Robinson McClellan holds a sheet of music. It’s as small as an index card. 

Could this long-lost paper really be a piece of music composed by the great Frédéric Chopin (sho-PAN)? His name is written at the top!

Mr. McClellan is the museum curator at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, New York. He found the piece. He says it could be the first new Chopin piece discovered in the last 100 years.

But, again, was it really a song Chopin wrote? Mr. McClellan admits we may never know for sure. It could be just an already-existing piece of music the composer copied down.

The piece has a “very stormy, brooding opening section.” Then it switches to a sad, thoughtful melody. “This is his style,” says Mr. McClellan. “It really feels like him.”

Mr. McClellan worked with experts to study the paper. It’s the same kind of paper Chopin liked to use for writing music. But he did not write the name “Chopin” at the top. It doesn’t match his handwriting. 

Frédéric Chopin was born in Poland in 1810. People considered him a musical genius from an early age. He died in 1849 at the age of 39. He is buried in France. But he asked for his heart to be returned to his home country. It rests in a church in Warsaw, Poland.

One expert thinks the “new” piece may have been a work in progress. Or something co-written with another musician or a student. 

If it is a Chopin original, the piece would be one of Chopin’s shortest known pieces. It’s less than one minute long.

 Praise Him. — Psalm 150:3