![]() In the contrasting middle section the “raindrop” motive moves to a more ominous lower octave and is set against a minor, bass-range melody that leads to forte chords (thunder?) with heavy “raindrops” in octaves. The opening section of the piece is calm and major, perhaps a gentle rain. The piano is not quite as suited to the genre, tonally, and the popular piano “character pieces” of Grieg, Schumann and others tended more toward mood descriptions (“Melancholy”, “Homesickness”) or caricatures of people or seasons (“Sailor’s song”, “Spring dance”) than programmatic events like a storm.Ĭhopin would have been well aware of both genres, but if this prelude was indeed inspired by raindrops or a storm, he chose to keep the pictorial references quite subdued compared to those of other composers (think of the dramatic storm imagery of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony in contrast). Storm pieces were in quite popular during the 19th-century, in particular as organ improvisations that used the different tone colors of the instrument to move from a tranquil setting to approaching thunder (some organs even had a “thunder pedal”) and a dramatic storm resolving into happy shepherds once more dancing in the field. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, Chopin was not given to pictorial music, either in his choice of titles ( Prelude, Mazurka, Etude, etc) or in his musical imagery. Chopin did generally improvise his compositions first, then notate them, and no doubt he did so during storms sometimes, so this story is entirely plausible. Legend has it that Chopin, who composed his preludes during a stay at a monastery in Mallorca with his lover Georges Sand, composed this piece while listening to the rain from the solitude of the monastery Sand describes him improvising the prelude during a storm in her novel Histoire de ma Vie. 15 is one of Chopin’s most well-known preludes, and is nicknamed “Raindrop” because of the repeated A-flat that is heard throughout almost the entire piece. His works are mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century classical music.An admirer of J.S.Bach, Frédéric Chopin composer his 24 Preludes in each of the major and minor keys just as Bach composed prelude/fugue pairs in each of the 24 keys in The Well-Tempered Clavier. Chopin invented musical forms such as the ballade and was responsible for major innovations in forms such as the piano sonata, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu and prelude. Though technically demanding, Chopin's style emphasizes nuance and expressive depth rather than virtuosity. A Polish patriot,Ĭhopin's extant compositions were written primarily for the piano as a solo instrument. In Paris, he made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. In November 1830, at the age of 20, Chopin went abroad following the suppression of the Polish November Uprising of 1830–31, he became one of many expatriates of the Polish "Great Emigration." He was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French-expatriate father, and in his early life was regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. He is widely regarded as the greatest Polish composer, and ranks as one of music's greatest tone poets. Frédéric Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period. ![]()
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