No. 4 E minor

The E minor prelude has to be one of my favorite preludes of Chopin, along with a few others. If there was any way I would characterize Chopin's method of composition so far, it would be described as mass development of simplistic ideas. Chopin seems reluctant to make his work overly complex, or full of a lot of ideas. Instead, he seems content taking a simple idea, and stretching it out through development. I feel that this principle is embodied quite well by the E minor prelude, which can be boiled down to three chords (E minor, B7, and Gr+6) that are connected through linear motion, and essentially three cadences.

Chopin begins the phrase with a simple neighbor note, Sol-La-Sol, gesture in the melody, and an E minor triad down below. By the second measure, he's already moving downward, not settling on a single harmony for too long. There's little in the way of functional harmony, and while there isn't a strict rule for chords he uses, but there are some general rules for the quality of chords he uses, and for which voice to move.

Now, for moving voices, there is no set order, but as stated earlier, there are some general rules. The first being that Chopin doesn't move all three voices at once. He only moves one, sometimes two, at most. Second being that he only moves downward. Also, there are limits to the range. In the left hand, the bottom and top voice are restricted to a range of a 6th, and 7th. He does not go to an octave. Along with this, the middle and upper voice are restricted to being in intervals of 4ths and 5ths, and the middle and bottom voices are always in 3rds or 2nds. The only time Chopin breaks any of these rules is when he goes into a cadence.

 Here, in the first cadence of the piece, a half-cadence, Chopin breaks two rules: the middle and bottom voices move into intervals of a 4th, and there are voices that move upwards (the bottom two).

Another example of Chopin breaking his rules here in the final bars (which also includes the last two cadences, a deceptive cadence five bars from the end, and a cadential 6/4 into an authentic cadence) when putting the outer voices of the left hand in octaves, the bottom voices move to 4ths, and there is linear motion upward that occurs. Now, I should clarify, these are his rules for linear motion. There are another couple measures that break the rules established by the piece that I have left out, the reason being that the measures break the linear motion in general.

As you can see, there is linear motion occurring, such as the E minor moving to the A minor, but it is broken up by harmonies that do not behave in the same manner, particularly the D# diminished moving to the G augmented 7 chord (which is a fairly interesting chord choice, and will be explained why soon), which resolves to the E minor.

Now, the quality of chords that Chopin uses is interesting. Through his linear motion, he passes through minor, diminished, and dominant 7th sonorities. These are the most common chords that he uses, with a few exceptions, one of which being the G augmented 7 mentioned earlier, as well as another augmented chord that has a bit more interest due to its context.

The reason I find this chord more interesting than the other is because of how it was approached. The G+ was part of the section that broke the linear motion, and passed by my ear, whereas the C+ was approached and left by linear motion, which made it such a striking moment in the piece because how different it was from the chords beforehand. The other chords that break the mold are the B suspended chords that lead into the cadences.

No. 3 G major

The following prelude, G major, is considerably simpler than the previous two in terms of what's happening in the piece. This work seems to be tailored less towards the theorist, and more towards the performer, and is intended to show of the player's virtuosic playing ability. That's not to say that this piece is any less remarkable, it's just that there is less to say about it.

The piece begins with a run of 16th notes that is consistent throughout each measure. What I found interesting was how much activity was going on in the bass compared to how little is happening in the upper voice. The counterpoint is relatively simple. There are no extraordinary dissonances. As you can see in the third measure, the melody out lines a G major chord moving to a different inversion, followed by an appoggiatura, C-E, resolving down to B-D, and another appoggiatura at the end of measure four leading into the fifth measure, this all happening over a bass line that outlines the tonic area.

There are a couple things I find interesting in the next few measures. Chopin does not opt for a traditional IV chord, or ii for the predominant, but instead does a V7/V having only played in the tonic area. Another thing is in the melody. The harmony implies an A7, but there is a stubborn F# sounding that doesn't resolve into the chord until the last 16th note of the bar before leaping up into the fifth of a D major chord. It's an interesting gesture that compliments the previous measures quite well. There is motion going back and forth between the V7/V and V, before ending the phrase on a half cadence, starting the next with a I which soon becomes the V/IV, as shown below.

Chopin continues to play around in the predominant for several measures before landing on a cadential 6/4 leading into the I, and finishing off with the left and right hands playing the same line an octave apart. Well, mostly the same line.

At the fifth measure before the end, the bass line is doubled by the melody, except for the first note in each measure, which are in thirds. Maybe he wrote that in for the sake of the performer, or maybe he wanted just that little bit of color before doubling, but it was something that did catch my attention.

No. 2 A minor

Next of the Chopin preludes is No. 2, which is in A minor. Sort of.

As you can see by the opening measures, this decidedly not A minor.

However, when we look at the last line, particularly the last three bars, we have E major going to B major going back to E major, then to E dominant 7, finally ending on A minor. So, in the last few bars, we have the chords V - V/V - V - V7 - I in the key of A minor. So, what's the deal? What key were we in up until that point? I tried looking at the harmonies, but that led to some difficulties. To be honest, I had a difficult time interpreting the harmonies that Chopin used. I could not see the logic behind his chord choices, not to say that there isn't one, it's just that as of now, I do not understand it. But, when looking at the melody, I was able to extract something.

I think it's important to look at the last time the melody shows up first, because at this point, the harmony is undoubtedly in A minor, and removes any ambiguity as to what the melody is in. So, looking at the melody from the third and fourth bars from the end, we have D-F-E-D-A-B. Which, when changed to solfege syllables in reference to A minor, are Fa-Le-Sol-Fa-Do-Re. This motive pops up three other times throughout the piece.

So, with the last iteration of the motive, it's set in A minor. If we go to the first time it shows up, we have a line very similar, except with one minor alteration.

Instead of having an F natural, we now have an F#. This turns the A minor motive into an A major motive.

The second time that the motive appears, it's been transposed to E major.

When we look at the third time that the melody appears, we see that it is in C major. So, when looking at all the keys that Chopin goes through in the melody, we have A major-E major-C major-A minor. A-E-C-A. Those are pretty interesting key choices. When you order the keys by stacking the thirds, you get A-C-E. I don't know about you, but to me, that looks like Chopin just spelled out an A minor triad with the keys he traveled through in the melody. Which if you ask me, is a pretty clever thing to do.

No. 1 C major

Before I began my work on the first piece in Chopin's collection of preludes, the worry of making mistakes, or only seeing surface details came to mind. When I first looked at the score, my initial goal was to find something significant in the music. When nothing jumped out, I decided to take a step back, and simply break down what I could (after all, this is a LEARNING experience. I should expect to make mistakes and miss things), and that is when I started making actual discoveries. So, let us begin our tour of the Chopin preludes.

One of the first things I attempted was to label chords. Things went smoothly. That is until I hit the fourth and fifth measures of the piece.

It was as this point that I felt the need to segment parts off. The first set of triplet sixteenth notes would make up one section, the last sixteenth note, and then the rest would be it's own.

Now, the reason I segmented the green is because when I began labeling chords, I initially thought that the last note was something extra, a non-harmonic tone. But, as I looked at what led to these "non-harmonic tones" I saw that the two notes were always the same, and approached the same. Almost as if parallel octaves.

Without failure, the sets of notes mimic each other, up until the last 6 measures, where the pattern changes. Now, what exactly does the mean for interpreting the harmonies? Well, these act as points of resolution, and through repetition, create an expectation. So, now chords are going to be interpreted retroactively.

So, if we interpret as the Gs not going to a non-harmonic tone, but rather the C major chord moving to the relative, A minor, we have a new harmonic motion happening above the bass line. Now, if we understand that the bass line as being independent from the rest of the piece, we are now have an explanation for measures such as this...

where we have an F+ leading to D minor over top of F major. This separation of harmonies has led to interesting cadences in the music, such as where in the bass line, we have a cadential 6/4 going to a V7, followed by a tonic chord pedal with the occasional F in the line to color things up, and the last few measures creating a plagal cadence with the upper voice rocking back and forth between F major, and C major.