In the concluding bar, but one, Chopin has in the F major Prelude
attempted a most audacious feat in harmony. An E flat in the bass
of the third group of sixteenths leaves the whole composition
floating enigmatically in thin air. It deliciously colors the
close, leaving a sense of suspense, of anticipation which is not
tonally realized, for the succeeding number is in a widely
divorced key. But it must have pressed hard the philistines. And
this prelude, the twenty-third, is fashioned out of the most
volatile stuff. Aerial, imponderable, and like a sun-shot spider
web oscillating in the breeze of summer, its hues change at every
puff. It is in extended harmonics and must be delivered with
spirituality. The horny hand of the toilsome pianist would
shatter the delicate, swinging fantasy of the poet. Kullak points
out a variant in the fourteenth bar, G instead of B natural being
used by Riemann. Klindworth prefers the latter.
We have reached the last prelude of op. 28. In D minor, it is
sonorously tragic, troubled by fevers and visions, and
capricious, irregular and massive in design.
Pages:
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250