For background Chopin has substituted his soul;
no one in art, except Bach or Rembrandt, could paint as Chopin
did in this composition. Its despair has the antique flavor, and
there is a breadth, nobility and proud submission quite free from
the tortured, whimpering complaint of the second prelude. The
picture is small, but the subject looms large in meanings.
The fifth prelude in D is Chopin at his happiest. Its arabesque
pattern conveys a most charming content; and there is a dewy
freshness, a joy in life, that puts to flight much of the morbid
tittle-tattle about Chopin's sickly soul. The few bars of this
prelude, so seldom heard in public, reveal musicianship of the
highest order. The harmonic scheme is intricate; Klindworth
phrases the first four bars so as to bring out the alternate B
and B flat. It is Chopin spinning his finest, his most iridescent
web.
The next prelude, the sixth, in B minor, is doleful, pessimistic.
As George Sand says: "It precipitates the soul into frightful
depression." It is the most frequently played--and oh! how
meaninglessly--prelude of the set; this and the one in D flat.
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