Raindrop Prelude
The Raindrop Prelude ( French La goutte d'eau , Polish deszczowe ) is a piece of music composed by Frédéric Chopin in the years 1838/39 from the cycle of 24 Preludes op. 28 , which were composed during Chopin's stay on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca . The prelude is in 15th position in the composition cycle and is notated in the key of D flat major .
The play's nickname refers to an episode passed down by Chopin's partner George Sand , according to which Chopin is said to have endured great fears in the absence of his family because of an approaching storm. Due to its timbres and atmospheric fluctuations (D flat major, C sharp minor, D flat major), the 15th Prelude was often associated with this tradition of Sand, in particular because of the ostinati that run through the work and can easily give the listener the impression that they are falling raindrops . Chopin himself never confirmed this interpretation of the Prelude based on previous knowledge. George Sand reports:
“He felt like he had drowned in a lake; heavy, icy drops of water fell on his chest in time. When I made him sit up and take notice because you could actually hear the steady beat of drops falling on the roof, he insisted that he hadn't heard it. He even got angry when I talked about tone painting and protested violently and rightly against such simple-minded musical imitations of acoustic impressions. "
From the prelude to bar 62 there is a quote from the Bach chorale O Head full of blood and wounds from Bach's St. Matthew Passion : Chopin takes over the melody and harmonization of the second line of text “full of pain and full of scorn”, but does not end on the minor tonic c sharp -Moll, but on the tonic counter-sound of A major, slightly obscured by the "drop" on the major seventh G sharp over A major. The fallacy is exaggerated here in the figurative sense by the text "mockery".
literature
- Brigitte Esser et al. (Ed.): Harenberg culture guide piano music. 3. Edition. Meyers, Mannheim 2008, ISBN 978-3-411-07103-6 , pp. 209-214.
- Klaus Wolters: manual of piano literature for two hands. 5th edition. Atlantis, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-254-00248-2 .
Web links
- Preludes op. 28 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
Individual evidence
- ↑ Brief description of the work and musical text
- ↑ George Sand: History of my stay in Mallorca from History of my life , as an appendix in George Sand: A winter in Mallorca. DTV Taschenbuch, 10th edition, Munich 1995, p. 258 f.