Etude op.10, no.2 (Chopin)

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Proof of the etude op. 10, no. 2, with handwritten fingerings by Chopin

The Etude Op. 10, No. 2 , composed in the key of A minor by Frédéric Chopin in 1829, is one of the most famous classical studies for piano. She puts the emphasis on the right hand exercise, the chromatic runs of which are to be played legato and fast in the tempo Allegro in a bound performance . Like all of Chopin's etudes , however, the composition is not just a practice piece. Their romantic musical character and their high demands on playing technique make them one of the most famous piano pieces. Like the other etudes from op. 10, Chopin dedicated them to his friend Franz Liszt .

publication

The Etude in A minor, Op. 10, was first published in June 1833 in Paris by Adolf Martin Schlesinger , the first German publication appeared in August 1833 by Fr. Kistner in Leipzig, and in England the work was published by Wessel & Co in London in the same year out.

Fingering

Chopin's Etude No. 2 is intended to strengthen the weak fingers of the right hand by quickly playing chromatic scales and making them independent of one another. This applies particularly to the third, fourth and fifth fingers (middle, ring and little fingers). At the same time, the first two fingers, i.e. the thumb and forefinger of both hands, accompany the chromatic runs with short chords and individual notes. Chopin himself noted a fingering note for note that spanned almost 800 notes. In addition to his original fingering, there is one by Ignacy Jan Paderewski in the Krakauer Edition by the Instytut Fryderyka Chopina Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne and one by Paul Badura-Skoda in the Wiener Urtext Edition .

Musical structure and stylistic elements

The work is in Commontime.svgor 4 / 4 - stroke written and includes 49 measures. In a copy of Chopin's autograph of his classmates Warsaw Józef Linowski although the signature is Allabreve.pngor 2 / 2 -Stroke ( Alla breve ) noted, but this name was not used in the other expenditure; the first editions of the French, German and English Edition have the designation 4 / 4 on -Stroke. Chopin provides an Allegro (Italian for quick, lively, cheerful, cheerful ) as the tempo . As a metronome , he gives = 144. This means that the quarter note should be struck 144 times per minute. At this speed, the piece lasts about one and a half minutes. Most of the later adapters of the piece stuck to this value, but the German piano virtuoso Hans von Bülow suggested the value MM = 114. The composer gives a semper legato (always bound) for the right hand as a performance instruction and reminds the player six times of this in the notation. This legato, which is important for finger practice, is in stark contrast to the staccato of the accompanying chords of the left hand. Quarter note with upwards stem.svgQuarter note with upwards stem.svg

The melody consists of rapidly played chromatic scales , the notes of which are to be played exclusively by the outer three fingers of the right hand. The left hand accompanies this melody line with briefly struck chords. Like most of Chopin's other etudes, this one also follows the three-part song form ABA, with the first part A extending to bar 18, the second part B up to bar 35 and the last part A up to bar 49. From a harmonious perspective, the first part of chords in A minor, E major and A minor. But the note C♯ ( C sharp ) contained in the chromatic melody as a position together with the harmonic A minor gives the piece a slightly strange disharmony, which is supposed to obscure the clarity of the key and create a mysterious sound that ends up in a Neapolitan sixth chord ends in bar 15.

The middle part of the etude leads to a slow increase in musical dynamics . It starts with a (ital .: piano for quiet), but should then be given an increasing volume to generate the necessary drama. Chopin calls for a poco a poco cresc [endo] (gradual increase). Exactly in the middle of the etude, in bar 25, the climax can be heard. It is achieved through a steady approximation through two-bar sequences of chords, first in F major , then via G minor and A major in a brilliant ( forte , strong). The dominant seventh chord ending each of these sequences leads to a fallacy . The longer and therefore asymmetrical second part of the B section then leads back to the A minor of part A of the etude , albeit with shorter sequences but with a similar harmonic progression . The last bars of the work are then very similar to the first part, but shorter and end as a coda with an initially rising, but then falling scale in a Picardy third .

Character of the work

The musicologist Hugo Leichtentritt describes the etude as a musical perpetual motion machine . The transparent musical texture , consisting of sixteenth notes strung together without interruption and accompanied by a kind of gently dancing bass, has its forerunner in Prelude No. 5 in D major ( BWV 850 ) from the first part of the Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach , similar to other pieces of music from the first half of the 19th century, such as Niccolò Paganini's Moto Perpetuo for violin and piano op. 11. In Robert Schumann's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in the article Die Pianoforte-Etuden in the 1836 edition, every piece from Chopin's Op. 10, marked with a star as a sign of a poetic character , with the exception of number 2, A minor. Hugo Leichtentritt, however, describes the sound effect of this piece in his analysis of Chopin's piano works as the whispering and blowing of a light wind . In his Edition de travail, the French pianist Alfred Cortot mentions the sliding and fragrant character of this etude. The Italian composer Alfredo Casella talks about the quick character , the airy and immaterial mystery . The American music critic James Huneker (1857–1921) finally notes that the whole composition, with its murmuring, meandering and chromatic character, is a forerunner of whispering, waving and its moonlight-like effects in some of Chopin's later works.

Technical difficulties

First bar of the Etude op.10, No. 2

The novelty of this etude in terms of playing technique consists in the chromatic tone sequences, which are to be played exclusively with the three outer fingers of the right hand at high speed and in a bound manner. The first two fingers of the right hand complement the accompanying chords of the left hand with the intervals of thirds and fourths , but also individual tones. The difficulty lies in Chopin's simultaneous demand for legato, tempo and low volume. Piano composers before Chopin, such as Ignaz Moscheles in his Etude op. 70 No. 3 in G major, already used chromatic scales with accompanying notes, which should be played with the same hand, not with the three weak outer fingers. Hugo Leichtentritt, a proven Chopin connoisseur, believes that in this etude the old fingering habit from the time of the clavichord before JS Bach, not to use the thumb to play, was revived. However, this playing technique was obsolete by the 17th century. The technical significance of this etude for Chopin is evidenced by the detailed fingering that he himself added to the piece. In no other work did he go to this trouble again.

An analysis of Chopin's fingering shows that - as in normal fingering for chromatic ladders - the long third finger hits the black keys. The second finger, which normally plays C and F , is replaced by the fifth. The thumb (1st finger), which usually hits the other white keys, is replaced here by the fourth finger. While crossing your third finger over your thumb is fairly easy, crossing your third over your fourth finger takes some acrobatic dexterity. One obvious way to continue playing is to stretch your third finger, but curl your fourth and fifth fingers.

Alfred Cortot notes that the first difficulty to be overcome in this piece is to cross the third, fourth, and fifth fingers and achieve the resulting stretch of those fingers through continuous play . Preparatory exercises introduced by Cortot, the Austrian pianist Gottfried Galston and Alfredo Casella before a performance of the work always begin with the chromatic scale of the upper part without the other parts. Cortot divides the hand into an active and an accompanying element and first insists on playing the chromatic ladders in all their variations with the three outer fingers. Galston recommends holding a small object with your first and second fingers and pressing while the other fingers play the chromatic runs.

Cortot recommends the sounds as pizzicato notes to pluck , not to strike . Casella compares the three outer fingers with a motorcycle team, whose sidecars represent the first two fingers. The Australian pianist Alan Kogosowski (* 1952) recommends keeping your thumb and forefinger completely relaxed while playing the upper part. The first two fingers, which play the small two-note intervals of the middle voices on each of the four beats, should release themselves from the keys as soon as they are played. The thumb should not be held vertically in order to avoid overexertion and to play the notes extremely easily, as lightly as a feather, as if they were hardly there . Hans von Bülow determined that the middle harmonies should be played clearly, but fleetingly . Galston suggests accentuating the upper tone of the two-tone intervals struck by the second finger when practicing the right hand.

Performing this work in public, especially immediately after the first etude (op. 10 No. 1 in C major), with its great stretches, is a physical and psychological effort. Kogosowski reports that even the impressive and powerful Russian pianist Svyatoslaw Richter , who had an awesome playing technique, trembled before playing the Etude in A minor . When performing all 12 Etudes Op. 10 in one go, he hesitated and sometimes skipped this second small but dangerous piece. And he wasn't alone in that. Gottfried Galston believed that if you wanted to play it in MM 144, you had to be able to master it at home ( in a quiet room ) in MM 152 or, better still, 160.

Audio sample

In this recording, the pianist Martha Goldstein plays the work on a piano by Sébastien Érard from 1851.

Edits and arrangements

The first two bars of the Etude op.365, No. 19 by Carl Czerny, 1836

Three years after the publication of the Etude Op. 10 No. 2, the Austrian piano teacher Carl Czerny , who often invited Chopin to Vienna, published a piece in his School of Virtuoso in 1836 that seems like a parody of Chopin's Etude. In the course of this practice piece, the chromatic tone sequences with their two-part accompaniment appear in all variants for the left, right hand and both hands simultaneously. The Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni presented an extensive exercise in his piano exercise that is reminiscent of Chopin's etude. There are two versions of the 53 Studies of Chopin's Etudes by the Polish pianist Leopold Godowsky . The first is solo for the left hand, while the better-known second version Ignis Fatuus ( Irrlicht ) is an impressive polyrhythmic exercise in which Chopin's part for the right hand is transposed into the left, while the right hand is accompanied by two chords. The piece appears faster than the specified tempo MM 120 to 132. The German pianist Friedrich Wührer published a version that combines Godowsky's study with an accompaniment for the right hand. In his Triple Étude (after Chopin) from 1992, the Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin combines the Etudes op.10 No. 2 in A minor with the numbers 4 and 11 from Opus 25 and tries to emulate Godowsky, whose triple etude lost has gone.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ French edition, M. Schlesinger, Paris, June 1833
  2. ^ English edition, Wessel & Co, London, August 1833
  3. ^ Paul Badura-Skoda: Chopin Etudes Op. 10 , Wiener Urtext Edition / Editio Musica Budapest, Vienna 1973, p. 7 ff.
  4. ↑ Jan Ekier (Red. National Edition): Source Commentary. Chopin Etudes . Warsaw: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1999.
  5. ^ Willard A. Palmer: Chopin Etudes for the Piano , Alfred Publishing Co., Inc., 1992, p. 10.
  6. ↑ a b James Huneker: The Studies — Titanic Experiments . In: Chopin. The Man and His Music . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1900.
  7. ^ A b Hugo Leichtentritt : The Etudes In: Analysis of Chopin's piano works. Volume II, Max Hesses Verlag, Berlin 1922, p. 92.
  8. ↑ Robert Schumann: The Pianoforte Etudes, arranged according to their purposes , Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, No. 11, February 6, 1836, p. 45.
  9. ^ Alfred Cortot: Frédéric Chopin - 12 Études, op.10 , Édition de travail des oeuvres de Chopin, Éditions Salabert, Paris 1915.
  10. ^ Alfredo Casella: F. Chopin, Studi per pianoforte , Edizioni Curci Milano, 1946.
  11. ↑ Ignaz Moscheles: Studies for the pianoforte for the higher perfection of already trained pianists, consisting of 24 characteristic pieces in different major and minor keys , HA Probst, Leipzig 1827, reprinted by Fr. Kistner, 1860, p. 20.
  12. ^ Hugo Leichtentritt: The Etudes In: Analysis of Chopin's piano works. Volume II, Max Hesses Verlag, Berlin 1922, p. 90.
  13. ↑ Alfred Cortot: Frédéric Chopin 12 Études, op.10 , Édition de travail des oeuvres de Chopin, Éditions Salabert, Paris 1915, p. 14.
  14. ↑ a b Gottfried Galston: Study book, III. Evening (Frédéric Chopin) , Bruno Cassirer, Berlin 1910, p. 15.
  15. ^ A b Alan Kogosowski: Mastering the Chopin Études. A compendium to Chopin: Genius of the Piano , E-Book, 2010.
  16. ↑ Carl Czerny: School of the Virtuoso , Haslinger Vienna 1836, No. 19
  17. ↑ Ferruccio Busoni: Piano Exercise in Ten Books, second redesigned and enriched edition, Book 8 (Variations and Variations after Chopin) , Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1925.
  18. ↑ Friedrich Wührer: Eighteen studies on Frederic Chopin's Etudes in Motu Contrario. Süddeutscher Musikverlag, Heidelberg 1958.
  19. ↑ Marc-André Hamelin: Triple Étude after Chopin in 12 Études in all minor keys. Edition Peters (EP68235) 1992.