Introduction: 24 Preludes. Op.28. 1-5

Three things I’m bad at:

     -Writing
     -Sight reading - the art of playing a piece of music without preparation or previous acquaintance 
     -Sticking with something long enough to finish it

With a freshly printed 1315 page compilation of Frederic Chopin’s music, and a can-do attitude, I invite you to join me on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.  Over the next 365 days I plan to sit down in a practice room and force myself to sight read four pages from the compilation a day.  I will then blog about the experience, things I notice in the music, a bit about Chopin’s life, and maybe a bit of what is going on in my life.  The unfortunate thing is that, other than taking about an hour of my day, there is absolutely no reason that I shouldn’t do this.  

I chose Frederic Chopin's music because I've always felt connected with his music.  Chopin is a true Romantic composer in that his music represents full expressions of the heart and soul.  He often breaks classical conventions, constantly pushing the envelope towards 20th century music.  It is with this musical expression and emotional depth that I have learned to love his compositions.

Today marks the beginning of my journey, how fitting it is that I should start with his collection of Preludes.

One thing the three piano teachers I have had in my live have had in common is that they frequent the phrase "SLOW DOWN."  The fact is that I have always tried to work on the musicality of the piece before learning the notes, thus why I have poor sight reading habits.  Starting off the first Prelude I took it way too fast.  Instead of shooting for hitting the notes I was more focused on what the piece sounded like, which was incredibly hard since the piece is supposed to move fast and the chord progressions are rather unconventional, thus I kept losing my sense of the key center during the piece. In fact, it wasn't till halfway through the piece that I noticed the piece was in triplets.  Embarrassing. The tempo marking for the piece is "Agitato," which is similar to our word for agitated.  The piece even sounds agitated with the fast moving two note melodic phrases coupled with the cluster of accompanimental notes beneath.  

The second prelude went a bit better because the left hand had a similar chordal pattern throughout the piece  and I smartly took it a bit slower.  The right hand had a slow melody which contrasts the left hand accompaniment.  The melody is structure in a very lyrical, vocal, manner.

Not gonna lie, the third prelude kicked my butt.  I'm used to chording and arpeggiating in my left, so having to play a fast lyrical left hand accompaniment threw me off.  I found that I was constantly stumbling over the left hand fingering.  Something to work on: left hand scales.

The fourth prelude is one of my favorite.  Coincidentally, it's also fairly easy since the left hand forms chords moving one voice a half step at a time.  The piece is Largo, very slow, and expressive.  I sight read it fairly well until measure 16 and 17 when the melody became more involved and the left hand jumped up an octave. towards the end of the piece Chopin uses a term I had never seen before: Smorzando, which means growing slower and softer : dying away (merriam-webster).

I finally ended my period of sight reading by stumbling my way through the fifth prelude.

Total time spent sight reading: 40 minutes

Total time spent writing: 1 hour

Yeah, this will be good for me.