Musicpiece Theatre Episode 37: Nocturne For Raindrops
Welcome to the 37th episode of Musicpiece Theatre. Tonight: Nocturne For Raindrops
Liner Notes: "When i look out the window, I like to watch the rain through my windowsil."
The music is Prelude, Op. 28, No. 15 by Frédéric Chopin
"Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano".He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".
Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising. At 21, he settled in Paris. Thereafter he gave only 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and by giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann. After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska from 1836 to 1837, he maintained an often troubled relationship with the French writer Aurore Dupin (known by her pen name George Sand). A brief and unhappy visit to Mallorca with Sand in 1838–39 would prove one of his most productive periods of composition. In his final years, he was supported financially by his admirer Jane Stirling. For most of his life, Chopin was in poor health. He died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39.
All of Chopin's compositions feature the piano. Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, some chamber music, and 19 songs set to Polish lyrics. His piano pieces are technically demanding and expanded the limits of the instrument; his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin's major piano works include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, the instrumental ballade (which Chopin created as an instrumental genre), études, impromptus, scherzi, preludes, and sonatas, some published only posthumously. Among the influences on his style of composition were Polish folk music, the classical tradition of Mozart and Schubert, and the atmosphere of the Paris salons, of which he was a frequent guest. His innovations in style, harmony, and musical form, and his association of music with nationalism, were influential throughout and after the late Romantic period.
The Prelude Op. 28, No. 15, by Frédéric Chopin, known as the "Raindrop" prelude, is one of the 24 Chopin preludes. It is one of Chopin's most famous works.[1] Usually lasting between five and seven minutes, this is the longest of the preludes. The prelude is noted for its repeating A♭, which appears throughout the piece and sounds like raindrops to many listeners.
Some of Op. 28 was written during Chopin and George Sand's stay at a monastery in Valldemossa, Mallorca in 1838.[2] In her Histoire de ma vie, or "Story of My Life", Sand related how one evening she and her son Maurice, returning from Palma in a terrible rainstorm, found a distraught Chopin who exclaimed, "Ah! I knew well that you were dead." While playing his piano he had a dream:
He saw himself drowned in a lake. Heavy drops of icy water fell in a regular rhythm on his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water indeed falling in rhythm on the roof, he denied having heard it. He was even angry that I should interpret this in terms of imitative sounds. He protested with all his might – and he was right to – against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds.
Sand did not say which prelude Chopin played for her on that occasion, but most music critics assume it to be no. 15, because of the repeating A♭, with its suggestion of the "gentle patter" of rain. However, Peter Dayan points out that Sand accepted Chopin's protests that the prelude was not an imitation of the sound of raindrops, but a translation of nature's harmonies within Chopin's "génie". Frederick Niecks says that in the middle section of the prelude there "rises before one's mind the cloistered court of the monastery of Valldemossa, and a procession of monks chanting lugubrious prayers, and carrying in the dark hours of night their departed brother to his last resting-place."
Footage Courtesy of:
Digital Juice
& Getty Images
Anyway, I'm back again because i haven't done any filming or uploading videos for a few days. And besides, I just got a brand-new phone because my old one blew up.