Étude Op. 10, No. 1 (Chopin)

The American music critic James Huneker (1857–1921) compared the "hypnotic charm" that these "dizzy acclivities and descents exercise for eye as well as ear" to the frightening staircases in Giovanni Battista Piranesi's prints of the Carceri d'invenzione.

[6] The first part of the middle section introduces chromaticism in the left hand octave melody while the second one modulates to the C major recapitulation via an extended circle of fifths.

James Huneker states that Chopin wished to begin the "exposition of his wonderful technical system" with a "skeletonized statement" and compares the étude to a "tree stripped of its bark.

[7] A fictional example of Chopin's harmonies with Bach's figuration and vice versa is given by British musicologist Jim Samson (born 1946).

[8] A harmonic reduction ("ground melody") of the work can already be found in Carl Czerny's School of Practical Composition.

[11] A slower tempo ( = 152) has been suggested by later editors such as Hans von Bülow who feared that at  = 176 "the majestic grandeur [would be] impaired.

[12]In Robert Schumann's 1836 article on piano études in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,[13] the study is classified under the category "stretches: right hand" (Spannungen.

French pianist Alfred Cortot (1877–1962) states that the first difficulty to overcome is "stretch and firmness in shifting the hand over nearly the whole length of the keyboard.

"[14] Exercises introduced by Cortot, Gottfried Galston [de; fr][15] and Alfredo Casella[16] deal mostly with stretch and anticipation of position changes.

After Emerson performs the introduction on the piano, the rest of the band joins him using Chopin's harmonic structure for their song.