Featured picture Choice of the week: the first page of the autograph manuscript of Chopin's well-known Polonaise in A flat for piano (1842). Scholars can work back from such evidence as the strike-throughs, the handwriting, how the ink dried, and the spacing of the chords and bar-lines, to reveal aspects of how the composer conceived and penned the music. The "shadow" of an adjacent page pressed against this one can be seen.
