Prelude in E Minor: How Chopin Baffled Critics

Just a general comment about tempo since quite a few comments have brought this up: Chopin's cut-time metre would suggest (beyond question really) that the tempo is quicker than the performance tradition suggests. I suspect that Chopin played quite a few of his pieces faster than the subsequent performance tradition (and this is true of almost every composer because the romanticism of the performance tradition tends to slow everything down as performers become more indulgent with the material). And even when you hear a composer perform their own work (Rachmaninov is a wonderful example) you're often surprised by the tempo and by the interpretation! So it's very important to remember that you simply can be over-fundamentalist about tempo. It doesn't work that way. There are no definitive tempi and there are no absolute ultimate performances. Music is much too fluid, and it can't be boxed in like that. Anyone who says 'this is the only tempo' is fundamentally wrong!. You can be convinced by one performance and equally convinced by another performance at half the speed, and Leonard Bernstein's famously slow performances of various pieces demonstrate that, FOR HIM, it worked that way, and that's fine, and its convincing but it doesn't have to be played that way. Glenn Gould had some interesting choices, and some of them are really very close to unlistenable (in my opinion) but I think he had every right to try it out that way!

Sir, you have that ineffable quality all great teachers possess: to simultaneously make whatever you're explaining sound simple and intuitive, and also completely magical. I tip my hat.

"Hats Off, Gentlemen – A Genius:" a contemporaneous review by another genius, Robert Schumann.

Loved this presentation. I find it surprising that we did not highlight the fact that nowhere in the prelude did the e minor chord show itself in root position until the very last chord! But there were so many, many delicious points of musical brilliance that this observation does not detract from the great journey you afforded us. What a great marriage of music analysis, social context and emotional sensitivity. I am a new fan. Thank you.

Chopin: Guess you guys aren't ready for that yet... but your kids are gonna love it

I had a class at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois in 1965 that dissected Classical Music in much this way and as I look back on all my classes from there to UCLA Masters program in theater... that class was one of my favorite classes of my college life. It took the emotions evoked by music and attempted to make sense of that amazing art. But alas... I was pushed by my father to shy away from music and study business and accounting... I unfortunately pulled away from that class in which I was getting all "A"s... Now a lifetime later I wonder what might have happened if I had had the courage at that time to follow my love of music and stay in that class and yes, even Major in that field... I wonder where my life would have taken me. Later...I moved to LA... toured with Ike and Tina Turner with me playing sax... and just by chance bought a house and lived next door to Herbie Hancock for 19 years...and even had him perform on a song that I had written, "Tennessee Hitman" and later perform with another song I'd written with my Sister singing... "When Night Turns Blue"... and yet I still wonder what might have happened if I'd continued that path which is suggested in this amazing Study by "The Music Professor" and his very cool pup nearby. I drink a nice Chardonnay and listen to this very amazing dissection of a heavenly piece by this brilliant man... and wonder... and here even at this late point in my life is the "lament"... and I suppose a chance to attempt a 2024 composition of a lament using these secret Codes of that Masterful Chopin... who knows?

I remember when i first got a handle on functional harmony and went on a binge figuring out music and thinking the e minor prelude would be an easy piece to start with Chopin. Five minutes later I got frustrated and didn't have the nerve to analyze Chopin again for a couple of years. Definitely worth the work though.

As a rock and pop musician who loves Chopin, I can only express appreciation and gratitude for the depth you have added to my understanding of the composer and his musical process via this wonderful analysis of this beautiful prelude. Thanks.

About that "blue note" in the middle of the piece: it's what in jazz is called "augmented harmony", where a dominant chord has both the major and the minor third at the same time (traditionally written augmented 9th, but it usually comes at the same time as the minor 9th, so it's not really a 9th in my opinion). I was quite astonished when I realised this for the first time. Listening for it carefully throughout history you can find it often as a device for "extreme sorrow", for example at the beginning of Mozart's Lacrimosa

This piece, for myself at least, probably others too, emotionally jacks into my psyche unlike other works that need to pass through other gates or perception checks. It takes the fast lane to my heart every time no matter what state I’m in.

You remind me of some of my favorite professors when I was a music major. Wonderful enthusiasm and knowledge combined.

As a youngster taking years of classical piano lessons, I loved Chopin's nocturns. They were hard to play with small hands, but worth the work. Chopin knew how to challenge any pianist's skill level; many times leaving us defeated.

Played this piece for over 20 years and seeing it in a new light is such a thrill.

One of the best pieces of music ever written tbh Proof it doesn't need to be incredibly virtuosic

There are amazing Chopin passages that we will never hear because they weren't transcribed. Makes me think of Keith Jarret's greatest performances and what a tragedy if they hadn't been recorded.

I practiced this prelude when I studied during my teenage years. Playing the correct notes took lots of practice. Now in my senior years I appreciate the analysis of Chopin's genius. I wish I had a piano to practice Chopin again.

Marvelous. I wonder if sounded like noise to them partly because of the way pianos were tuned then? It wasn’t quite equal temperament yet, because that’s almost impossible to achieve without electronic help. On the mainland, I believe Valotti tuning was in fashion at the time? But in England, the piano may well have been in an earlier tuning that was a bit further from equal, causing some of the chromaticism to be more dissonant than it is for us. Especially, certain perfect fifths may have been, not quite wolf fifths, but impure enough to interfere with chord function in such a highly chromatic work. Years ago, I recorded an orchestra in Tomsk, Russia. There was only one piano tuner in town, and he showed up with a 440 tuning fork and a tuning wrench. He started with the As and worked outward in pure Pythagorean fifths, leaving a wolf of 22 cents between the D# and the Bb. Some of the pieces we wanted to record were simply unplayable.

My favorite thing to do when playing Chopin is to improvise but it doesn’t seem like anyone else does this even though it’s in keeping with the spirit of the music.

There are so many music theory people on YT that seem to miss the point in their videos. The context of the music in its own time as well as its place in history, and not only what harmony is happening, but the much more important question of why it matters. You do a great job at this! Reminds me of being in the classroom with a passionate educator when I was in music school.

Re: Improvisation and notation... We're really lucky to have the tools today that we have... I'd love to go back in time and give Chopin a recording/playback device