Just a general comment about tempo since quite a few comments have brought this up: Chopin's cut-time metre would suggest (beyond question really) that the tempo is quicker than the performance tradition suggests. I suspect that Chopin played quite a few of his pieces faster than the subsequent performance tradition (and this is true of almost every composer because the romanticism of the performance tradition tends to slow everything down as performers become more indulgent with the material). And even when you hear a composer perform their own work (Rachmaninov is a wonderful example) you're often surprised by the tempo and by the interpretation! So it's very important to remember that you simply can be over-fundamentalist about tempo. It doesn't work that way. There are no definitive tempi and there are no absolute ultimate performances. Music is much too fluid, and it can't be boxed in like that. Anyone who says 'this is the only tempo' is fundamentally wrong!. You can be convinced by one performance and equally convinced by another performance at half the speed, and Leonard Bernstein's famously slow performances of various pieces demonstrate that, FOR HIM, it worked that way, and that's fine, and its convincing but it doesn't have to be played that way. Glenn Gould had some interesting choices, and some of them are really very close to unlistenable (in my opinion) but I think he had every right to try it out that way!
Your tempo discussion reminds me of the jazz standard Lil Darlin by Neal Hefti for the Count Basie Orchestra. Played too fast, it doesn’t work. Count Basie envisioned it at a medium tempo they say, but not a slow ballad. Seems tempo is as important as the notes themselves. All the best-Cheers.
This really is one of the most common misconceptions. Every time I scroll down to the comment section of any classical music video, there is a pedantic troll who certainly knows the one way to interpret something-too fast and too quiet/loud amongst the frequent complaints. "Bach would never have done that!" How do you know, "SpoiledPotato078"? There are conventions that we should probably follow; it's not as though Chopin writes a D and we should feel free to play an E on a whim. But when people see "larghetto", they shouldn't think "within this BPM range". That's insane! Tempo is perhaps more an indication of how the time will make us feel, or maybe better, the way it will feel will influence the time. More ironic is when someone confidently states the tempo it has to be when the composer's recording is available...and contradicts them. Your choices in interpretation are clearly made with taste and knowledge together. If how you play is controversial, I feel confident knowing it was done with purpose. "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist" is something I've taken to heart with music-or life in general, I suppose. Please keep doing what you're doing, Matthew King and Ian Coulter!
I like chromatic decent because of Chopin that I wrote this to play all 88 keys on piano. Hope you find it interesting. ua-cam.com/video/TPrmK-sR4f4/v-deo.htmlsi=Fzf6rtLgaIf-OK8m
Sir, you have that ineffable quality all great teachers possess: to simultaneously make whatever you're explaining sound simple and intuitive, and also completely magical. I tip my hat.
@@kinorspielmann4649 for me it's not pretentious, just an indicator of respect. pretty standard in the culture i grew up with. maybe yours is different! that's ok too.
Yes. It takes an ace musician to understand another one! The thing is, the famous Schumann reviews are the only ones we remember because they're so beautiful and perceptive and..encouraging! But actually the reality was that Chopin was mired in critical hostility, and opinions like Schumann's would have been viewed as just eccentric.
Loved this presentation. I find it surprising that we did not highlight the fact that nowhere in the prelude did the e minor chord show itself in root position until the very last chord! But there were so many, many delicious points of musical brilliance that this observation does not detract from the great journey you afforded us. What a great marriage of music analysis, social context and emotional sensitivity. I am a new fan. Thank you.
I remember when i first got a handle on functional harmony and went on a binge figuring out music and thinking the e minor prelude would be an easy piece to start with Chopin. Five minutes later I got frustrated and didn't have the nerve to analyze Chopin again for a couple of years. Definitely worth the work though.
18 & 19th century composers can't be analyzed with 20th century analysis. They learned music through pattern recognition and improvisatuon not "theory" like today that they give you a textbook and thats it. If you try with modern analysis, you are just going to waste your time because thats something that was invented for university students and for scholars to live off scholarships.
As a rock and pop musician who loves Chopin, I can only express appreciation and gratitude for the depth you have added to my understanding of the composer and his musical process via this wonderful analysis of this beautiful prelude. Thanks.
I had a class at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois in 1965 that dissected Classical Music in much this way and as I look back on all my classes from there to UCLA Masters program in theater... that class was one of my favorite classes of my college life. It took the emotions evoked by music and attempted to make sense of that amazing art. But alas... I was pushed by my father to shy away from music and study business and accounting... I unfortunately pulled away from that class in which I was getting all "A"s... Now a lifetime later I wonder what might have happened if I had had the courage at that time to follow my love of music and stay in that class and yes, even Major in that field... I wonder where my life would have taken me. Later...I moved to LA... toured with Ike and Tina Turner with me playing sax... and just by chance bought a house and lived next door to Herbie Hancock for 19 years...and even had him perform on a song that I had written, "Tennessee Hitman" and later perform with another song I'd written with my Sister singing... "When Night Turns Blue"... and yet I still wonder what might have happened if I'd continued that path which is suggested in this amazing Study by "The Music Professor" and his very cool pup nearby. I drink a nice Chardonnay and listen to this very amazing dissection of a heavenly piece by this brilliant man... and wonder... and here even at this late point in my life is the "lament"... and I suppose a chance to attempt a 2024 composition of a lament using these secret Codes of that Masterful Chopin... who knows?
That's a lot of whiplash for me, as I haven't heard Bradley University ever mentioned online before. I grew up in Chillicothe, some 15-20 miles from Peoria.
This piece, for myself at least, probably others too, emotionally jacks into my psyche unlike other works that need to pass through other gates or perception checks. It takes the fast lane to my heart every time no matter what state I’m in.
9:32 I don’t know if this counts since it’s a V6 but the Beethoven Sonata in D minor Op. 31, No. 2 starts off with a A major chord with the C# in the bass.
About that "blue note" in the middle of the piece: it's what in jazz is called "augmented harmony", where a dominant chord has both the major and the minor third at the same time (traditionally written augmented 9th, but it usually comes at the same time as the minor 9th, so it's not really a 9th in my opinion). I was quite astonished when I realised this for the first time. Listening for it carefully throughout history you can find it often as a device for "extreme sorrow", for example at the beginning of Mozart's Lacrimosa
That phrase does have both the #9 and the b9. In that sense, the “D” should really be notated as a “C##”, then followed by C natural. A bit clunky to read, of course. It’s similar to the point made about how Bb should be an augmented sixth, i.e. notated as A#.
@@donach9I, too, came to offer up the "Hendrix" chord. I'm glad you did first, as I can't recall (or at least not frequently enough to stick) it being named 7m10. To me, this defines (duh) too strictly the tonality of that note, which really only "works" when it's the top voice. I feel it doesn't give a 🤬 about resolving. Besides, 7#9 reads as being more "edgy", which this chord certainly is! That's my take; I'd be interested to read whatever else you (or anyone else) have to say on this.
Those are almost always some form of "sixth" chord, whether that's German, French, Italian, or otherwise. "Altered dominant" is a catch-all concept that envelops all of them.
@@mal2ksc mmm... but augmented sixth chords have predominant function, and altered dominant has dominant function. The way I functionally "explain" altered harmony is that it maximises the tension by keeping the leading tones and altering pretty much everything else, creating a lot of tension. In jazz altered harmony is used as a device to safely play "outside"
As a youngster taking years of classical piano lessons, I loved Chopin's nocturns. They were hard to play with small hands, but worth the work. Chopin knew how to challenge any pianist's skill level; many times leaving us defeated.
Marvelous. I wonder if sounded like noise to them partly because of the way pianos were tuned then? It wasn’t quite equal temperament yet, because that’s almost impossible to achieve without electronic help. On the mainland, I believe Valotti tuning was in fashion at the time? But in England, the piano may well have been in an earlier tuning that was a bit further from equal, causing some of the chromaticism to be more dissonant than it is for us. Especially, certain perfect fifths may have been, not quite wolf fifths, but impure enough to interfere with chord function in such a highly chromatic work. Years ago, I recorded an orchestra in Tomsk, Russia. There was only one piano tuner in town, and he showed up with a 440 tuning fork and a tuning wrench. He started with the As and worked outward in pure Pythagorean fifths, leaving a wolf of 22 cents between the D# and the Bb. Some of the pieces we wanted to record were simply unplayable.
Interesting observation. In those days keyboardists had to tune their own pianos - the instruments could not hold a tuning like today's instruments. Constant tuning was required. It is likely the English heard the pieces while Chopin himself was sojourning there, perhaps even with the composer at the piano. I don't recall tuning systems ever being an issue in Chopin's biography and thought, but I have not read every last one of his letters, either! If it had an impact on his music, good or bad, he cannot have been oblivious to it, and if performed in his presence or by him personally, I would think he would have done something to mitigate it. Or maybe we are hearing the pieces today with LESS dissonance than he intended, and the impact the piece had on that critic is exactly what he wanted. Wouldn't that be wild! That is certainly the case with some earlier composers, especially in the Baroque and early classical, who used the increasing dissonance of unrelated keys to create tension in their keyboard works (JS & CPE Bach, Mozart, maybe even Beethoven).
9:53 this vocal characteristic is what really draws me to Chopin's music, particularly in his nocturnes and sonatas. One of Chopin's greatest desires was for his piano to sing so you end of up these very beautiful melodies where the right hand part really wants to sing out as if it were in an opera.
Wonderful analyse, thank you so much! The part about the contemporary critics having a hard time understanding those new harmonies, I think, is nicely presented in Berlioz saying: "Unfortunately, virtually no one except Chopin himself can play his music. He alone holds the secret." I think this says a lot about the people of the day as well as about Chopin, the pianist and Chopin, the composer. Pieces like his Scherzi, Ballades, Sonatas and his Preludes must have been very challenging for the average listener to get used to. And yet, the majority were enchanted by his music, often without knowing exactly why.
He starts on complete uncertainty (5th in the treble and 1st position chord) and ends on complete certainty (with the added lower octave tonic) but makes the journey so convoluted and rich that the final chord, very strongly, has that "arriving home" feeling, so much so that it takes the breath away when it finally happens.
There are so many music theory people on YT that seem to miss the point in their videos. The context of the music in its own time as well as its place in history, and not only what harmony is happening, but the much more important question of why it matters. You do a great job at this! Reminds me of being in the classroom with a passionate educator when I was in music school.
i grew up playing piano, depression and anxiety took me out of lessons as I just wasn’t able to bring myself to practice, but on my own, I kept playing onto college, and in that i so slowly added new songs to my repertoire. I don’t have easy access to a piano now, it’s been years, i would struggle to play it. But I know. The single note that begins it would instantly transport me, as it always does. 20 minutes, an hour would go by as i devote myself to the piece, relearning how to make my hands mourn. I’m going to try to make that a reality next time I’m at my dad’s, thank you.
The way you illuminate the concepts in this piece of music is simply fascinating. Your use of the score inset while playing and the music theory associated with each measure is so well explained that even an amateur like me can begin to grasp the true depths being explored by Chopin. I love descending bass lines and the transitions they create in music. Thank you so much for your presentation.
You were born to teach. I’ve played this piece for 40 years and I’ve always wondered about the source of its power. No ever managed to explain it until you did. Thank you. Please keep up the good work.
I've always loved Chopin's music and your explanation here was just enthralling. I've never watched your channel before but I knew all would be good as soon as I saw your Revolver T-shirt. Thanks.
For a first viewing of this channel, I was enthralled by the analysis! Chopin is one of my favourite composers, and I never tire of his music. I'll be back..!
The musical 'expose' here is very well done! This Chopin prelude fascinated me as a teenager studying piano many years ago. It brings back to vivid memory the struggle I had with it harmonically trying to figure out the magic behind it's emotional impact. Thanks for downloading.
I really enjoyed this lecture, if you like. It gives great insight both structurally to the piece and also contextually .As for the most solemn cadence in classical music I’m sure Herr Beethoven would have something to say about that!😅
As a 20th-century music fan, I like how you framed this historically, how challenging to sensibilities were all those seconds banging together, although the harmony is all perfectly functional. And this is how dissonance begins to slip its bonds ...
What I enjoyed most about your exposition as a pianist was how you were able to just SKETCH out pieces with like top note and bottom note and/or points of interest where relevant, just the artistry of a pencil line without needing full shading etc
As a retired college music theory teacher of 35 years, let me say this is just marvelous. Love to see your harmonic analysis of the Crucifixus and about ten other pieces I loved to look at when I was teaching. Another is the Erlkonig...
Before writing my comments, I read what the other music lovers have commented and I could hear a loud clapping of applause for both you and Chopin for your master explanation and the Prelude in E masterpiece which you both well deserve. One of the amazing attributes of this Prelude is its absolute simplicity yet deep poetic depth.
There is something with this composition that makes perfect sense to me, and it couldn't have been composed any other way, much like a lot of Chopins music. This must be as you say, his music being so intervowen into the lives of people in the west that we don't recognize it in the same way, as when it came out. Thank you for this in-depth lesson about one of the things i love.
I remember this being played by Jack Nicholson's character in 'Five easy pieces'. I must listen to more Chopin, a composer I've neglected for too long.
My favorite thing to do when playing Chopin is to improvise but it doesn’t seem like anyone else does this even though it’s in keeping with the spirit of the music.
It's an eternal debate between musical "purity" or playing it as what the composer would do. If I understand Chopin correctly, his pieces are very easy to play badly and difficult to play perfectly so it makes sense that many schools and teachers opt to teach students how to play Chopin as written in the score...
I was very pleased with this presentation of yours. I am a composer but not a pianist, but beauty of this piece, forced me managed to play it. I am speaking literally when i am saying that the beauty forcing me playing It. It is not the technique that allow me to play it, because i do not have any kind of technique (i never was on a music school or had a piano teacher). The unbelievable beauty of Chopin's music in this piece force me to find the right movements on my hands, in order my ears listen the beauty. It is a kind of a miracle...
Such an easy piece to play BADLY. I memorised it really quickly only to be told by my tutor to find a modicum of expression. I must have sounded like an errant robot. After 40 or more years I'm still not confident. Great lesson. I love the spontaneous feel with your delivery. Many thanks.
Very nice discussion. I've played the piece since I was a teen some 60 years ago. The professor has done an admirable and at the same time engaging job of conveying the subtleties of the e minor prelude but comparing it to the chromatics of earlier composers, Purcell and Bach. Applause.
Interesting reference to historical expectations and the contemporary reviews. I've played this for 45 years - I felt the emotive qualities and form - everything you describe - "intuitively" at the age of ten - remarkable how our historical context changes what our ear is prepared to accept.
There are amazing Chopin passages that we will never hear because they weren't transcribed. Makes me think of Keith Jarret's greatest performances and what a tragedy if they hadn't been recorded.
Or worse, ordered destroyed by Chopin himself. All of the posthumous waltzes are gone save for the first few bars of each of them transcribed by someone close to Chopin and the Fantasie-Impromptu nearly got the same treatment had not for Julian Fontana disobeying Chopin's dying wish to have it destroyed...
Fantastic video! The late Bill Evans, jazz pianist, has been called "the Chopin of Jazz." In studying Evan's approach to harmony, I've noticed that this idea of progressively altering the left-hand chords by single semi-tones (in any one of the voices, as you describe here), was a common thing for Evans. When used, this drives the harmony in a direction that often defies the classical chord progressions that focus on the circle of fifths (functional harmony), as with Bach, et al. (However, Bach himself did things like Prelude No. 1 from Well-Tempered Clavier, which seems to focus on "changing shapes," more than a standard chord progression). You will often see transcriptions of Evan's music that try to fit his harmonic language into classical harmonic movement, and you feel the transcriber struggling to do that (in the chord names on the chart). I think that chromatically descending voicings almost needs its own descriptive language, outside of the I, VI, IV, V, etc, realm. Slash chords, such as Em/G, work pretty well here.
Brilliant analysis! The lament is legendary and Chopin is THE BOSS. Really interesting perspective to know that music critics at his time did not view his music positively and that artistic chromaticism is seen as excessive. Just a funny thing to know. Just another proof that critics really don't know what they're saying.
Fine lecture, inspiring, I am taken to my knees every day playing Chopin. I remember nothing of theory and find it a difficult task, so everything I appreciate is on instinct
I‘ve been working on this piece, I can play it pretty well now and I really look forward to revisiting it in a year or two and really making it shine. Absolutely beautiful
I was working on my arrangement of the prelude and here is your video :) Just in time. Thank you for the interesting video! I had no idea that Chopin was criticized like that.
Thank you for the great analysis! This piece in brief explains Chopin as grandad of jazz. That flat 3rd over dominant 7 chord is simply blues,but that "excessive" harmony informs other jazz forms. (McCoy Tyner has recorded this prelude as a bossa nova) and Jobim's Insensatez parallels this prelude almost too closely.
Wow, this was fantastic! E minor is my favorite key. I played this piece years ago and loved it but you’ve really helped me understand so much more about *why* I loved it.
Thank you so much for this insightful video. As an old punk rocker both in practice and at heart, Chopin has long been my very favorite composer. I cherish fondly, memories of the wonder with which I beheld the Chopin pieces which I played so poorly as a piano student. His penchant for improvisatory melodic phrasings such as you highlight here @15:53 were a direct influence on my compositional stylings. I shamelessly copied my hero, incorporating this type of elemental device, deriving lines which were oft times quite off-kilter and which, in the case of my simple pop/punk tunes, added an intriguing facade of sophistication. Having this lamenting prelude dissected like you do here, revealing the genius of Chopin's harmonic complexities, is most edifying. Your final, complete play through provoked goose bumps. "The most solemn cadence", indeed.
I practiced this prelude when I studied during my teenage years. Playing the correct notes took lots of practice. Now in my senior years I appreciate the analysis of Chopin's genius. I wish I had a piano to practice Chopin again.
Ha! I love the London review. This video is marvelous and full of so much fascinating information and analysis. My piano teacher studied with Alicia de Laroccha and my favorite composers for piano all wrote 10ths. So he had me doing stretching exercises and never said no to my choosing Chopin or Rachmaninoff for recitals. I enjoyed your video today immensely!.
Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 2 No. 3 (beginning of the concluding movement) uses the 1st inversion of the C major chord and each ascending chord thereafter.
The historical reviews were apparently read from Nicolas Slonimsky’s fabulous book (one of many), “Lexicon of Musical Invective - Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven’s Time", available in paperback from W. W. Norton & Company. Highly recommended, especially to anyone who ever got a negative review. Until you have been raked over the coals, you have not walked among the great ones.
Thank you, Professor. Your explanations and references to other works to demonstrate your points made watching and learning very easy. I was also delighted to learn of Chopin's forgetting what he'd just played. My engineer has learned to start recording as soon as I sit down at the piano as grew very weary of hearing, "Tim, what did I just play?" It's comforting to know that those better than I have struggled in a similar way.
I’ve been an improviser for over half a century. Primarily jazz, but also pseudo classical and electronic. I was taught by my teacher, Connie Crothers, to get into the nonjudgmental zone where my ego is not responsible for what happens musically. Of course, Chopin could access this space at will and explains why he had difficulty recalling what he did exactly. And, also, why he moved forward, so easily into new harmonic territory. Thanks for your contribution to understanding this aspect of music creation and the irony of analyzing it all after the original creative acts untethered to the bonds of musical theory.
16:19 that #9 is great. Chopin was a jazzer. Great video, sir. A great video you would like is Nahre Sol's video "Is Chopin Jazz?" Chopin was an amazing composer and improviser.
"Jazz" happens to be a colloquial early 20th c. word meaning to have sex with. I never had the heart to tell my sister that, when she says " he [or it] jazzed me!" because the action really does inspire positive valence, emotional creativity.
Music Professor, I love you. Very informational channel, the analysis are always great, full of history and anecdotes and easy to follow. Much love to Loki
I have to tell you, that he plays it here much more ragtime-like than it is in the symphony (he was just showing the 'formula' of the section). Listen to the orchestral version - it's much more funeral march-like. But then, listen to the last movement of the Sonata no. 32, where Beethoven has got his reputation as predicting ragtime/boogie-woogie.
Fabulous exposition of a sublime and deeply moving work. So many harmonic surprises. I love these mysterious, gradual changes. Minimal minimalism? It’s a miracle in miniature. Thank you for this!
A beautiful analysis with historical context. I certainly knew the 'sigh' tradition this work falls in, but the harsh (and hilarious) criticism by his British peers was news. On a personal note: I was 13 when my grandma (herself a wonderful pianist, and who had -- apart from being a teacher and silent movie pianist -- been a host to composers from Europe during and after WWII, including Stravinsky and Tansman) died. I played this prelude at her funeral, and have associated it with her and her memory ever since. I'm glad you spent as long as you did discussing that unexpected chord German 6th chord toward the end: what a marvel, and what a treat to play before the pregnant pause... Thank you.
I really thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you very much! I really like who each piece of the base cord moves progressively down chromatically in an interesting systematic way so interesting. Also interesting how it just keeps postponing and postponing the end of that sort of sigh. This was a very cool video
This a a great commentary on a wonderful piece of art - i have played this music badly and in private for many years but never really understood what was going on - thanks for explaining the craft and the 'magic'
I love your analysis of this piece! I would really like to see you do a comparison and contrast between the compositional techniques and styles of Chopin and Rachmaninoff.
My favorite performer of Chopin is Adam Harasiewicz. I found him a few years ago and it seems he plays Chopin’s music like Chopin would have intended. There is a newly found nocturne he recorded that I purchased sheet music for about 8 years ago. I need to find it. Its very beautiful. Its Nocturne 21 he recorded in 1974 so maybe not newly discovered.
a great exposé on this great example of voice leading taking functional harmony on a heartbreaking ride... wonderfully instructive overview of the piece and all within and around it! thank you!
What a beautiful piece! Chopin reminds me of Bach! He sounds rhapsodic but is extremely disciplined in choosing harmonies! Thanks for posting! 😻🌹🦋🤡🎹🎶🍀💐🍁🎈🌺🥰😀👍
Thank you for this wonderfully explanatory exposition of this Chopin work. Classical music is so much more enjoyable when it's explained, as to its context, meaning and emotions.
Just a general comment about tempo since quite a few comments have brought this up: Chopin's cut-time metre would suggest (beyond question really) that the tempo is quicker than the performance tradition suggests. I suspect that Chopin played quite a few of his pieces faster than the subsequent performance tradition (and this is true of almost every composer because the romanticism of the performance tradition tends to slow everything down as performers become more indulgent with the material). And even when you hear a composer perform their own work (Rachmaninov is a wonderful example) you're often surprised by the tempo and by the interpretation! So it's very important to remember that you simply can be over-fundamentalist about tempo. It doesn't work that way. There are no definitive tempi and there are no absolute ultimate performances. Music is much too fluid, and it can't be boxed in like that. Anyone who says 'this is the only tempo' is fundamentally wrong!. You can be convinced by one performance and equally convinced by another performance at half the speed, and Leonard Bernstein's famously slow performances of various pieces demonstrate that, FOR HIM, it worked that way, and that's fine, and its convincing but it doesn't have to be played that way. Glenn Gould had some interesting choices, and some of them are really very close to unlistenable (in my opinion) but I think he had every right to try it out that way!
Your tempo discussion reminds me of the jazz standard Lil Darlin by Neal Hefti for the Count Basie Orchestra. Played too fast, it doesn’t work. Count Basie envisioned it at a medium tempo they say, but not a slow ballad. Seems tempo is as important as the notes themselves. All the best-Cheers.
This really is one of the most common misconceptions. Every time I scroll down to the comment section of any classical music video, there is a pedantic troll who certainly knows the one way to interpret something-too fast and too quiet/loud amongst the frequent complaints. "Bach would never have done that!" How do you know, "SpoiledPotato078"?
There are conventions that we should probably follow; it's not as though Chopin writes a D and we should feel free to play an E on a whim. But when people see "larghetto", they shouldn't think "within this BPM range". That's insane! Tempo is perhaps more an indication of how the time will make us feel, or maybe better, the way it will feel will influence the time. More ironic is when someone confidently states the tempo it has to be when the composer's recording is available...and contradicts them.
Your choices in interpretation are clearly made with taste and knowledge together. If how you play is controversial, I feel confident knowing it was done with purpose. "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist" is something I've taken to heart with music-or life in general, I suppose.
Please keep doing what you're doing, Matthew King and Ian Coulter!
I like chromatic decent because of Chopin that I wrote this to play all 88 keys on piano. Hope you find it interesting. ua-cam.com/video/TPrmK-sR4f4/v-deo.htmlsi=Fzf6rtLgaIf-OK8m
@@jaydenfung1 Thank you for your kind and supportive comment.
@@themusicprofessor Of course! I love what you two (or three, counting Loki!) are doing.
Sir, you have that ineffable quality all great teachers possess: to simultaneously make whatever you're explaining sound simple and intuitive, and also completely magical. I tip my hat.
Thank you!
@@themusicprofessor I fully agree.
@@kinorspielmann4649Everything okay?
@@kinorspielmann4649 for me it's not pretentious, just an indicator of respect. pretty standard in the culture i grew up with. maybe yours is different! that's ok too.
It's not pretentious. It's nice.
Chopin: Guess you guys aren't ready for that yet... but your kids are gonna love it
"Hats Off, Gentlemen - A Genius:" a contemporaneous review by another genius, Robert Schumann.
love your vids!
@@sculptystudios4557 awww tx
OMG IT IS MY FAVOURITE EARLY MUSIC EMSEMBLE HERE
Yes. It takes an ace musician to understand another one! The thing is, the famous Schumann reviews are the only ones we remember because they're so beautiful and perceptive and..encouraging! But actually the reality was that Chopin was mired in critical hostility, and opinions like Schumann's would have been viewed as just eccentric.
Loved this presentation. I find it surprising that we did not highlight the fact that nowhere in the prelude did the e minor chord show itself in root position until the very last chord! But there were so many, many delicious points of musical brilliance that this observation does not detract from the great journey you afforded us. What a great marriage of music analysis, social context and emotional sensitivity. I am a new fan. Thank you.
Chopin knew what he was doing. Alas, he must have suffered greatly with those around him. He is my everything.
I remember when i first got a handle on functional harmony and went on a binge figuring out music and thinking the e minor prelude would be an easy piece to start with Chopin. Five minutes later I got frustrated and didn't have the nerve to analyze Chopin again for a couple of years. Definitely worth the work though.
I analyzed it as him moving one voice chromatically mostly
18 & 19th century composers can't be analyzed with 20th century analysis. They learned music through pattern recognition and improvisatuon not "theory" like today that they give you a textbook and thats it.
If you try with modern analysis, you are just going to waste your time because thats something that was invented for university students and for scholars to live off scholarships.
The problem is that you have to ignore a lot of chromatic passing chords between the chords that are actually functional
Hahaha same experience here
sh!t y'all are gangsta
i'd settle for just playing it
As a rock and pop musician who loves Chopin, I can only express appreciation and gratitude for the depth you have added to my understanding of the composer and his musical process via this wonderful analysis of this beautiful prelude. Thanks.
Thank you!
Me too .. although I learned classical music (clarinet, piano) then jazz guitar .. Yeah, master of none .. lol
I had a class at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois in 1965 that dissected Classical Music in much this way and as I look back on all my classes from there to UCLA Masters program in theater... that class was one of my favorite classes of my college life. It took the emotions evoked by music and attempted to make sense of that amazing art. But alas... I was pushed by my father to shy away from music and study business and accounting... I unfortunately pulled away from that class in which I was getting all "A"s... Now a lifetime later I wonder what might have happened if I had had the courage at that time to follow my love of music and stay in that class and yes, even Major in that field... I wonder where my life would have taken me. Later...I moved to LA... toured with Ike and Tina Turner with me playing sax... and just by chance bought a house and lived next door to Herbie Hancock for 19 years...and even had him perform on a song that I had written, "Tennessee Hitman" and later perform with another song I'd written with my Sister singing... "When Night Turns Blue"... and yet I still wonder what might have happened if I'd continued that path which is suggested in this amazing Study by "The Music Professor" and his very cool pup nearby. I drink a nice Chardonnay and listen to this very amazing dissection of a heavenly piece by this brilliant man... and wonder... and here even at this late point in my life is the "lament"... and I suppose a chance to attempt a 2024 composition of a lament using these secret Codes of that Masterful Chopin... who knows?
That's a lot of whiplash for me, as I haven't heard Bradley University ever mentioned online before. I grew up in Chillicothe, some 15-20 miles from Peoria.
Very touching, I too.
You should arrange this piece for sax and maybe vibes.
This piece, for myself at least, probably others too, emotionally jacks into my psyche unlike other works that need to pass through other gates or perception checks. It takes the fast lane to my heart every time no matter what state I’m in.
Huh? LOL
xdcountry. Me too. Chopin is my favourite composer, and this composition, in particular, I find very moving.
You remind me of some of my favorite professors when I was a music major. Wonderful enthusiasm and knowledge combined.
It takes a peculiar kind of “genius” to deliver a lecture like this. Congratulations and thank you.
High praise! Thank you!
9:32 I don’t know if this counts since it’s a V6 but the Beethoven Sonata in D minor Op. 31, No. 2 starts off with a A major chord with the C# in the bass.
About that "blue note" in the middle of the piece: it's what in jazz is called "augmented harmony", where a dominant chord has both the major and the minor third at the same time (traditionally written augmented 9th, but it usually comes at the same time as the minor 9th, so it's not really a 9th in my opinion). I was quite astonished when I realised this for the first time. Listening for it carefully throughout history you can find it often as a device for "extreme sorrow", for example at the beginning of Mozart's Lacrimosa
Yes, I think the Hendrix/Taxman chord, normally called the 7#9, should be called the 7m10. It's a minor 10th, not any kind of 9th
That phrase does have both the #9 and the b9. In that sense, the “D” should really be notated as a “C##”, then followed by C natural. A bit clunky to read, of course.
It’s similar to the point made about how Bb should be an augmented sixth, i.e. notated as A#.
@@donach9I, too, came to offer up the "Hendrix" chord. I'm glad you did first, as I can't recall (or at least not frequently enough to stick) it being named 7m10. To me, this defines (duh) too strictly the tonality of that note, which really only "works" when it's the top voice. I feel it doesn't give a 🤬 about resolving. Besides, 7#9 reads as being more "edgy", which this chord certainly is!
That's my take; I'd be interested to read whatever else you (or anyone else) have to say on this.
Those are almost always some form of "sixth" chord, whether that's German, French, Italian, or otherwise. "Altered dominant" is a catch-all concept that envelops all of them.
@@mal2ksc mmm... but augmented sixth chords have predominant function, and altered dominant has dominant function. The way I functionally "explain" altered harmony is that it maximises the tension by keeping the leading tones and altering pretty much everything else, creating a lot of tension. In jazz altered harmony is used as a device to safely play "outside"
As a youngster taking years of classical piano lessons, I loved Chopin's nocturns. They were hard to play with small hands, but worth the work. Chopin knew how to challenge any pianist's skill level; many times leaving us defeated.
@@kinorspielmann4649 Stop. Just stop.
The only master I would be glad to kneel before
Marvelous. I wonder if sounded like noise to them partly because of the way pianos were tuned then? It wasn’t quite equal temperament yet, because that’s almost impossible to achieve without electronic help. On the mainland, I believe Valotti tuning was in fashion at the time? But in England, the piano may well have been in an earlier tuning that was a bit further from equal, causing some of the chromaticism to be more dissonant than it is for us. Especially, certain perfect fifths may have been, not quite wolf fifths, but impure enough to interfere with chord function in such a highly chromatic work.
Years ago, I recorded an orchestra in Tomsk, Russia. There was only one piano tuner in town, and he showed up with a 440 tuning fork and a tuning wrench. He started with the As and worked outward in pure Pythagorean fifths, leaving a wolf of 22 cents between the D# and the Bb. Some of the pieces we wanted to record were simply unplayable.
Interesting, and, I believe, salient point.
Interesting observation. In those days keyboardists had to tune their own pianos - the instruments could not hold a tuning like today's instruments. Constant tuning was required. It is likely the English heard the pieces while Chopin himself was sojourning there, perhaps even with the composer at the piano. I don't recall tuning systems ever being an issue in Chopin's biography and thought, but I have not read every last one of his letters, either! If it had an impact on his music, good or bad, he cannot have been oblivious to it, and if performed in his presence or by him personally, I would think he would have done something to mitigate it. Or maybe we are hearing the pieces today with LESS dissonance than he intended, and the impact the piece had on that critic is exactly what he wanted. Wouldn't that be wild! That is certainly the case with some earlier composers, especially in the Baroque and early classical, who used the increasing dissonance of unrelated keys to create tension in their keyboard works (JS & CPE Bach, Mozart, maybe even Beethoven).
No, they were just not very bright and threatened by Chopin
9:53 this vocal characteristic is what really draws me to Chopin's music, particularly in his nocturnes and sonatas. One of Chopin's greatest desires was for his piano to sing so you end of up these very beautiful melodies where the right hand part really wants to sing out as if it were in an opera.
Wonderful analyse, thank you so much!
The part about the contemporary critics having a hard time understanding those new harmonies, I think, is nicely presented in Berlioz saying:
"Unfortunately, virtually no one except Chopin himself can play his music. He alone holds the secret."
I think this says a lot about the people of the day as well as about Chopin, the pianist and Chopin, the composer. Pieces like his Scherzi, Ballades, Sonatas and his Preludes must have been very challenging for the average listener to get used to. And yet, the majority were enchanted by his music, often without knowing exactly why.
What a fantastic exploration of this wonderful piece! Thank you once again.
He starts on complete uncertainty (5th in the treble and 1st position chord) and ends on complete certainty (with the added lower octave tonic) but makes the journey so convoluted and rich that the final chord, very strongly, has that "arriving home" feeling, so much so that it takes the breath away when it finally happens.
The end is so final 😢
I wonder what the piece was inspired by. Death?
There are so many music theory people on YT that seem to miss the point in their videos. The context of the music in its own time as well as its place in history, and not only what harmony is happening, but the much more important question of why it matters. You do a great job at this! Reminds me of being in the classroom with a passionate educator when I was in music school.
i grew up playing piano, depression and anxiety took me out of lessons as I just wasn’t able to bring myself to practice, but on my own, I kept playing onto college, and in that i so slowly added new songs to my repertoire. I don’t have easy access to a piano now, it’s been years, i would struggle to play it. But I know. The single note that begins it would instantly transport me, as it always does. 20 minutes, an hour would go by as i devote myself to the piece, relearning how to make my hands mourn. I’m going to try to make that a reality next time I’m at my dad’s, thank you.
The way you illuminate the concepts in this piece of music is simply fascinating. Your use of the score inset while playing and the music theory associated with each measure is so well explained that even an amateur like me can begin to grasp the true depths being explored by Chopin. I love descending bass lines and the transitions they create in music. Thank you so much for your presentation.
Thank you!
Thanks!
Thank you so much!
You were born to teach. I’ve played this piece for 40 years and I’ve always wondered about the source of its power. No ever managed to explain it until you did. Thank you. Please keep up the good work.
I've always loved Chopin's music and your explanation here was just enthralling. I've never watched your channel before but I knew all would be good as soon as I saw your Revolver T-shirt. Thanks.
This tune was used as a basis for the Bossa classic "How Insensitive " (Insensatez ) by Jobim . Very good presentation - I like the Revolver T shirt !
Your analysis is exceptional and illuminating.
I love the way you have analyzed this prelude in E minor! The information is so much more than just music history and harmonic analysis!
For a first viewing of this channel, I was enthralled by the analysis! Chopin is one of my favourite composers, and I never tire of his music. I'll be back..!
Played this piece for over 20 years and seeing it in a new light is such a thrill.
the visualizations you use for the score are amazing. simple, yet so effective and informative. you are an amazing teacher.
The musical 'expose' here is very well done! This Chopin
prelude fascinated me as a teenager studying piano many
years ago. It brings back to vivid memory the struggle I had
with it harmonically trying to figure out the magic behind
it's emotional impact. Thanks for downloading.
He did upload.
To download is to extract it FROM internet for your sustained personal use
I really enjoyed this lecture, if you like. It gives great insight both structurally to the piece and also contextually .As for the most solemn cadence in classical music I’m sure Herr Beethoven would have something to say about that!😅
As a 20th-century music fan, I like how you framed this historically, how challenging to sensibilities were all those seconds banging together, although the harmony is all perfectly functional. And this is how dissonance begins to slip its bonds ...
What I enjoyed most about your exposition as a pianist was how you were able to just SKETCH out pieces with like top note and bottom note and/or points of interest where relevant, just the artistry of a pencil line without needing full shading etc
As a retired college music theory teacher of 35 years, let me say this is just marvelous. Love to see your harmonic analysis of the Crucifixus and about ten other pieces I loved to look at when I was teaching. Another is the Erlkonig...
Before writing my comments, I read what the other music lovers have commented and I could hear a loud clapping of applause for both you and Chopin for your master explanation and the Prelude in E masterpiece which you both well deserve. One of the amazing attributes of this Prelude is its absolute simplicity yet deep poetic depth.
There is something with this composition that makes perfect sense to me, and it couldn't have been composed any other way, much like a lot of Chopins music.
This must be as you say, his music being so intervowen into the lives of people in the west that we don't recognize it in the same way, as when it came out.
Thank you for this in-depth lesson about one of the things i love.
I remember this being played by Jack Nicholson's character in 'Five easy pieces'. I must listen to more Chopin, a composer I've neglected for too long.
Oh man I wish I could discover Chopins brilliance again for the first time. So emotive.
My favorite thing to do when playing Chopin is to improvise but it doesn’t seem like anyone else does this even though it’s in keeping with the spirit of the music.
It really is in the spirit of the music!
Every musician should improvise! Too few classical musicians "dare" to, dooming them to being musical typists.
It's just you
@@jeffrogers210 "musical typists" is surely a gross oversimplification, but I will take the spirit of your comment despite the hyperbole
It's an eternal debate between musical "purity" or playing it as what the composer would do. If I understand Chopin correctly, his pieces are very easy to play badly and difficult to play perfectly so it makes sense that many schools and teachers opt to teach students how to play Chopin as written in the score...
I was very pleased with this presentation of yours.
I am a composer but not a pianist, but beauty of this piece, forced me managed to play it. I am speaking literally when i am saying that the beauty forcing me playing It. It is not the technique that allow me to play it, because i do not have any kind of technique (i never was on a music school or had a piano teacher). The unbelievable beauty of Chopin's music in this piece force me to find the right movements on my hands, in order my ears listen the beauty. It is a kind of a miracle...
Such an easy piece to play BADLY. I memorised it really quickly only to be told by my tutor to find a modicum of expression. I must have sounded like an errant robot. After 40 or more years I'm still not confident. Great lesson. I love the spontaneous feel with your delivery. Many thanks.
You have won me over. I love the sort of all-over-the-place approach with many insightful examples.
Very nice discussion. I've played the piece since I was a teen some 60 years ago. The professor has done an admirable and at the same time engaging job of conveying the subtleties of the e minor prelude but comparing it to the chromatics of earlier composers, Purcell and Bach. Applause.
Interesting reference to historical expectations and the contemporary reviews. I've played this for 45 years - I felt the emotive qualities and form - everything you describe - "intuitively" at the age of ten - remarkable how our historical context changes what our ear is prepared to accept.
There are amazing Chopin passages that we will never hear because they weren't transcribed. Makes me think of Keith Jarret's greatest performances and what a tragedy if they hadn't been recorded.
Or worse, ordered destroyed by Chopin himself. All of the posthumous waltzes are gone save for the first few bars of each of them transcribed by someone close to Chopin and the Fantasie-Impromptu nearly got the same treatment had not for Julian Fontana disobeying Chopin's dying wish to have it destroyed...
George Sand described his improvisations and Chopin's terrible difficulties at trying to recapture them in notational form.
It's a great piece, because it's technically easy for children or beginners in general, who can then focus in the interpretation
Also because it sounds good
Fantastic video! The late Bill Evans, jazz pianist, has been called "the Chopin of Jazz." In studying Evan's approach to harmony, I've noticed that this idea of progressively altering the left-hand chords by single semi-tones (in any one of the voices, as you describe here), was a common thing for Evans. When used, this drives the harmony in a direction that often defies the classical chord progressions that focus on the circle of fifths (functional harmony), as with Bach, et al. (However, Bach himself did things like Prelude No. 1 from Well-Tempered Clavier, which seems to focus on "changing shapes," more than a standard chord progression). You will often see transcriptions of Evan's music that try to fit his harmonic language into classical harmonic movement, and you feel the transcriber struggling to do that (in the chord names on the chart). I think that chromatically descending voicings almost needs its own descriptive language, outside of the I, VI, IV, V, etc, realm. Slash chords, such as Em/G, work pretty well here.
Yes, Bill Evans was a marvellous musician!
Brilliant analysis! The lament is legendary and Chopin is THE BOSS. Really interesting perspective to know that music critics at his time did not view his music positively and that artistic chromaticism is seen as excessive. Just a funny thing to know. Just another proof that critics really don't know what they're saying.
Love the Revolver shirt! Haha! Thanks for another great video! I learn so much from you. Thank you!
Suberb descriptions of the physics of note interplay - Thank you!
A masterful analysis. Your ability to describe music with language is rare (being a futile pursuit). Thank you!
Fine lecture, inspiring, I am taken to my knees every day playing Chopin. I remember nothing of theory and find it a difficult task, so everything I appreciate is on instinct
I‘ve been working on this piece, I can play it pretty well now and I really look forward to revisiting it in a year or two and really making it shine. Absolutely beautiful
Fine lecture, inspiring, I am taken to my knees every day playing Chopin
I'm in tears. This is a wonderful, wonderful presentation. Thank you so much.
I was working on my arrangement of the prelude and here is your video :) Just in time. Thank you for the interesting video!
I had no idea that Chopin was criticized like that.
One of the best pieces of music ever written tbh
Proof it doesn't need to be incredibly virtuosic
Thank you for the great analysis! This piece in brief explains Chopin as grandad of
jazz. That flat 3rd over dominant 7 chord is simply blues,but that "excessive" harmony informs other jazz forms. (McCoy Tyner has recorded this prelude as a bossa nova) and Jobim's Insensatez parallels this prelude almost too closely.
A most enjoyable analysis, presented with infectious enthusiasm for this superb piece of music. Thank you!
Wow, this was fantastic! E minor is my favorite key. I played this piece years ago and loved it but you’ve really helped me understand so much more about *why* I loved it.
Thank you so much for this insightful video. As an old punk rocker both in practice and at heart, Chopin has long been my very favorite composer. I cherish fondly, memories of the wonder with which I beheld the Chopin pieces which I played so poorly as a piano student.
His penchant for improvisatory melodic phrasings such as you highlight here @15:53 were a direct influence on my compositional stylings. I shamelessly copied my hero, incorporating this type of elemental device, deriving lines which were oft times quite off-kilter and which, in the case of my simple pop/punk tunes, added an intriguing facade of sophistication.
Having this lamenting prelude dissected like you do here, revealing the genius of Chopin's harmonic complexities, is most edifying. Your final, complete play through provoked goose bumps. "The most solemn cadence", indeed.
Thank you for your lovely comment.
I practiced this prelude when I studied during my teenage years. Playing the correct notes took lots of practice. Now in my senior years I appreciate the analysis of Chopin's genius. I wish I had a piano to practice Chopin again.
Mastering the "rests" is the difficult part of this prelude.
Ha! I love the London review. This video is marvelous and full of so much fascinating information and analysis. My piano teacher studied with Alicia de Laroccha and my favorite composers for piano all wrote 10ths. So he had me doing stretching exercises and never said no to my choosing Chopin or Rachmaninoff for recitals. I enjoyed your video today immensely!.
Thank you. Alicia de Laroccha is one of my favourite pianists of all!
This is my new favorite Chopin lecture and demonstration. What a range of emotions put to sound.
I'm thrilled YT recommended this video. LOVE this musical analyses! Thanks! Subscribed.
Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 2 No. 3 (beginning of the concluding movement) uses the 1st inversion of the C major chord and each ascending chord thereafter.
The historical reviews were apparently read from Nicolas Slonimsky’s fabulous book (one of many), “Lexicon of Musical Invective - Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven’s Time", available in paperback from W. W. Norton & Company. Highly recommended, especially to anyone who ever got a negative review. Until you have been raked over the coals, you have not walked among the great ones.
Thank you, Professor. Your explanations and references to other works to demonstrate your points made watching and learning very easy. I was also delighted to learn of Chopin's forgetting what he'd just played. My engineer has learned to start recording as soon as I sit down at the piano as grew very weary of hearing, "Tim, what did I just play?" It's comforting to know that those better than I have struggled in a similar way.
Great job, you had two great moments in the video. I watch all UA-cam analysis of Prelude in E minor.
An excellent analysis which is quite complementary to Benjamin Zander's equally excellent analysis on a TED video on YT.
Wonderful analogy with Ulysses.
I’ve been an improviser for over half a century. Primarily jazz, but also pseudo classical and electronic. I was taught by my teacher, Connie Crothers, to get into the nonjudgmental zone where my ego is not responsible for what happens musically. Of course, Chopin could access this space at will and explains why he had difficulty recalling what he did exactly. And, also, why he moved forward, so easily into new harmonic territory.
Thanks for your contribution to understanding this aspect of music creation and the irony of analyzing it all after the original creative acts untethered to the bonds of musical theory.
16:19 that #9 is great.
Chopin was a jazzer.
Great video, sir.
A great video you would like is Nahre Sol's video "Is Chopin Jazz?"
Chopin was an amazing composer and improviser.
So much jazz! The B minor scherzo, in the middle section in A major, is uncanny as a jazz piece 100+ years ahead of its time.
"Jazz" happens to be a colloquial early 20th c. word meaning to have sex with. I never had the heart to tell my sister that, when she says " he [or it] jazzed me!" because the action really does inspire positive valence, emotional creativity.
@@briseboy Yikes, now I have to quit saying "I'm jazzed" about something! 😆
@@postmodernrecycler for real!
@@briseboy maybe that's why some of the artists didn't like the name "jazz." RIP haha
An intelligent, inviting introduction to Chopin. Thank you, sir, your passion is quite contagious !
Interesting ❤ the beginning feels like Mozart adagio k540 B minor?..😊
Mazurka 13 starts and ends on on a first inversion chord. Fabulous!
Yes!
I LOVE this. This is the type of content I could listen for days on end!
Music Professor, I love you. Very informational channel, the analysis are always great, full of history and anecdotes and easy to follow. Much love to Loki
Thank you! And Loki says thank you too.
11:35
I've heard some of Beethoven's stuff is a "prelude" (har har) to ragtime/swing, but this really hits that point home for me.
I have to tell you, that he plays it here much more ragtime-like than it is in the symphony (he was just showing the 'formula' of the section). Listen to the orchestral version - it's much more funeral march-like.
But then, listen to the last movement of the Sonata no. 32, where Beethoven has got his reputation as predicting ragtime/boogie-woogie.
ua-cam.com/video/Pz-AuBcmASA/v-deo.html
@@themusicprofessor It was you after all! Cheers. Thanks @adhdlama2403 too.
I really like your more ragtime rendition regardless; sounded great.
Fabulous exposition of a sublime and deeply moving work. So many harmonic surprises. I love these mysterious, gradual changes. Minimal minimalism? It’s a miracle in miniature. Thank you for this!
Thank you!
Thrilled to find your channel (thank you Algorithm!) and to really dig into this exquisite piece.
I’m really glad I found your channel. Love the discussion so far!
Very nice presentation. Now it's time for the A minor prelude. In my opinion one of the most unusual pieces of the 19th century.
Several people have requested it.
A beautiful analysis with historical context. I certainly knew the 'sigh' tradition this work falls in, but the harsh (and hilarious) criticism by his British peers was news. On a personal note: I was 13 when my grandma (herself a wonderful pianist, and who had -- apart from being a teacher and silent movie pianist -- been a host to composers from Europe during and after WWII, including Stravinsky and Tansman) died. I played this prelude at her funeral, and have associated it with her and her memory ever since. I'm glad you spent as long as you did discussing that unexpected chord German 6th chord toward the end: what a marvel, and what a treat to play before the pregnant pause... Thank you.
Wonderful, it seems incomprehensible that it wasn't much liked at the time. Now, it sounds quite natural, all the notes in a perfect place.
That's a recurring pattern in music history!
@@themusicprofessor In art history...heck, history in general. Visionaries tend to be derided in their own times.
@@rikk319 we fear that which we do not understand... or at least, we write rude reviews of it lol
I really thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you very much! I really like who each piece of the base cord moves progressively down chromatically in an interesting systematic way so interesting. Also interesting how it just keeps postponing and postponing the end of that sort of sigh. This was a very cool video
It is comforting to know that others we're as confused by how to receive this piece as I.
Wonderful breakdown! I shall listen to this in a totally different way now. Many thanks!
This a a great commentary on a wonderful piece of art - i have played this music badly and in private for many years but never really understood what was going on - thanks for explaining the craft and the 'magic'
I love your analysis of this piece! I would really like to see you do a comparison and contrast between the compositional techniques and styles of Chopin and Rachmaninoff.
Me too
My favorite performer of Chopin is Adam Harasiewicz. I found him a few years ago and it seems he plays Chopin’s music like Chopin would have intended. There is a newly found nocturne he recorded that I purchased sheet music for about 8 years ago. I need to find it. Its very beautiful. Its Nocturne 21 he recorded in 1974 so maybe not newly discovered.
So true. My teacher introduced me to Adam Harasiewicz and how he plays Chopin's Mazurkas.
Agree reg. Harasiewicz, his LP of the Nocturnes was the 1st Chopin I ever heard, still love it.
Wow the algorithm is on point, so fun to hear you explain and analyze 🙏
Thank you!
a great exposé on this great example of voice leading taking functional harmony on a heartbreaking ride... wonderfully instructive overview of the piece and all within and around it! thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you so much for this video! I am always trying to learn new things about music harmony and history
(As a novice). It was very fascinating!
What a beautiful piece! Chopin reminds me of Bach! He sounds rhapsodic but is extremely disciplined in choosing harmonies! Thanks for posting! 😻🌹🦋🤡🎹🎶🍀💐🍁🎈🌺🥰😀👍
Great video. Subscribed. Didnt realize this was the exact type video i needed to watch
Instantly subscribed. Excellent content, you really have my gratitude.
Thank you for this wonderfully explanatory exposition of this Chopin work. Classical music is so much more enjoyable when it's explained, as to its context, meaning and emotions.
8:00 I never noticed until you played it how jazzy that 9th symphony passage is. So cool.