Chopin's Small Miracles

Over the years I seem to have lost my taste for a lot of the romantics and have been listening a lot more to music from Bach and earlier. Chopin still captivates me though, as do Ravel and Debussy.

davepeck• 16 years ago

I became fascinated with Chopin's preludes about two years ago, and have devoted some part of my free time to studying them.

Of all the recordings I've found, the recent recording of Rafal Blechacz is by far my favorite. [1]

Blechacz took first prize in the International Chopin Competition in 2005. Entertainingly, he was considered so much better than his competition that no second place prize was awarded. Contrast: in 1990 and 1995, the field was considered sub-par; no first place prizes were awarded! [2]

To follow Blechacz's performance with the actual score [3] is a special treat, and was the start of my interest in these great works.

---

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Chopin-Préludes/dp/B0017QJO44/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Frédéric_Chopin_P...

[3] http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/8/83/IMSLP00485-Chopin...

cageface2• 16 years ago

Alexandre Tharaud's recording is good too: http://www.amazon.com/Chopin-Pr%C3%A9ludes-Op-28/dp/B0012X2C...

The preludes seem to me to prefigure jazz in some passages.

aarghh• 16 years ago

This NPR recording with Murray Perahia further explores the connection between Bach and Chopin: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1251806...

mds• 16 years ago

Also Amazon sells an MP3 collection of "The 99 Most Essential Chopin Masterpieces" for $5. I bought them because they were on sale for $1 -- that was the start of my real appreciation for Chopin.

I've started collecting recordings of different performances of some of my favorites. It's interesting to listen back to back and try to pick out the nuances of how different performers interpret the same score.

nphase• 16 years ago

I was lucky enough to catch a ticket to see Pollini at CSO this spring. He played all of Opus 28, along with a few assorted favorites. I have yet to hear a more authentic yet passionate performance of Chopin ever.

If you get the chance to hear him before he retires (he's 68 and still going strong!), I would strongly recommend it.

jacquesm• 16 years ago

I am so jealous.

He's probably the best Chopin player alive today (not that he's limited to that, but I'm not aware of anybody playing Chopin as beautiful as he does) To hear him perform live must be amazing.

icarus_drowning2• 16 years ago

In college, my music history teacher always told us that "every instrumentalist harbors a secret desire to be a singer". (It was always startling when he said this-- he was the school's orchestra conductor and a semi-famous Cellist, and was often dismissive of singers as "lazy musicians").

More than any other composer (at least for piano), Chopin seems most gifted in his ability to write music that, for all intents and purposes, is singing with the piano.

pohl• 16 years ago

Bach's preludes, some of considerable length, need their fugues,... Each of Chopin's Preludes is self-sufficient, but they were composed, like Bach's, with one for each major and minor key. Since nothing follows them, one may ask what these works are a prelude to...

Excellent article, but this little bit is inaccurate. The article gets the above almost exactly backwards, because one could make a case that it is the fugue that needs the prelude - but I say "almost" because both are self-contained pieces and neither needs the other. Rather, the prelude exists as an aid to audiences with untrained ears. That is, it is not the fugue that needs the prelude, but the audience who "needs" it, for it was intended to help them make better sense out of a fugue, which were considered to be sufficiently complex to warrant a little extra context prior to listening.

The prelude helped them by being a less complex piece but in the same key as the fugue it precedes. Listening to the prelude prior to hearing the fugue helped to "establish the key". By the time the prelude was finished, it would have taken the listener's ear on a brief journey around the notes of the piece's scale, resolving to (and thereby drawing the listener's attention to) the note that serves as the key's tonic, and also to whether the 3rd was a major 3rd or a minor 3rd. Once the ear was calibrated in this manner, it was thought that the interweaving lines of the fugue would be easier to follow.

knowledgesale9• 16 years ago

I find it to be waste of time when people put conscious efforts to listen to more classical music and to educate themselves about it.

Music is usually considered to be an intellectual endeavor like art and science. But there is a crucial difference for music. Science and art (at least the best of it) give us new insights to the world we live in: ideally we understand things and people more as a result.

But the ultimate purpose of music is a physiological/emotional response, something utterly subjective and that does not enrich our objective understanding of the world. In this sense, music should be considered to be an indulgence like drugs, sex or delicatessen food, in all but the delivering mechanism. Not that there is something wrong with them, but these are pleasures, not a meaningful activity.

Thus the whole notion of the special kind of music that bears higher value is of no more sense to me than, say, meth of higher culture.

Life is too short for it. For me if you can avoid listening to something, do it.

delano• 16 years ago

We're not machines.

prodigal_erik• 16 years ago

If the days of our lives are too short to spend on moving subjective experiences (and I'd put music on the same level as visual art and drama), what should we be reserving those days for? I am not a brain in a jar, though I have long neglected the needs of the animal which is carrying me around on his neck. I've come to think that's a recipe for depression, which sooner or later will interfere with whatever it is you're trying to accomplish.

knowledgesale9• 16 years ago

That is what I wanted to emphasize. There is a difference between drama and music. Drama or movies have a plot and a story. The author passes to us the thoughts and experiences that she has in her head, that is what makes it an intellectual endeavour.

Affecting mechanism for music is different. In this case, composer is like a cook: she prepares the music by the emperically established rules (certain frequency fractions, tempo to match the heart pace for a specific mood).

sp3322• 16 years ago

It's about expression and communication. Improving your vocabulary doesn't give you insight into the physical world, but it does improve your ability to communicate your experience to others. Music is useful for communicating emotions and stories.

knowledgesale9• 16 years ago

Doesn't alcohol satisfy your definition of usefulness with the same success?

icarus_drowning2• 16 years ago

Where I think you err is in stating that music doesn't give us "new insights into the world we live in". It is precisely because music is emotion/physiological/psychological that it gives us a great deal of insights into not only individual human beings, but the movements and ideas of entire societies.

Stravinsky, who's "Poetics of Music"[1] is one of the more brilliant treatises on the importance of "high" music, once famously stated the "music doesn't have the power to express anything at all"-- his entire belief is that music is a reflection of the people and societies in which it develops. He above all placed music in a higher realm because of what it uniquely taught about people

The belief that there is an objectivity to judging music isn't a popular one, but it is one that I believe to be rather self-evident. Certainly the depth of emotional response to the opening of Beethoven's 9th Symphony[2] should be dramatically different from the response to the latest Britney Spears single. Certainly Bob Dylan's music teaches us something far more complex and valuable about the culture in which it arose than does a jingle from a car commercial.

Indeed, looking through the major musical time periods, it is clear that the representative "geniuses" of each are are elevated as such precisely because their music teaches us something about that time period. Bach's music is unerringly rational, but always highly ornamented. His greatest works are often religious, and reflect the emerging force of Protestantism. Mozart's contrast greatly, with emphasis on balance and elegance, and are often more "absolute" (and thus "secular", although this distinction is somewhat artificial). Etc. Etc.

Simply contrast two symphonies: Beethoven 3[3] with Copland 3[4]. I think you'd be hard-pressed to make the argument that the boisterous triumphalism of the former doesn't crystalize the specific emotions, cultural trends, and overall ideas of the Napoleonic era, or that the latter could have emerged from any culture other than that of individualist America.

And this is just scratching the surface. I haven't even mentioned the dedecophonic serialism of Schoenberg and its clear roots in the modernist era, and I skipped completely the Romantic era from which Chopin, the original topic of discussion, sprung.

All of which to say, is: I think you are short-changing one of the single most powerful elements of human culture, and in doing so, genuinely short-changing yourself out of both greater pleasure and understanding.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Poetics-Music-Lessons-Harvard-paperbac... [2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg5vABFHgpU [3]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XL2ha18i5w [4]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGVvsh8BKO8 (Not the best performance, but largely competent)

maxawaytoolong2• 16 years ago

Don't make the mistake of engagement. At some point at every company I've worked for, we got lazy during the "cultural fit" part of the interviews and at least one of these guys slipped through and got hired. We usually eventually let them do something like maintain the build server or ticket tracker. That usually kept them from doing harmful stuff like alphabetizing the method names in classes or reformatting all the source code for "proper indentation". The key though, is to never engage them in a conversation. Let them go home to their silent, empty apartment and pull wings off of beetles, or whatever their true dark passion is. But don't engage. You're just better off not knowing how far certain peculiarities go...

knowledgesale9• 16 years ago

Thank you for your interesting comment and the links.

I still wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more. It seems to me that we speak about different things.

I am glad you brought up the Bob Dylan's music as an example. I agree that for him the music was an effective tool to pass his emotions and experiences to a listener. However his main tool is his lyrics and we cannot separate it from his music.

A good argument for that is that Bob Dylan isn't popular or well-known in the non-english speaking countries. I would say it is because his music isn't expressive without the lyrics. He wasn't a musician in the sense Beethoven was, he was rather a modernized poet.

This is the difference between Bob Dylan and "classical music" we discuss in this thread. My point is about where we need to place Beethoven music as an intellectual activity. I say it is different from written art, science or discussion. These are methods for creative people to transfer their experience and understanding to other people.

Music (pure music) doesn't involve it literary, only indirectly. It involves finding sound patterns that are known to bring pleasure to a listener. Nobel but different.

There is no question that music brings pleasure to people's and specifically yours and mine life and it is an important part of the culture and I am certainly not arguing that people should stop listening to music.

Music definitely tells us a lot about the cultural evolution with time just as you argue. But cuisine and drugs consumption habits of the epoch (alcohol, cigarrette, opium) tells us a lot too.

I say classical music has more to do with wines culture than with, say, literature. It's chemistry in one case and the humans sharing ideas in the other.

Wines are fine but I think conscious decision to spend time to learn the good wines and then spend time indulging elaborately fine tastes is a little bit twisted one. Maybe just a personal attitude.

Feynman might illustrate my point more succintly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8&feature=playe...

Pistos23• 16 years ago

In my opinion, excellence in the arts* is among the highest goals toward which humanity can strive. In music, a composer (and performer) can deliver to the listener great beauty and wonder. Through music, a window into the very fabric of the universe can be opened. Music is one of those things that makes us distinct from animals; to encounter, to appreciate and to experience music is to more intimately apprehend what it means to be human.

* By "the arts", I mean to include: acting/drama, poetry, music, visual arts, literary arts, dance, and so on.

knowledgesale9• 16 years ago

"In my opinion, excellence in the peacock's tail dance is among the highest goals toward which we peacocks can strive. In feather dancing, a male (performer) can deliver to the observer (fertile female) great beauty and wonder. Through the right dance pattern, a window into the very fabric of the universe can be opened. Proper feather color is one of those things that makes us distinct from other animals and humans; to encounter, to appreciate and to experience peacock's tails is to more intimately apprehend what it means to be a peacock."

siglesias5• 16 years ago

It's too bad you feel this way, because whether you like it or not, most (if not all) of the great intellectuals of the 19th and 20th centuries--Einstein, Wittgenstein, Planck, and (why not?) Jobs--saw a critical role in music as providing some kind of aesthetic guidelines for their work. Bach's music, for example, is contrapuntally rigorous to the extent that fairly complex matrix mathematics are required to explain his patters in crafting The Art of Fugue. Mozart's music Einstein described as "perfect," as if "plucked from nowhere," containing a grace that he was convinced existed in the mathematical formulations describing the cosmos. Believe it or not our logical convictions and "faith" in science do have deep-seeded atoms of intuition that nearly identically match the visceral responses we have to music.

That's not to mention the fact that music ostensibly IS intertwined with our language and culture, so it would be almost impossible to relate to other people (or understand them, communicate with them, as is the project of numerous scientific fields) if we didn't share their practices. You'd be left in a very strange position of describing an "objective" reality devoid of the emotions that make humanness--and by extension, the world--what it is.

I recommend you engage in a deeper reading of science and objectivity, because nary will you find a thinker or scientist whose findings, motivations, or thought processes are completely uniformed by a particular set of aesthetic considerations. Theories are beautiful. Designs speak to us. Mathematical formulations must be true. These convictions are developed from the same stuff as that of our musical convictions. They are one and the same.

knowledgesale9• 16 years ago

Thank you for your interesting comment.

I must say your argument resembles arguments in favor of the divine design. Specifically, I mean appealing to outstanding people as an argument. It is safe to state that effectively every outstanding creator before ~1870 had a deep faith in God and of course it affected her personality deeply. However I don't expect you to decide for yourself if God exists relying on this impressive statistics.

As for the link with mathematics, it is relevant to our discussion to mention here that I work in mathematical physics. To put it shortly, my work experience is that music has no special role in the research and definitely not in the understanding of it on the contrary to what you say. I can elaborate more if there were readers.

Let me repeat myself, I don't deny that music improves the quality of our life and can serve as an inspiration and improve the productivity as I experience it every day just like most of us. My point is different.

Hope to hear your feedback.

tszyn• 16 years ago

I find it disappointing that your clearly written argument was met with downvotes and ad hominem attacks. I expected more of HN.

I listen to music a lot. I might even be described as an audiophile. But I recognize music for what it is: a source of pleasure, relaxation and comfort, and a social glue. I don't feel the need to make pretentious claims -- that by listening to music, I'm learning about the history of humanity, human nature, mathematics, etc. Someone on a carousel might as well claim to be studying physics.

I would never in a million years claim that music is as valuable as philosophy or science. Music simply conveys no truths, except the most trivial truths: about itself, the composer, or (in a limited way) the times he lived in. Whatever Einstein might have said, Mozart is not his equal.

It's all good and well if you use music as a tool for achieving certain beneficial mental states, akin to wine or physical exercise. But spending a large chunk of your time studying classical works, composers, etc. is a horrendous waste of time, unless you are a composer yourself. It's like studying 17-century Russian iconography or the cuisine of medieval France. Pure intellectual masturbation. There are so many unsolved problems in this world that spending your mental energy on things with no practical significance is a criminal waste of intellectual resources.

siglesias5• 16 years ago

tszyn, you have a LONG way to go before your claim that philosophy or science is "more valuable" than music to our culture. How would you go about proving that, anyway, given that nearly every colossus in 19th and 20th century science, mathematics, and business was/is an avid consumer or enthusiast of good music? Would you be willing to impart an experimental design, for example, in which you surveyed the careers of the top achievers and found a negative correlation between scientific or philosophical achievement and musical devotion? And with respect to Einstein, I'm not sure on what grounds you could gainsay Einstein's own assertion that Mozart's music informed his mental heuristics for describing the cosmos. And I would challenge you to make a well reasoned separation of Wittgenstein (the most important figure in 20th century philosophy) from his music. Music informed Wittgenstein's highly influential philosophy of language: "Understanding a sentence is more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think. What I mean is that understanding a sentence lies nearer that one thinks to what is ordinarily called understanding a musical theme" (Philosophical Investigations remark 527). Again, on what grounds can you gainsay Wittgenstein? It's a matter of FACT (we like facts here on HN, don't we?) that music, by the mouths of these geniuses and creators played a critical role in the formation of these thinkers' aesthetic values and motivations.

We aren't machines.

atlei• 16 years ago

How sad :-(

"But the ultimate purpose of music is a physiological/emotional response, something utterly subjective and that does not enrich our objective understanding of the world."

You can read about our planet, and see pictures of it, and everyone can agree on the objective understanding of it (even a computer can "understand" it objectively).

But what really enriches our (personal !) understanding of the world is not the objective understanding, but our subjective understanding, and music can enrich this understanding ...

The sun will rise again tomorrow, and it will be a new day, and we all know it....but listen to 'morning mood' in this video, look at the pictures, think, feel, and tell me that this doesn't make you appreciate the wonderful world we live in even more...

Morning mood, by Edvard Grieg:

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxlnnvz9lJk

knowledgesale9• 16 years ago

It seems to me you confuse personal emotional experience and understanding. The first doesn't necessary improve our judgement.

10ren• 16 years ago

The one that inspired the author: No. 7 in A major http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UTAmV54OWE

elblanco3• 16 years ago

It has always been interesting to me that, while I can certainly appreciate that more "clinical" aspects of Chopin...the technicality of the writing, the skill of great performances, the difficulty of the music, Chopin's place in musical history, etc., and I can certainly appreciate the beauty of his music, I've never been able to reach a place with his music (and generally with most of the music of the Romantics) where it "speaks" to me -- where I can make a connection with it.

I suppose it's because I've never found myself have an aesthetic chill to this type of music...but put on a decent record of Bach's Brandenburg 3 - allegro...and I feel instantly like the world and humanity was advanced forward two full steps by this one piece of music. Likewise with numerous pieces. But when analyzing the music, the clockwork precision of Bach's music "feels" cold and emotionless, sterile compared to Chopin, yet it's Bach's music that makes me feel an emotional connection and not Chopin.

But I know plenty of people who are the opposite. Who fall into ecstatic bliss the moment some Liszt or Chopin plays.

I've always wondered what this meant.

(that being said....Beethoven's 7th 2nd movement almost always leaves me breathless and in tears).

maxawaytoolong2• 16 years ago

I am exactly the opposite. I can (and often do) listen to Chopin all day. Bach sounds like weird robot music to me.

However, Bach is fun to play, whereas Chopin is too hard...

elblanco3• 16 years ago

Right...it's like a sympathetic vibration ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_vibration )...but on an emotional level. I guess I'm "tuned" to Bach and you're tuned to Chopin.

If anybody is interested, I've found this to be a very pleasurable way to listen to music http://www.youtube.com/user/smalin

Here's some Chopin http://www.youtube.com/user/smalin#p/u/7/Tj1hDqf8Pm0

And also here's a paper on Aesthetic Chills if anybody is wondering... http://www.springerlink.com/content/w50652r575n16342/

ryan-allen• 16 years ago

An easy(ish) Chopin nocturne is No. 6 in G minor. It's popular amongst beginner/intermediate players because it's a lot less technically difficult than his other pieces.

Pistos23• 16 years ago

How about Chopin's Mazurkas? For me, many of them have tear-inducingly beautiful melodies.

elblanco3• 16 years ago

So it'd been a while and I ran out and listened to the following, recording my visceral reactions:

Op. 17 No.4 (performed by Horowitz) - pretty, no "connection". I'd probably play it in the background during a nice dinner party.

Op. 33 No.2 (Horowitz as well) - entertaining but not beauteous to me, sounds like background music for old movies before "talkies". No "connection".

Op.24, No.1 (Zimerman) - pretty, I could see this being the music for a pre-talkie film of a world's fair. It's a bit downbeat for a dinner party. No connection.

Op. 63, No.3 (Zimerman) - pretty, I'd probably enjoy playing this one for some reason. I like the ornamentation this the best so far. No connection. I'd play it at a dinner party.

Op. 68, No.2. (Rachmaninoff) - pretty, I feel like this captures the Polish folk origin of the form the best. I listened to a few different performances of this one actually since I like old folk music and I like Rachmaninoff's interpretation the best. No particular connection. I'd probably play this in the background while doing something else.

Overall, I can appreciate the music mentally. But it just doesn't push any particular emotional buttons. I suspect that for a couple of them, 63.3 and 68.2 if somebody would just play them straight out like a proper Mazurka and stick to a hard meter it might come close.

Again, nothing wrong with these. I'm not placing any value judgement on Chopin. I'm just not "tuned" to him I guess. I enjoy Bach quite a bit more. But even plenty of "newer" things like some of the Paganini piano variations, or some very modern Copland (Hoedown does it almost everytime), and especially Holst (Jupiter has long been a huge favorite in this way).

euccastro• 16 years ago

Seconded about Beethoven's 7th, 2nd mvt. I'm no connoisseur, but that one disarms me every time.

A fascinating visualization of it (maybe less so for those who can read music scores?) If you haven't heard this piece yet, don't let the link below be your first exposure to it. It's Youtube audio and I'd like it a bit slower. But once you've heard it properly, seeing this fullscreen is fascinating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uOxOgm5jQ4&feature=fvw

Pistos23• 16 years ago

Chopin is my absolutely favourite composer. I hope I am not out of place in wishing for more such submissions (links) from HN (music-related ones, that is).

Chopin's Small Miracles

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