Étude Op. 10, No. 3 (Chopin)

[citation needed][5] This étude differs from most of Chopin's in its tempo, its poetic character and the lingering yet powerful recitation of its cantabile melody.

")"[6] Niecks writes that this study "may be reckoned among Chopin's loveliest compositions" as it "combines classical chasteness of contour with the fragrance of romanticism".

American music critic James Huneker (1857–1921) believed it to be "simpler, less morbid, sultry and languorous, therefore saner, than the much be-praised study in C sharp minor (Étude Op.

Musicologist Hugo Leichtentritt (1874–1951) believes its asymmetric structure, (5 + 3) + (5 + 7) bars, to be highly relevant to the impact of the melody.

Italian composer and editor Alfredo Casella (1883–1947) notices the Pelléas-like effect of the oscillating major thirds in bars 4–5 anticipating Debussy by more than half a century.

In the middle section (poco più animato), characterized by rhythmic shifts and sudden harmonic turns, theme and accompaniment are fused into oscillating double notes.

[11] The third period, although it stays chromatically centered around E major, is a long sequence of diminished seventh and tritone intervals, littered with accidentals and irregular rhythms difficult to play.

Leichtentritt calls the étude a "nocturne like piece of intimate and rich cantabile melodics [gesangreicher, inniger Melodik], relieved in its middle section by a highly effective sound-unfolding [Klangentfaltung] of a novel and peculiarly original character [Gepräge]".

[17] Ekier observes: "Only in print did Chopin change it to Lento ma non-troppo simultaneously adding a metronome mark."

[18] In Robert Schumann's 1836 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik article on piano études,[19] the study is classified under the category "melody and accompaniment in one hand simultaneously".

He recommends practicing the right-hand part of the first twenty bars (the A section) in three distinct modes of articulation and dynamics simultaneously, the top voice forte and legato, the middle one mp, and the lowest semiquavers in pp and staccato.

[22] Leopold Godowsky's version for the left hand alone in his Studies on Chopin's Études is a "rather faithful transformation... creating the illusion of two-hand writing".

This étude, or at least its last section, was orchestrated in 1943 or 1944 in Birkenau by Alma Rosé for a highly peculiar lineup of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz to be performed in secret for the band's members and trusted inmates, as music by Polish composers was strictly forbidden.

A section of the piece is played in the Futurama episode Meanwhile, during a montage while Fry and Leela explore the world as it is frozen in time.