Prelude in C sharp minor op.45 (Chopin)
The Prelude in C sharp minor op.45 is a piano piece by Frédéric Chopin , written in 1841.
Emergence
Chopin's former publisher Maurice Schlesinger was impressed by the success of the 24 Preludes and the public concert and regretted that the collection had not been edited by him. So he asked the composer to write another piece for him. Since Chopin still owed Schlesinger and wanted to return to him anyway, he agreed. With the receipt of the independent prelude, the cooperation between the two was resumed and the publisher accepted Chopin's conditions for the publication of further works.
The first edition was published in November 1841 in Vienna by Pietro Mechetti's publishing house, namely in his album - Beethoven , together with pieces by Carl Czerny , Theodor Döhler , Adolf Henselt , Friedrich Kalkbrenner , Franz Liszt , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Ignaz Moscheles , Wilhelm Taubert and Sigismund Thalberg . The proceeds were intended for the Beethoven monument in Bonn. The first French edition followed on December 12, 1841 in Schlesinger's Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris .
Chopin dedicated the work, composed in 1841, to the 15-year-old Princess Elisabeth Tschernyschjowa ( Russian Елизавета Александровна Чернышёва , born October 11, 1826, † February 11, 1902), who was his student. As Wilhelm von Lenz reports, she was a daughter of the then Russian Minister of War, Prince Alexander Tschernyschjow (1786–1857). On October 11, 1846 she married Lieutenant General Vladimir Baryatinsky (1817–1875).
Content and special features
In contrast to the mostly scarce 24 preludes in his style-defining collection, this is a longer piece comprising 92 bars that is not easy to classify. While the mood and intensity of expression, the performance designation ( sostenuto ) and the even, legato eighth note accompaniment are reminiscent of a nocturne , it lacks the rhythmic finesse, virtuoso ornamentation and the three-part song form that characterize this genre.
The piece begins with an improvisational, thoughtful introduction to descending sixth chords . Apart from the A sharp, all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are presented here. After the C sharp minor has emerged as the actual key of the work in the fourth bar via the dominant G sharp major, the theme develops from a constantly flowing figure that rises in the lower register, rises up and repeats this movement, whereby the voices the left and right hands are connected. The listener only recognizes the melody and the harmony shaped by the accompaniment at the beginning and end of the lines: While an ascending phrase ends at the top, a further sound event is already developing below, which makes it possible to have two musical levels sound simultaneously.
Two other special features that characterize this out: The various modulations in which a phrase constantly in a different key ends and the wistful romantic suspensions at the end of chordal theme chains (measures 35 and 59) to the depth of feeling late Romantic remember music, such as the expressive slow movements by Gustav Mahler , including the famous Adagietto from his fifth symphony .
After a short, sonically exquisite execution and the restatement of the theme that surprised Cadenza ( leggierissimo e legato ) from clock 80. Indeed, with small notes listed cadences in other works of Chopin - as the Nocturne in B major, Op 9 and the. Polonaise in D minor; With its harmoniously finely drawn, chromatically refined palette of colors, it is a novelty. The parallel fifth and sixth movements increase dynamically and end loudly in a gloomy sixth fourth chord . The short and unanimous recitative that follows forms a wistful contrast in which the feeling of sudden loneliness and despair is expressed, a resignation that is soon withdrawn and gives way to a peculiar lightening in D major ( dolce ), which introduces the calm and serious end .