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.
Good little analysis here! You made some great observations in this little analysis, particularly: Chopin's tight use of motivic ideas in the preludes (be careful about using the word "simplistic" here, though--that word doesn't quite mean what it is often used to mean) and the intervals used in the left hand (a factor that Tymoczko doesn't directly address in his own analysis of this piece, if I recall correctly).
ReplyDeleteThe only things I would point out in your analysis are relatively minor: the melodic idea is sol-le-sol (the half-step making it more poignantly expressive), and if you examine both augmented chords closely you notice that they behave similarly: two common tones, a melodic dissonance that resolves up by half-step, and a seventh that resolves downwards; these are thus more common tone augmented chords than functional ones (which most often act as coloristic dominants).