Prelude in C sharp minor, Op.45

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Prelude in C sharp minor, Op.45

The solitary Prelude in C sharp minor was Chopin’s contribution to a Beethoven Album published in Vienna in 1841 in aid of the fund for the Beethoven monument in Bonn. He clearly did not have Beethoven in mind as he wrote it, however. It is an essentially romantic inspiration, a nocturnal kind of improvisation modulating so freely and so spontaneously on every poetic impulse that it floats out of reach of the home key almost as soon as it is established. Basically ternary in form, it restores the C sharp minor harmonies at the appropriate point but only to slips away again, drifting this time into a strange little cadenza of parallel fourths and fifths and then bumping, as if by accident, back into C sharp minor.

Two Nocturnes, Op.27

No.1 in C sharp minor

No.2 in D flat major

Of the two Nocturnes written in 1845 for the Countess d’Apponyi, pianists tend to prefer the second in D flat major. The first in C sharp minor is particularly interesting, however, for the peculiarly personal use Chopin makes of a common harmonic device - left-hand C sharp arpeggios omitting the third of the triad and a right-hand melody equivocating poignantly between E and E sharp. Any of Chopin’s contemporaries could have done it but only a composer inspired by the sound of the piano - by the contrast in colour between the dark shadow of the left-hand arpeggios and the bright line of the melodic voice - could have made anything as beautiful of it. In the end, incidentally the decision is made in favour of C sharp major, but only after and long and agitated middle section.

The attraction of the D flat major Nocturne is, above all, its highly decorative passages of purely pianistic figuration. It is also a masterful example of continuous melodic development, uninterrupted by a contrasting middle section, effortlessly sustained in the right hand over a regular arpeggio in the left.

Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise in E flat major, Op.22

Although they have been inseparable companions ever since they were published together as Chopin’s Op.22 in 1836, the Andante spianato in G major and the Grande Polonaise in E flat major have essentially little in common. It has been claimed that Chopin created the Andante specifically for the polonaise but - bearing in mind that the Grande Polonaise was written in 1831 for piano and orchestra and that the Andante spianato was written for solo piano four years later in a different key - it seems unlikely: it is surely a matter more of convenience, and of adaptability on the part of the Andante, than of natural affinity. Even so, with the polonaise arranged (not by Chopin himself) for piano solo, they offset each other well enough to have survived as a regular recital item.

True to its spianato qualification (meaning ‘level’ or ‘even’), the wistfully melodious Andante is as remarkable for what does not happen - in that its construction is left open-ended - as for anything that momentarily disturbs its tranquil surface. The Grande Polonaise is compensatingly eventful. Although it dates from the pre-heroic period in the development of the Chopin polonaise, it is not unaristocratic in spite of its self-regarding swagger, not without poetic inspiration as it touches on the minor in the more lyrical middle section, and certainly not without stamina as it races through its breathtakingly virtuoso coda.

Polonaise-Fantasie in A flat major, Op.61

At Nohant in the summer of 1846, shortly before his break with George Sand and when he still had the strength and the ambition to work on a comparatively large scale, Chopin completed a Cello Sonata with the most impressive of all his first-movement constructions. At much the same time he wrote his Polonaise-Fantaisie, which is remarkably complex in form and the longest of his piano works in one movement - longer than any of the ballades or scherzos, longer than any of the other polonaises, longer even than the F minor Fantasia of 1841. It was as though, while retaining his characteristic spontaneity of expression, he had deliberately set out to extend himself as far as his structural skill would take him.

Prophetic of the large-scale structural mastery Chopin might have achieved had he lived only half as long as, say, Richard Strauss, the Polonaise-Fantaisie is an indication too of the still developing freedom of his imagination. As the title suggests, it is no ordinary polonaise. The conventions are taken for granted. Listen for the characteristic polonaise rhythm and you will hear nothing of it throughout the introduction, which is in no dancing mood. Indeed, after the first appearance of the main theme and another, more lively one, it is scarcely heard again. It should, on the other hand, echo on in the subconscious, to offset the unconventional rhythms of the rest of the piece.

On its first appearance, the main theme is poised above an accompani­ment of undulating triplets, almost as in a nocturne. There is nothing at all of the polonaise in the B major middle section, with its lovely duet between an expressive left hand and a shy right, its elegant theme in G sharp minor, and the poetic anthology of trills. Some of the more prominent themes of the work, including those of the introduction, are passed under review, but there is no conventional third section to balance and reflect the first. The main theme reappears on the crest of a crescendo, accompanied by massive triplet chords in both hands. It is displaced, however, by a still more forceful version of the expressive left-hand melody from the middle section, its even quavers now altered to energetic dotted rhythms and surviving almost to the last bar.

Twenty-four Preludes, Op.28

No.1 in C major

No.2 in A minor

No.3 in G major

No.4 in E minor

No.5 in D major

No.6 in B minor

No.7 in A major

No.8 in F sharp minor

No.9 in E major

No.10 in C sharp minor

No.11 in B major

No.12 in G sharp minor

No.13 in F sharp major

No.14 in E flat minor

No.15 in D flat major

No.16 in B flat minor

No.17 in A flat major

No.18 in F minor

No.19 in E flat major

No.20 in C minor

No.21 in B flat major

No.22 in G minor

No.23 in F major

No.24 in D minor

Chopin completed his Twenty-four Preludes, Op.28, between November 1838 and February 1839 when he was staying in Majorca with George Sand and her children. It was a holiday which - as winter set in, as his piano failed to arrive, and as his health deteriorated - proved not to be the idyll it ought to have been. So much romantic literature has been written about Chopin at this time, coughing blood and banished by Majorcan ignorance to the deserted but supposedly haunted monastery of Valdemosa, that the preludes have taken on an additional, retrospective emotional colouring. Most of them were actually written in Paris before he left. No.7, a charming stray from the mazurkas, and No.17 date from as early as 1836, and only Nos.1, 2, 4, 10 and 21 were actually written on the island.

It is conceivable that the exotic sounding No.2 in A minor, with its syncopated ostinato and repeated fragments of melody has something to do with the African aspect of Majorca. As for the famous “Raindrop,” No.15 in D flat, it is difficult to resist the temptation to set it in the monastery at Valdemosa, in spite of the chronological evidence to the contrary. True, the repeated A flat of the outer sections would not disqualify the work from being associated with the most tranquil of the nocturnes, but the C sharp minor middle section, with its grimly obsessive G sharps and snatches of plainsong, suggests that this part at least might have been written there. On the other hand, while Liszt considered No.8 in F sharp minor as the Prelude inspired by the rainstorm at Valdemosa, No.6 in B minor would also qualify.

After the efforts of George Sand and Liszt and the romantic biographers, however, the pathological aspect of the preludes does not need to be stressed here. What is more significant is that in this “cell shaped like a tall coffin,” beneath the “enormous vaulting covered with dust,” on the legendary “old square grubby box with a leaden candle stick and a little candle” was a copy of Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues. They more than anything else are the inspiration of Chopin’s 24 Preludes in 24 keys. Slightly alter the rhythm of Bach’s C major Prelude in Book 1 and there is Chopin’s allegedly “feverish” No.1 in C major. The continuous semiquaver figuration of Chopin’s No.5 in D minor, crossed by a fragment of melody in conflicting rhythm, the alternating runs and cadences of No.10 in C sharp minor, the radiant right-hand arpeggios in No.23 in F major are all anticipated in the Preludes in corresponding keys in Bach’s Book 1. Even the “raindrops” of Prelude No.15 in D flat major are already there in the repeated notes of the Prelude in C sharp major in Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Clavier.

The Bach-inspired preludes are usually those which most resemble the technical studies of Op.10 and Op.25. Many of the others are studies in expression, perhaps even sketches for other works. Embryo nocturnes occur regularly, as in No.13 in F sharp major.A flight of bare octaves crosses No.14 in E flat minor in a triplet figuration anticipating the last movement of the Sonata in B flat minor. No.17 in A flat major could be an experiment with the gondoliera form which he later developed even more impressively in the Barcarolle, Op.60, while there is an alternative funeral march in No.20 in C minor and an embryonic scherzo in No.22 in G minor.

Apart from the Prelude in C sharp minor, Op.45, incidentally, there is one other Chopin Prelude - a rarely heard example in A flat major which was written two years before the earliest of the others but not published until 1918.

Gerald Larner©