Preludes (Chopin)
[2] Most of his préludes were already finished before setting foot on Majorca, however, he did finalize them there, as referenced by him in his letters to Pleyel: "I have finished my préludes here on your little piano[...]" The manuscript, which Chopin carefully prepared for publication, carries a dedication to the German pianist and composer Joseph Christoph Kessler.
[3] The French and English editions (Catelin, Wessel) were dedicated to the piano-maker and publisher Camille Pleyel, who had commissioned the work for 2,000 francs (equivalent to nearly €6500 in present-day currency).
Since this sequence of related keys is much closer to common harmonic practice, it is thought that Chopin might have conceived the cycle as a single performance entity for continuous recital.
[6] An opposing view is that the set was never intended for continuous performance, and that the individual preludes were indeed conceived as possible introductions for other works.
28 preludes has become repertory fare, and many concert pianists have recorded the entire set, beginning with Ferruccio Busoni in 1915, when making piano rolls for the Duo-Art label.
Schumann said: "[t]hey are sketches, beginnings of études, or, so to speak, ruins, individual eagle pinions, all disorder and wild confusions.
"[10] Biographer Jeremy Nicholas writes that "[e]ven on their own, the 24 Preludes would have ensured Chopin's claim to immortality.
In doing so, the scholar emphasizes the unified conception of the collection, which presents itself as a profound meditation on the theme of death.
As we note or sense at the start of each piece the various connections to and changes from the previous one, we then feel free to involve ourselves – as listeners, as players, as commentators – only with the new pleasure at hand.The first four measures of the Prelude No.
However, each of Bach's preludes leads to a fugue in the same key, and Bach's pieces are arranged, in each of the work's two volumes, in ascending chromatic order (with major preceding parallel minor), while Chopin's are arranged in a circle of fifths (with major preceding relative minor).
Harold C. Schonberg, in The Great Pianists, writes: "It also is hard to escape the notion that Chopin was very familiar with Hummel's now-forgotten Op.
[20] It was dedicated to Princess E. Czernicheff (Elisaweta Tschernyschewa), and contains widely extending basses and highly expressive and effective chromatic modulations over a rather uniform thematic basis.
The untitled Presto con leggierezza in A♭ major was composed in 1834 as a gift for Pierre Wolff and published in Geneva in 1918.
A further prelude exists in E♭ minor and has been subtitled "Devil's Trill" by Jeffrey Kallberg, a professor of music history at the University of Pennsylvania.
Chopin left this piece uncompleted and seems to have discarded it; while he worked on it during his stay on Majorca, the E♭ minor prelude that ultimately formed part of the Op.
