio. Momentum increases while the minor key remains in place.
  • The trio’s entrance: B major changes the music’s colour and brings a new melody. As its phrase recurs, ornaments and paired notes can make the writing sound richer.
  • The return of the minor mode: Towards the end of the trio, the change of key is prepared gradually before the opening melody returns. The length of the final reprise may also offer a clue to the version followed in a performance.

🎶 Further Listening

These three recordings feature the same waltz and retain the pianists named in the published article. Heard together, they invite comparison of phrase length, the feel of the dance pulse and the way each performer brings the trio into focus.

  • Arthur Rubinstein: The melody unfolds naturally over a pulse that remains steady without becoming heavy. His performance clarifies the balance of the work’s sections and allows the B-major trio to brighten the sound without introducing an abrupt change of style. It is a particularly useful starting point for hearing the waltz as a continuous narrative rather than a sequence of contrasting episodes.
  • Alfred Cortot: Upbeats, slight hesitations and the ends of phrases acquire unusual expressive weight. His flexible timing makes the melody sound almost spoken, while the underlying dance remains perceptible in the background. The recording reveals how decisively rubato can alter the character of the same written phrases.
  • Dinu Lipatti: A lucid melodic line is matched by finely graded dynamics and a clearly articulated accompaniment. The move from the main section into the trio registers less as an external contrast than as a change of colour. Particularly striking is the economy with which small shifts of phrasing and sonority are made to matter.

📚 Further Reading

This short waltz offers an unusual opportunity to read a piece alongside the history of its different texts. The following books and edition serve distinct purposes: comparison of the surviving versions, study of Chopin’s musical language and a broader historical view.

  • Jan Ekier and Paweł Kamiński, eds., Waltzes (B): Published Posthumously: The critical edition and commentary are the starting point for the work’s versions, variants and disputed final reprise.
  • Jim Samson, The Music of Chopin: Examines Chopin’s musical language and creative process, providing a wider context for the waltz’s subtle changes of form and piano texture.
  • Jim Samson, Chopin: Brings music and biography together in an accessible study of the composer.
  • Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times: A more extensive biography for readers wishing to place the youthful waltz and its posthumous circulation within Chopin’s larger story.

These pieces illuminate different possibilities within short-form piano writing: the return of a phrase, the relationship with dance and the expressive reach of a restrained texture.

  • Frédéric Chopin — Waltz in A-flat Major, Op. 69 No. 1: This is the work with which the B-minor waltz was later paired in print, although it was composed later and belongs to a different period of Chopin’s life. Its warmer key, broader melodic breathing and reflective manner invite comparison with the youthful directness and minor–major contrasts of Op. 69 No. 2.
  • Frédéric Chopin — Waltz in C-sharp Minor, Op. 64 No. 2: Here the piano waltz is organised through sharper contrasts of motion, recurring ideas and changes of character. Its movement between restrained melancholy, swirling momentum and a lyrical central region shows how much further Chopin would extend the expressive possibilities of the same dance form.
  • Robert Schumann — Kinderszenen, Op. 15: Although this is not a cycle of waltzes, its brief scenes offer a related example of poetic concentration. Clear musical ideas acquire depth through phrasing, memory and subtle changes of sound—qualities that also help us hear beyond the apparent simplicity of Chopin’s piece.
  • Johannes Brahms — Waltz No. 15 from the Waltzes, Op. 39: This short A-flat-major waltz approaches the dance through gentle swaying motion, concentrated melodic writing and inward calm. Heard beside Chopin’s piece, it reveals another way in which a steady three-beat pulse can support an intensely lyrical phrase without requiring a large formal span.

🎼 Closing Reflection

The opening phrase returns after the sound of B major has faded. Its pulse is familiar, as is its melody; in the short time between the two appearances, the music has acquired a past.

📖 References & Sources

This article draws chiefly on a comparison of the waltz’s surviving sources and the critical commentary of the Chopin National Edition. Early prints establish its publication history; later studies provide the wider musical and historical context.

Scores and critical edition

  • Frédéric Chopin, Waltzes (B): Published Posthumously, ed. Jan Ekier and Paweł Kamiński, National Edition of the Works of Fryderyk Chopin. Warsaw: Foundation for the National Edition / PWM Edition, 2007. Waltz in B minor, WN 19, with performance and source commentaries.

Early printed sources

  • Frédéric Chopin, Waltz in B minor, in Deux Valses mélancoliques. Kraków: Juliusz Wildt, 1852.
  • Frédéric Chopin, Deux Valses, ed. Julian Fontana. Paris: J. Meissonnier fils, 1855; corresponding German edition, Berlin: A. M. Schlesinger, 1855. The German edition assigned the two waltzes the opus number 69.

Secondary literature

  • Jim Samson, The Music of Chopin. Oxford University Press, 1994.
  • Jim Samson, Chopin, The Master Musicians series. Oxford University Press, 1996.
  • Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

Selected discography

  • Arthur Rubinstein, recording of Chopin’s Waltz in B minor, Op. 69 No. 2, from his recordings of the waltzes.
  • Alfred Cortot, recording of the same waltz, May 1943.
  • Dinu Lipatti, recording of the same waltz, from his recordings of Chopin’s waltzes.

Digital resources

  • Chopin Online, Annotated Catalogue of Chopin’s First Editions: records of successive printings associated with Op. 69.
  • International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), Waltzes, Op. 69: historical editions, copies and bibliographic information.
  • PTNA Piano Music Encyclopedia, “Valse No. 10 in B minor, Op. 69 No. 2”: comparative overview of the versions. Its English text is an automatic translation; the consequential historical and editorial details were checked against the National Edition’s critical commentary.