Prelude in E Minor: How Chopin Baffled Critics

0:00 Introduction with Loki. 0:28 Chopin and the advance of harmonic vocabulary 1:10 The Preludes, Chopin and George Sand 1:31 Chopin and improvisation 2:27 Improvisation and composition, a historical perspective. 3:07 The structure and key relationships of the Preludes 3:31 Simplicity and complexity 4:01 A huge compendium of Chopin’s virtuosity 4:20 A comparison with James Joyce 4:55 The E minor is a Lament 5:13 Dido’s Lament by Purcell. 5:54 The Passus Duriusculus 6:35 Bach’s Crucifixus 7:29 Beethoven’s 9th Symphony 8:29 Chopin’s lament breaks with tradition 10:03 The pedal note and the sigh 11:20 The chromatic descent in 3 parts 13:05 Chopin’s magical harmony 14:51 The first half: more and more poignant 17:16 The second half: faster and more turbulent 20:33 Contemporary criticisms of Chopin in the London Press in the 1840s 23:16 Chopin, the radical: new vistas, new colours, new harmonic possibilities. 24:17 Chopin’s E min or Prelude (with animated commentary) This video is an introduction to Chopin’s Prelude in E minor: the quintessential Romantic lament, popular among virtuoso pianists and amateur players alike. Composed in the late 1830s, Chopin discovered new, unexplored harmonic possibilities in this apparently simple music, creating a wonderfully concise and poetic depiction of melancholy in just two ’sentences’: each one consisting of a sighing melody of fixed notes in the right hand over subtly shifting chords in the left hand. As it progresses in long, descending chromatic lines (in all 3 parts) from tonic to dominant, the music gives rise to a rich and labyrinthine pathway of magically coloured harmonies. Apologies for the slightly fuzzy resolution on this video. Matthew had the camera on the wrong setting! Chopin Prelude in E minor Op 28 no. 4. Pianist: Matthew King. ⦿ SUPPORT US ON PATREON ⦿ https://www.patreon.com/musicprofessor ⦿ BUY US A Kofi ⦿ https://ko-fi.com/themusicprofessor ⦿ Support us on PayPal ⦿ https://paypal.me/themusicprofessor?c... ⦿ SUBSCRIBE TO THIS CHANNEL ⦿ https://bit.ly/3Pnnwon Alfred Cortot’s wonderfully evocative, almost improvisatory 1933 recording can be heard here: https://youtu.be/OkxKCW8nq0Y?si=iGSwkS0GHxUEgM1J Blechacz's recording of the complete Op.28 preludes can be heard here: https://youtu.be/SqXYIteAfNs?si=ybVoFOr3p3vk_hGT #Chopin #EminorPrelude #themusicprofessor