"Impromptus, Book 1", Op. 32

This collection comprises four short pieces, combining two sets of miniatures compiled by the editorial department of 'Revue et Gazette Musicale', a music magazine published by Maurice Schlesinger in Paris, with two other short pieces composed independently. It was published by Brandus et Cie in 1848 as a collection and organized as a numbered work. The four pieces are titled: "Vaghezza" (first edition announced in the January 10, 1847 issue), "Friendship – Etude for Piano" (first published without an opus number in 1845), "Moorish Caprice" (supplement to issue No. 20, published May 16, 1847), and "Faith".

No. 1 "Vaghezza"

Publication: Brandus et Cie, 1847

This piece is an excerpt from "Impromptus, Book 1", a collection of four pieces published around 1848. Although the publisher's address printed on the first edition's cover was current in 1848, the legal deposit date stipulated by France is 1849. It is presumed that the deposit was delayed due to the publisher's relocation at the end of 1848.

Therefore, while the publication year for "Impromptus" as a collection is 1848–1849, this particular piece was published earlier in a different collection. That collection is "L'Album du Pianiste", Volume 1, published in January 1847 by the editorial department of the music magazine 'Revue et Gazette Musicale', and it contains the following works:

Composers and Titles:

• Ch.-V. Alkan (1813-1888) Vaghezza
• Stephen Heller (1813-1888) Love Letter – Schubert's Ballade
• Chopin Nocturne [Op. 62-2]
• F. Liszt (1811-1886) Andante amoroso [S.395]
• Émile Prudent (1817-1863) Impromptu
• Édouard Wolff (1816-1880) Polonaise caractéristique

All were rising musicians in their mid-thirties at the time. Chopin contributed a Nocturne composed in the preceding one or two years, while Liszt provided his "Idée fixe: Andante amoroso", composed in 1833 and only recently published in Milan and Vienna in 1846. Prudent was a colleague of Alkan and already renowned as an international musician, while Wolff, a junior contemporary of Chopin who came to Paris from Poland via Vienna, was counted among Paris's leading musicians. Heller, a Hungarian who had been a contributor to the same magazine since 1839, was an artistic ally of Schumann. Though technically more modest than other pianists, he published high-quality works and enjoyed immense support from enthusiasts. Alkan's presence among these brilliant figures indicates that he was requested by the publisher to contribute a work as a leading French musician.

"Vaghezza" in modern Italian means "vagueness" or "fuzziness", but originally it also carried the meaning of "subtle charm" that attracts people. In 18th and 19th-century France, it also became established as an art term referring to a descriptive technique for depicting mist or haze (in French, vaguesse). The effect created by the combination of triplet accompaniment and duple-division rhythms is not entirely unrelated to this nuance of "indefinite charm".