Still and Copland
Brianna Hatter
September 11, 2013 The musical example, Prelude in E Minor by Chopin was one of his most famous works from his entire catalogue. The Prelude is also known as "suffocation." In Fact, Chopin's last dynamic marking in the piece is smorzando, which means "dying away." The piece was played at Chopin's funeral upon request by himself. There have been many musical pieces that were based on the prelude. Some of these pieces include Antonio Jobim's "Insensatez," and Serge Gainsbourg's "Jane B." The prelude has also been featured in several older movies. Some of these movies include Street Scene from 1931 and Taste of Fear from 1961. To analyze the musical piece, It starts innocently enough with a simple tonic chord, though the E is not in the bass so the chord is slightly unstable. The melody lifts up to an upper neighbor, creating dissonance and signalling a change of harmony to come soon. The next chord is the dominant chord, though with a suspension: the E refuses to let go. When this suspension does resolve, Chopin "misspells" the chord with an Eb instead of a D#. The melody turns this dominant chord into a diminished seventh chord, which resolves as a common-tone chord to a secondary French augmented-sixth chord! By this point, only the third measure, the listener is quite confused as to where tonic is, even though the chords progress by very small steps with many common tones. The augmented-sixth chord does not resolve correctly, instead shifting to a chord progression that fits best in the key of A minor: iiø43 - viio42 - V7. By half-steps the dominant chord gets transformed, leading us back to the key of E minor. A minor is hinted at several times, and the final cadence of each phrase (there are only two phrases in the 25-measure prelude) includes an oscillation between the dominant B7 chord and the A minor triad. The second phrase (measure 13) repeats the first phrase for the first 1.5 measures. At that point a subtle shift in the
September 11, 2013 The musical example, Prelude in E Minor by Chopin was one of his most famous works from his entire catalogue. The Prelude is also known as "suffocation." In Fact, Chopin's last dynamic marking in the piece is smorzando, which means "dying away." The piece was played at Chopin's funeral upon request by himself. There have been many musical pieces that were based on the prelude. Some of these pieces include Antonio Jobim's "Insensatez," and Serge Gainsbourg's "Jane B." The prelude has also been featured in several older movies. Some of these movies include Street Scene from 1931 and Taste of Fear from 1961. To analyze the musical piece, It starts innocently enough with a simple tonic chord, though the E is not in the bass so the chord is slightly unstable. The melody lifts up to an upper neighbor, creating dissonance and signalling a change of harmony to come soon. The next chord is the dominant chord, though with a suspension: the E refuses to let go. When this suspension does resolve, Chopin "misspells" the chord with an Eb instead of a D#. The melody turns this dominant chord into a diminished seventh chord, which resolves as a common-tone chord to a secondary French augmented-sixth chord! By this point, only the third measure, the listener is quite confused as to where tonic is, even though the chords progress by very small steps with many common tones. The augmented-sixth chord does not resolve correctly, instead shifting to a chord progression that fits best in the key of A minor: iiø43 - viio42 - V7. By half-steps the dominant chord gets transformed, leading us back to the key of E minor. A minor is hinted at several times, and the final cadence of each phrase (there are only two phrases in the 25-measure prelude) includes an oscillation between the dominant B7 chord and the A minor triad. The second phrase (measure 13) repeats the first phrase for the first 1.5 measures. At that point a subtle shift in the