How do I play this chord with an overlapping sharp and flat?

Question

How do I play this chord (underneath the red arrow in the attached image) that seems to have both D sharp and an E flat? Am I misreading it?

EDIT: the clip is from the piece "Manchega" by Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Here's a link to the sheet music I'm using: https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ReverseLookup/3054

Answer 1

It's a mistake. It should be E# instead of D#. It's clearly audible in the recording:

Possible reason for the mistake is that D# is much more commonly used than E#. However it's a very reasonable use. The section is in the key of Gb. The first half of the measure is Gb chord, while the second half is D chord. F# is a chord tone for D, while E# is #9, a common alteration; or perhaps it's a chromatic ornamentation of F#. Writing F instead of E# would not only require using more accidentals in the measure, but also wouldn't make harmonic sense.

Answer 2

As @user1079505 points out, recorded versions of the piece include an E#. This begs the question, though: how do they know to play E#?

One way would be a more modern edition that contains the correction. But that still begs the question of how the editor(s) knew.

How does an editor or performer know that E# is correct?

The holograph manuscript

Gottschalk's original, handwritten manuscript is held by the New York Public Library (WorldCat). In principle, a researcher could consult the original to see if Gottschalk wrote an E#, with the error being introduced in the process of publishing the first edition. Unfortunately, the NYPL only has the first page of the manuscript, which does not contain measure 39.¹

The musical evidence

However, even without access to the holograph, examining the published edition (presuming the remainder is correct) gives clues supporting E#.

The B section's defining musical gesture is Db-Eb-F Gb-F-Gb:

X: 1
T: Manchega
T: B section motif
C: Louis Moreau Gottschalk
K: Gb
D'E'F' {/A'}G'F'/2G'/2 z

This gesture occurs four times, in measures 33, 35, 37, and 39.

Measures 33, 35, and 37 all contain exactly these same pitches. In measure 39, beat 4 is re-notated from Gb to F#, because the underlying harmony is D major. (This serves as a pivot chord. It's the vi chord borrowed from Gb minor [i.e., Ebb major] and also the iv chord of A major [i.e., D major], where the music arrives on measure 40, beats 5 and 6.)

Given the melodic consistency and harmonic context, there is no reason the F# would be decorated with Eb, which is musically jarring at least, if not altogether nonsensical. E# maintains (enharmonic) consistency with the preceding three occurrences, which contain F.

Further, the D# in the same chord makes little sense for the same reason (consistency with the other occurrences of the gesture) as well as the presence of D in the left hand.

Even more reliably than the autograph, this makes clear Gottschalk's intention that the Eb should be E# (and the D# should be D).

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¹ _{That only the first page is in the collection (call #: JPB 84-13 no. 31 [Score]) was confirmed in email communication with the library on 22 Sept 2021. The only other edition held by the NYPL is the William Hall & Son edition, which does contain the error. That edition is available on IMSLP.}

Answer 3

Looks like a misprint to me. I suspect the sharp is intended for the E.