Exquisitely poised are his pinions for flight, and in the
piu lento he wheels significantly and majestically about in the
blue. The return to earth is the signal for some strange
modulatory tactics. It is an impressive close. Then, almost
without pause, the blood begins to boil in this fragile man's
veins. His pulse beat increases, and with stifled rage he rushes
into the battle. It is the fourteenth prelude in the sinister key
of E flat minor, and its heavy, sullen-arched triplets recalls
for Niecks the last movement of the B flat minor Sonata; but
there is less interrogation in the prelude, less sophistication,
and the heat of conflict over it all. There is not a break in the
clouds until the beginning of the fifteenth, the familiar prelude
in D flat.
This must be George Sand's: "Some of them create such vivid
impressions that the shades of dead monks seem to rise and pass
before the hearer in solemn and gloomy funereal pomp." The work
needs no programme. Its serene beginning, lugubrious interlude,
with the dominant pedal never ceasing, a basso ostinato, gives
color to Kleczynski's contention that the prelude in B minor is a
mere sketch of the idea fully elaborated in No.
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