In 1837, Frederic Chopin learned from the mother of Maria Wodzinska that her daughter would not be following through on her engagement to the composer. The next year, Chopin took a lover, the author George Sand (Born Aurele Dupin). Chopin was no Don Juan. He was slight and sickly, and his music contains some of the darkest expressions of emotions ever written. It is Chopin’s ability to convey direct emotional knowledge that sets him apart from all other composers. His Preludes, Op. 28, written while he was with Sand on the island of Majorca, stand apart from all his other work as perfect distillations and impressions of this knowledge.
Thanks for an intriguing discussion which is thankfully free of musicological inflections. Chopin is a composer whose small corpus of works — moreover delimited by the piano — is integral to its property of being able to speak to so many people of divergent backgrounds and in unexpected circumstances.
Put another way — there is something authentic and personal about all of his “mature” work (whatever that could signify when speaking of the creative work of someone who died at 39).
As for your comment on the a-minor prélude, it struck me as odd — but sincere.
Thanks for an intriguing discussion which is thankfully free of musicological inflections. Chopin is a composer whose small corpus of works — moreover delimited by the piano — is integral to its property of being able to speak to so many people of divergent backgrounds and in unexpected circumstances.
Put another way — there is something authentic and personal about all of his “mature” work (whatever that could signify when speaking of the creative work of someone who died at 39).
As for your comment on the a-minor prélude, it struck me as odd — but sincere.