24 Preludes. Op.28. 12 (mm. 48-end)-14

Once in a blue moon I find enough time in the day to get my homework done, as well as spend enough time in a practice room to be relatively productive.  Today was one of those days.  I managed to finish the required program notes (excerpt to follow) for my junior recital hearing which is in *gasp* two weeks, on top of running through Tchaikovsky's Prelude in c# minor a few times, sight reading, and finding some time to compose.  I've found that my composition technique has become increasing chromatic and dissonant, more so within the last two days than it has been before.  I credit this to Chopin.

I picked up the 12th prelude where I ended yesterday, which was fairly unsettling due to the dissonant nature of the piece, luckily it settled back into the key towards the end, ending on a purely root V-I cadence which, as far as I can tell, is odd considering Chopin often chooses to fill out chords.

The 13th prelude is interesting in that the bass could be analyzed as outlining the chord in a melodic manner by presenting the root, then two non chord tones (the last being an appoggiatura), leading to the chord tones.  This bass motif is found throughout the piece.  The melody fills out the chords on the down beat while presenting the melody in the uppermost voice.  Once I understood the left hand pattern sight reading became easier, especially with the chording and very simple melody in the right hand.

The 14th prelude is a monster of itself!  Not a hard piece to sight read, but very very interesting.  The first odd thing about the piece is that both the right hand and left hand are playing the same melody in octaves for the entire piece.  Second, Chopin presents a motive in tonic, but immediately uses accidentals, thus the sense of key center is lost.  He then transitions upwards (almost atonally!) to the dominant where the sense of key is restored.  The piece then continues this pattern of transitioning between tonic and dominant eventually ending in eb minor (tonic).  The piece is only 20 measures long.

As promised, an excerpt from my program notes:

Total time spent sight reading: 30 minutes
Total time spent writing: 50 minutes