The official classical music term is “ horn fifths,” but rock musicians like me know a better name: power chords. It’s the specific way that Chopin voices these chords. When it does finally resolve in measure 28, you don’t land back in warm, sunny D-flat major instead, you’re plunged into the icy waters of C-sharp minor, where you’ll be staying until measure 75. Why is this section so cinematic? It isn’t just the minor key or slow, simple rhythms. You’re waiting for the Ab7 chord to resolve back to Db, but it doesn’t, it just hangs in the air. In measure 27, the drama starts to intensify. The rhythms stay simple until the end of measure 23, when Chopin uses a classic Chopin-ism, jamming too many chromatic embellishments into the bar than are supposed to fit, to create a weird tuplet. The turns on the V chords here make you really feel the European-ness. Then there’s a lovely haunting passage that takes us through E-flat minor to a long stay in B-flat minor. Two bars later, there’s another Abm, but this time it feels like the tonic in the key of A-flat minor. At measure 9, there’s a neat modulation as the chord changes from Ab7 to Abm, the V chord in D-flat major moving to the ii chord in G-flat major. The melody has a nursery-rhyme-like simplicity, aside from a few ninths and thirteenths on the V chord. The first eight bars of the prelude alternate back and forth between the I and V chords in D-flat major, Db and Ab7. So you can see why Chopin would rather write in C-sharp minor. Conversely, C-sharp minor has only four sharps, whereas D-flat minor has six flats and a double flat–it shares the same horrifying key signature as F-flat major. D-flat major has five flats, whereas C-sharp major has seven sharps, so D-flat major is less annoying to write and read. The reason has nothing to do with how the music sounds it’s a practical issue with key signatures. But why didn’t Chopin write the middle part in D-flat minor? Or write the first and last parts in C-sharp major? Either way, it would sound exactly the same. Switching between major and minor keys on the same root is a common compositional technique–you can hear it in the Bach Chaconne too. I was confused when I read that the first and last sections of the prelude are in D-flat major, but that the middle section is in C-sharp minor. Rather than trying to figure out what the pedal “represents,” it makes more sense to me to understand the prelude as being about the idea of pedal point. I mean, if you could verbally convey the meaning of music, you wouldn’t need the music. Maybe so, but the likeliest explanation is that the pedal point just sounds good, and that it evokes too many different feelings and associations to be neatly expressible by language. Another theory is that Chopin was trying to symbolize the tolling of a bell to evoke death coming for us all. George Sand told a story about Chopin writing the piece on a rainy day, or in response to a rainy day, but that is probably not true. It’s a gentle pulse in the first and last sections, but it builds to a relentless pounding in the middle section. The most conspicuous feature of this prelude is the near-constant A-flat/G-sharp pedal point. Chopin’s actual title of this piece is “12 Préludes, Opus 28 Number 15 in D-Flat Major.” That’s not very memorable, though, so von Bülow’s name stuck. The names were given later by a fan named Hans von Bülow. Chopin didn’t title the piece “Raindrop,” nor did he give catchy nicknames to any of his other preludes. If you do, make our Chopin tag your next stop.Let’s get the name out of the way first. Once you listen to these works, you’ll have a pretty good idea if you want to keep getting to know his music. So there you have it, twelve works that serve as an introduction for beginners to Chopin’s life and work. It’s theorized that the repeated, slightly discordant A-flat notes in the waltz might be a representation of the bell on the little dog’s collar tinkling. This piece might be Chopin’s musical tribute to Marquis and his antics. In French, this piece is known as “valse du petit chien”, or “waltz of the puppy.” Chopin adored George Sand’s dog Marquis, and apparently Marquis enjoyed chasing his own tail. There’s a legend that Chopin’s Minute Waltz was meant to be played in under sixty seconds, hence the name but actually, the name means “minute” as in “small,” not “minute” as in the unit of time. To wrap up our survey, here’s one of Chopin’s most famous little piano pieces.
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