Chopin is a bastard (proof inside)

[davidjosepha]

Proof:











And that's just in one 4 page piece. Not one of those whooshes of notes lines up on the beat anywhere other than the beginning and end. I mean, did Chopin exclusively use prime numbers? Not that it matters, since you're not supposed to play those lines in perfect time anyway, but still. What a pain.

And you know what the left hand plays? Four 16ths and an 8th note, repeat. Keep repeating for 4 pages, then 5 measures before the end, you get some quarters, dotted quarters, and half notes.

I swear, half of Chopin's pieces are just things he improvised once, didn't bother improving upon, and wrote down. I mean, the very fact that his left hand is just the same pattern over and over again with different chords basically proves it's just an improvisation. That's what you do when you improvise.

And yes, I know preludes come from improvisations, but isn't the composer supposed to do SOMETHING with them other than just write them down?

Honestly...

PS I'm only writing this because I feel inadequate as a pianist when playing Chopin

Edit: Also relevant

https://euge.ca/2012/02/24/fioratura/

[danhuyle]

A lot of pieces have those and they do get annoying.

[outin]

I swear, half of Chopin's pieces are just things he improvised once, didn't bother improving upon, and wrote down. I mean, the very fact that his left hand is just the same pattern over and over again with different chords basically proves it's just an improvisation. That's what you do when you improvise.

And yes, I know preludes come from improvisations, but isn't the composer supposed to do SOMETHING with them other than just write them down?

You may not be that far from the truth actually about the improvisation part

This is how Mrs. Sand described his working style in one of her letters:

"His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without foreseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he was impatient to play it to himself. But then began the most heart-rending labour I ever saw. It was a series of efforts, of irresolutions, and of frettings to seize again certain details of the theme he had heard; what he had conceived as a whole he analysed too much when wishing to write it, and his regret at not finding it again, in his opinion, clearly defined, threw him into a kind of despair. He shut himself up in his room for whole days, weeping, walking, breaking his pens, repeating and altering a bar a hundred times, writing and effacing it as many times, and recommencing the next day with a minute and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single page to write it at last as he had noted it down at the very first." (Niecks: Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician)

[quantum]

28/24  

If you think about these runs too much and their polyrhythmical ratios they will feel laborious.  You already have the picture in your mind that they were composed in an improvisational manner.  To play them, approach in an improvisational manner  

He probably wasn't thinking: put 48 notes in the time of 12.  But rather: LH maintains ostinato, RH needs scale, both hands have the goal of lining up on beat 1 of the next bar.  

The beauty of these preludes is that Chopin said so much, with the minimal material contained in each piece.  The constant LH pattern is not a sign of compositional weakness, but ingenuity: what can one achieve under the strict confines of the ostinato.  


P.S. Surprised you did not include the scale in 3rds in your pictures.  

[davidjosepha]

About saying so much within a simple pattern, I never thought of it that way. That's interesting.

P.S. Surprised you did not include the scale in 3rds in your pictures.  

I actually like those. I think they sound cool, and they're in time, not just a huge flourish of notes that have no meaning and only sound cool because of their speed.

[starstruck5]

Chopin clearly needed Sibelius to help him -I mean the software, not the man =-Problem was Electronic Computers were science fiction then and even sci-fi hadn't really been established as a genre -Then again he might have composed less playing too much Piano Hero.

[pianowolfi]

Chopin's mastery at composing accompaniments that are even more fascinating and haunting than the "main" voice, though they have to be kept "in the background" is yet unmatched, imo.