Photo credit: Henle
Moments Musicaux: Regarding a note in Chopin's Prelude in B Minor
The twenty-four preludes by Frederic Chopin are some of the most brilliant keyboard miniatures ever written. From the gasping, mournful no. 4 to the sweetly lilting no. 7; from the devilish leaps of no. 16 to the apocalyptic, forsaken death-in-death of no. 24—it is popular recital-fodder and familiar even to non-classical audiences.
But my favorite moment in the entire set—maybe in all of Chopin—is a single note, good enough to hold one's breath for. The B Minor prelude—the sixth, one often played just to complete the set—is a bleak, soulful thing, but not without its tenderness and warmth. It opens with its home key of B Minor: a heartbeat-like pulse in the right hand, a swell and subsiding in the left, like a "What if" to a terrible question that one rules out for oneself, settling back down into a heavy sadness. A brief change of key (modulation) to G Major—an earthen, sweetly nurturing mood; perhaps a comforting hand on one's shoulder—before returning to B Minor. Another harmonic unfurling: this time, back in G Major, and then C Major—clear, pure C Major, a key unknown to loss and death, a key in which to write a love song. But as the moon waxes, the moon wanes: that perfect C Major is yoked by a tugging, grieving melody to modulate the music back to the austere gloom of B Minor.
It is in this moment that an A natural peals, unsure but brave. Into the ashen, lifeless world—a landscape out of The Road or an acidified coral reef, something all the more poignant for its former vitality—plunges a drop of dandelion-yellow, canary-yellow, lemon-zest-after-a-week-of-canned-food-and-granola-bars-yellow: utterly transfixing and totally out-of-place. It's not redemptive—one dandelion does not a grassy knoll make—but it brings a smile amidst the despair: consoling, somehow, despite the hopelessness. Above all, it is a farewell, one much-needed: the journey left is not long, and not so sweet. The last music heard from the prelude is one last cardiac da-dum in the right hand, pp, after a small pause: a fading life in sonic form.
When friends and family gather around one of their own on the brink of death, what does the expiring individual feel? So long as the death is not painful, and the circumstances are well, one can only imagine happiness: a life lived well; joy and delight brought to others; regrets, sure, but all tinged with a pastoral, autumnal glaze. It's the final thing one needs to pass on—that image of one's loved ones, that sense of contentment in the face of the unknown, that single A natural.
[Written 2022]
[The A natural can be heard at 2:07.]