Blogtrek

Short and Sweet: Chopin's Prelude in A Major

This is the shortest of the preludes in Chopin's Opus 28. Number 7 is a brief waltz, that takes a theme and repeats it four times, following fairly standard harmonies, and ends in an A major chord. It comes, and then it is gone; too bad, because it is a really sweet number. Hence I call this one "Short and Sweet". At times I thought of continuing it but it is hard to do; it is like finding compounds of noble gases such as argon because the piece is complete as it is. This is the first Opus 28 prelude I have ever heard; I was only about 7 or 8 when I heard it the first time on a 45-rpm record that my parents had bought; it came with the Prelude in D Minor (Epic, number 24, which I will cover on 2003 May 27) on the same side, and that one seemed so complicated that I thought that it was forever out of my reach. I will discuss that later, but indeed I also learned how to play the A Major prelude. It is easy to play, but it needs to be played with feeling. One huge chord in the treble at the end of the third theme looks unplayable; the way to play the chord is to hit the A-sharp and the C-Sharp simultaneously with the thumb astraddle the two black keys. This means that the piece can't be transposed into another key without risking the playability of this chord. But no matter; the piece was made to be played in A Major and it stands as a completed work as it is.