![]() ![]() It seems likely that the music reflected his innermost feelings, for on the same sheet of paper as the despairing E minor prelude is a sketch of the strange, melancholic A minor prelude (as well as the E minor mazurka which would appear in the Op 41 set). Whatever the cross-pollination between these two and other composers (Hummel, for example, employs the same scheme in his Op 67 preludes of 1815, another cycle that Chopin must surely have known), at least four of the remaining seven preludes were written on Majorca, one of which (No 4 in E minor) we know was completed at the end of November in Palma (before the party moved to the monastery at Valldemossa), at the time when Chopin fell seriously ill. Seven years later, he dedicated to Chopin his Op 31 set of twenty-four preludes, one in each major and minor key and using the same circle of fifths employed in his études. Published in 1827 and much celebrated in their day, Kessler’s études (one in every key) were arranged in a cycle of fifths. The German edition, however, was dedicated to Johann Christoph Kessler (1800–1872), another friend whom he had met in Warsaw as a teenager and with whose set of études (Op 20, dedicated to Hummel) he was thoroughly familiar. The French edition of Op 28 would be dedicated by Chopin ‘À Son Ami Pleyel’. He had already sold them to the publisher Camille Pleyel for 2,000 francs (a domestic servant’s annual salary was about 500 francs at this time), some of which had been paid in advance to enable Chopin to travel to Majorca. They travelled separately, Chopin bringing with him some of his treasured volumes of Bach, a supply of manuscript paper and seventeen of the preludes. With her former lover threatening a duel, in early November 1838 the new couple thought it wise to leave Paris for a time and spend the winter in Majorca, taking with them Sand’s two children, Maurice and Solange. Their completion coincided with the beginning of his liaison with the novelist and playwright George Sand. It was left to Chopin, as was his wont, to raise an existing form to a new level, redefining the term ‘prelude’ and providing a model for later cycles by Alkan, Busoni, Rachmaninov and others.Ĭhopin had begun writing the set of twenty-four preludes in 1836. These rarely stray beyond the realm of the technical exercise. ![]() ![]() ‘Preluding’ was an opportunity to loosen the fingers and focus the mind (a tradition that lasted well into the twentieth century), one which inspired sets of preludes in all the major and minor keys by several leading pianist-composers of the day. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had become common practice for pianists to improvise briefly before their performance. In Bach’s time, a prelude usually preceded something else, whether a fugue or a suite of dance movements. The use of the title ‘prelude’ for a short, independent keyboard work was not new. These views expressed in the nineteenth century apply no less keenly today, for which other collection of music of the same length provides such a range of mood, colour and texture? Many of the preludes last less than a minute only a couple longer than three minutes, yet as Theodor Kullak said of them, ‘in their aphoristic brevity they are masterpieces of the first rank’. The critic James Huneker declared that the 24 Préludes, Op 28, alone would make good Chopin’s claim to immortality: ‘Such range, such vision, such humanity! … If all Chopin, all music, were to be destroyed I should plead for the preludes.’ Robert Schumann, though bemused by their form (‘ruins, eagles’ feathers, all wildly, variegatedly intermingled’), recognized ‘even in his pauses’ that each one of them said unmistakably ‘this is by Frederic Chopin’. Anton Rubinstein called them the pearls of Chopin’s work. ![]()
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