The Mystery of Chopin's Préludes

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Contents: Preface
The traditions, the innovations, and the predicaments
Lamartine's Les Preludes: the lyrics and the milieu
The Mallorca factor
Lamartine's Les Preludes and Chopin's Preludes
Deciphering the Preludes
Further thoughts
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

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Chopin's twenty-four Préludes remain as mysterious today as when they were newly published. What prompted Franz Liszt and others to consider Chopin's Préludes to be compositions in their own right rather than introductions to other works? What did set Chopin's Préludes so drastically apart from their forerunners? What exactly was 'the morbid, the feverish, the repellent' that Schumann heard in Opus 28, in that 'wild motley' of 'strange sketches' and 'ruins'? Why did Liszt and another, anonymous, reviewer publicly suggest that Lamartine's poem Les Préludes served as an inspiration for Chopin's Opus 28? And, if that is indeed the case, how did the poem affect the structure and the thematic contents of Chopin's Préludes? And, lastly, is Opus 28 a random assortment of short pieces or a cohesive cycle? In this monograph, richly illustrated with musical examples, Anatole Leikin combines historical perspectives, hermeneutic and thematic analyses, and a range of practical implications for performers to explore these questions and illuminate the music of one of the best loved collections of music for the piano.

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Anatole Leikin's The Mystery of Chopin's Preludes offers a far-reaching study of one of Chopin's most famous opuses, testifying to the expansive hermeneutic and analytic terrain the Preludes offer... He develops an original interpretation of the Preludes, one that...suggests links between Chopin's literary environment and the composition itself... Leikin draws on literary analogies in order to shed new light on long-standing issues surrounding Op. 28... One of The Mystery of Chopin's Preludes greatest merits is to guide its readers along many fascinating paths Leikin's deep engagement with the work has followed

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