"Chopsticks" (original name "The Celebrated Chop Waltz") is a simple, widely known waltz for the piano. Written in 1877, it is the only published piece by the British composer
Euphemia Allen (under the pseudonym Arthur de Lulli). Allen—whose brother, Mozart Allen, was a music publisher—was sixteen when she composed the piece, with arrangements for solo and duet. The title "Chop Waltz" comes from Allen's specification that the melody be played in two-part harmony with both hands held in a vertical orientation, little fingers down and palms facing each other, striking the keys with a chopping motion. The similar "The Coteletten Polka" also was first heard in 1877, with the piano collection Paraphrases elaborating on the theme by 1879. "Chopsticks" continues to be popular in various forms of media.
In 1877,
Alexander Borodin's daughter Gania played "The Coteletten Polka", with four bars of music similar to the beginning of de Lulli's work, though there is no hard evidence of a common source between the two pieces. In 1878–1879, with the collaboration of
César Cui and
Anatoly Lyadov, Borodin and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov each wrote variations on the theme, published together under the title Paraphrases. A supplementary paraphrase by
Franz Liszt was later appended to the collection. In Borodin's version, the first four bars begin in a similar way to de Lulli's, but are nevertheless distinct. According to James Fuld's book on "World-Famous Music", no common origins for the Chop Waltz and the Coteletten Polka have yet been discovered.
An equivalent of this rudimentary two-finger piano exercise was known in Russia in duple meter as "tati-tati" or the "Cutlet Polka". This version alternates the notes between the hands, rather than playing them at the same time in harmony.
