Chopin Etudes and associations

[popdog]

Hi all,

I just listened to the op.10 etudes and was struck by the different associations and qualities each etude presented as follows:

1. Celebration, brilliance, white
2. Childhood, forest
3. Love
4. Chaos, storm
5. Sunlight, tropics, birds
6. Sadness, decay, hope
7. Green(?)
8. Blue, delight
9. Longing
10.
11. Dizzy, floating
12. Conflict

Anyway, I thought this may be of some interest to others who study/listen to these pieces, and wonder how you view them.  Interestingly no. 10 presented nothing to me...  How does this piece strike everyone else out there?

Cheers

[frank_48]

10 - rippling water.  

chopin's posthumous nouvelle etude in f minor, brings to me a strong feeling of walking through a thick forest at night, its pitch black except for the moonlight, with an uneasy sensation as if your being followed

[stevebob]

I'm unsure of the role of extramusical associations for compositions that weren't intended by the composer to reflect a program or evoke specific content.  Do they come spontaneously to those who experience them?  Do they assist in the appreciation of the music in some way?

Also, for what it's worth, none of Chopin's etudes was issued posthumously.  The "Trois Nouvelles Etudes" without opus numbers were written for the Méthode des Méthodes of Moscheles and Fétis, a compilation of 18 etudes by a number of composers (including Liszt, Mendelssohn and Thalberg) published in 1840.

[frank_48]

steve, you are completley right, i have no idea why i wrote that. dont know what i was thinking

[nanabush]

Interesting! This thread is more for personal interest, and probably doesn't need to have any educational/historical value. 

Anyways; FIRST thing that pops into my mind (colour and action) when I listen to the first 5 seconds of Op 10:

1 - white, flying
2 - green, lost in a maze
3 - dark purple, (can't think of anything but the colour!)
4 - red, running up and down an endless staircase
5 - dark green, hopping through treetops
6 - a mix between an ugly faded grey and purple, a sickening feeling
7 - yellow, happy and ecstatic about something
8 - bright red, running a marathon (or something similar)
9 - dark brown, sitting at midnight in front of a fire and plotting
10 - green and pink, a circus or fair
11 - red/pink, royalty
11 - brown/yellow, a deep conflict (very original...)

Most of these are just random scenes that came to my mind that COULD fit the music (for me).  This was pretty fun to try to do; a few of them I kind of had to force out, and some could take a paragraph to explain, because my mind works in mysterious ways 

[liordavid]

I think that food is a great topic. particularly taste
opus 10. no 1: Pomegranete seeds rising from a level sweet to sour to pungent
opus 10. no 2: Saltwater
opus 10. no 3: Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream.
opus 10. no 4: Habanero Peppers. a strong spicy taste making us crazy.
opus 10. no 5: Rich Milk Chocolate giving us sweet flavor that makes us very excited.
opus 10. no 6: Sour Red Wine: the drowsy Eb minor dose.
opus 10. no 7: Coca-Cola: a pungeunt but bubbly flavor
opus 10. no 8: Veal: an oily pungeunt flavor that ranges from many consistansies.
opus 10. no 9: Bitter Herb: a food hard to eat and digest.
i can only do the first nine

[rienzi]

It's fine if non-programmatic music evokes images to individual listeners as long as their ideas don't enjoy wide circulation, otherwise we're in danger of being lumbered with totally inappropriate nicknames like "The Hen" being attached to one of Haydn's most dramatic symphonies all because somebody once thought that a couple of bars of oboe solo in the first movement sounded like a clucking hen. Other "delightful" and totally inappropriate evocative titles have attached themselves to well-known pieces by Chopin (The "Tuberose" nocturne) Mendelssohn (Bees' Wedding) and Beethoven ("Emperor" Concerto) to name but a few.
Having said that I have to confess that I always feel that Chopin's Polonaise-fantaisie represents a sort of bardic epic in music in which heroic and feminine elements contrast. I'm also working on the Ballade by Samuel Barber at the moment which conjures up a feeling of the sea to my mind, probably due to its restless, shifting harmonies and frequent use of low pedal-points.