Chopin's Raindrop

Frédéric Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude, Op 28, No. 15
Song Analysis/Essay

Intro
Frédéric Chopin was a Polish music composer born in 1810 most famous for his solo piano pieces being what he mostly wrote music before. This is because Chopin was a romantic era composer, the romantic era lasting from 1825 to 1910, and within the romantic era the piano (pianoforte) had been fully developed and was enlarged to give it a wider range and more tonal power. Being fully developed the Piano was new and improved, instantly being used in many orchestra’s and was one of the most favoured instruments and one of the most used in pieces of the time.

Song meaning
Chopin was extremely talented with the piano and very skillful with not only writing for it but
playing it as well as teaching it. His Prelude No. 15 “Raindrop” uses purely piano to express what the song means and what it is telling. Raindrop is a symphonic poem, also known as a tone poem, which is an orchestral piece used to illustrate an event, visual picture, or a story. The story Raindrop was is thought to be based on a dream Chopin had while playing the piano, when a storm had came in on his return from Palma, Spain. The song was named “Raindrop” after what it was based on by Hans von Bülow and Alfred Cortot after the composer's death in 1849. George Sand, Chopin’s lover accompanying him on his stay in Valldemossa, had said the dream was as follows:

“He saw himself drowned in a lake.
Heavy drops of icy water fell in a regular rhythm on his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water indeed falling in rhythm on the roof, he denied having heard it. He was even angry that I should interpret this in terms of imitative sounds. He protested with all his might – and he was right to – against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external
sounds.”

Structure
The song follows an ABA structure and is written in ternary form.
t's structure unlike many other preludes has a very clear Ternary form structure with a coda at the end to finish the piece nicely. Section A of the piece is written in Db, while section B is written enharmonically (meaning it involves tones of identical pitch yet are written differently in order of the key’s occurrence), in C# minor. Although it is in Ternary form the piece can be split into 4 parts. The Coda, A, B, and A again.

Ternary form
Ternary form, simply put, is a way of structuring a piece of music. It is usually found in classical music. Ternary form is a three part structure. The first and third parts are identical, or very nearly identical, while the second part is sharply contrasting. For this reason, ternary form is often represented as ABA. The contrasting second section is often known as a trio.

Melody and Rhythm
Just like it’s name, ‘Raindrop’, throughout the piece sustained notes are used to act as the continuous raindrops falling helping visualise the story the song is trying to tell. During the piece such as in the first bar, Chopin uses descending notes and arpeggio's (a type of broken chord, played in separate notes rather than in sync) to represent falling raindrops. He also uses septuplets and turns to create similar
effects.

Tonality
The Raindrop Prelude is written in Db major with 5 flats. Bb, Eb, Ab, Db and Gb. The piece is generally tonal and uses many different relative keys throughout the piece. This helps the piece create variation throughout, something commonly done within the romantic period

Texture
Although the Raindrop Prelude is written and played on one piano the texture is quite thick throughout. Chopin, in the B section, uses a technique called doubling, to create a powerful and a build up of the texture. This is where a note is played in octaves in both hands creating a more emotional feeling as well, as a feature of romantic music. The texture could be described as both polyphonic and homophonic as the melody above the pedaled notes is more complex but fits in with many of the sustained notes.

Dynamics
In section A the dynamics can be described as very delicate sounding, the whole time being piano (soft/quiet ) sounding. which the whole time i in piano (soft). The raindrop can also be heard with the first three notes played in this piece: F, D flat and A flat. This represents the raindrop motive making it sound like the raindrops are falling.

In section B The dynamics can be described as starting to build gradually until a short time into the section where the music drops back down to piano (soft/quiet). It then gets louder again, building up to fortissimo (very loud). The melody for three bars later into the music are quite similar to the start of section B , but some of the note lengths have been augmented (made longer). This helps to make the music feel slow and heavy, much like the storm being visualised.