Product Description
The Prélude Op. 28, No. 4, by Frédéric Chopin, is considered by many to be one of the most famous of the Chopin preludes.
Hans von Bülow called the prélude "suffocation", due to its sense of despair. In fact, Chopin's last dynamic marking in the piece is smorzando, which means "dying away". But the prélude may have once been given a title. According to George Sand's daughter Solange, who stayed with the composer at the monastery in Majorca when the préludes were written, "My mother gave a title to each of Chopins wonderful Préludes; these titles have been preserved on a score he gave to us." That titled score is lost. But Solange did record the names of the preludes, apparently without assigning the names to the prélude numbers. It is believed that the title "Quelles larmes au fond du cloître humide?" ("What tears (are shed) from the depths of the damp monastery?") corresponds to Prélude No. 4.
By Chopin's request, the piece was played at his own funeral by Franz Liszt on a pipe organ, along with Mozart's Requiem.
The piece uses a descending melody line. The melody starts with the dominant B and works its way to the tonic E, but halfway through the piece the descending line is interrupted and the melody starts over again. Only in the last bars does the melody dissolve in the tonic and go through a chord progression to the soothing and satisfying E minor chord.
Easy Intermediate.Format: Concert, 9 x 12 inches.4 pages.
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