Three more preludes

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 11 In F

Prelude No 11 in F

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 12 In F# Minor

Prelude No 12 in F# minor

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 13 In C Minor

Prelude No 13 in C minor

This is the latest batch of my preludes for guitar. There will be 24 eventually, in all the major and minor keys. 

Listen to all the preludes so far, in sequence: 

michaelpeverett · Preludes

Enjoy!

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Chopin's Preludes (Op. 28) were written between 1835 and 1839. The arrangement by cycle of fifths was not his invention, though. It was taken from the 24 Preludes by Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778 - 1837), published in 1814 (Op. 67). 

Many of Chopin's preludes are fairly brief, but they are all fully-formed and self-contained pieces. Hummel's preludes, on the other hand, are just expository flourishes. Often only four bars in length, a dazzle of scalework and arpeggiation, ending with big dominant-to-tonic chords. Here are all twenty-four (on today's equivalent of a pianola):

Hummel's collection, which lasts just eight minutes in total, would make no sense performed as a sequence. 

Its context was the practice of preluding. A keyboard performer, before playing a main piece (a Sonata in G, say), would normally improvise a brief prelude in the same key. It told the audience to quieten down and attend; it also allowed the performer to warm up the hands, get a feel for the instrument and its projection into the room. Hummel put together his collection for the benefit of those pianists who found it difficult to improvise their own preludes. 

[Information from Pei-Lin Liu's interesting 2010 thesis, available online as a PDF: 

https://www.proquest.com/openview/899bd1c3cb12d8940092c36abbde682e/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750

.]

Incidentally Hummel's more substantial Etudes (Op. 125, c. 1834), have a different 24-key arrangement.  Here too the major keys ascend by fifths, but each is paired not with its relative minor but with its parallel minor, in that respect recalling Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. This arrangement means that the minor keys also ascend by fifths, but shifted along from the majors, so to speak.

Hummel's and Chopin's Preludes:

C major - A minor - G major - E minor - D major - B minor, etc.

Hummel's Etudes:

C major - C minor - G major - G minor - D major - D minor,  etc

Here are Hummel's Etudes, performed by Mary Louise Boehm:

How to pronounce Hummel's full name. (If, like me, you are worried about showing yourself up as ignorant of classical music, but don't want to reveal your inner pedantry either.) 

First, if you are going to give his first name, you ought to give both parts of it (i.e. "Johann Nepomuk Hummel"; it is really not OK to say "Johann Hummel"). Hummel was born near Bratislava to Austrian parents, and was named after the Czech patron saint John of Nepomuk (c. 1345 -1393), himself named after the town of his birth. John of Nepomuk was drowned in the Vltava by Wenceslaus IV. 

"Johann Nepomuk" really operates as a single name, like "Gianbattista". It was a reasonably popular first name in Austria, especially among those with Bohemian connections. For instance the wind band composer Johann Nepomuk Wendt (1745 - 1801). Or Adolf Hitler's great-grandfather, the farmer Johann Nepomuk Hiedler (1807 - 1888). Or another composer (of eight symphonies among much else), Johann Nepomuk David (1895-1977). 

The name has a hybrid origin, linguistically. "Nepomuk" is Czech, but "Johann" is German, not Czech (which would be "Jan"). The saint was just as popular among German-speaking Bohemians as Czech-speaking ones. 

You'll pronounce "Johann" just as you pronounce it in e.g. "Johann Strauss", i.e. give the J a Y sound, but make no other effort to sound German. (Incidentally both the waltzers' names should really be "Johann Baptist Strauss", as per above, -- or, say, the Czech composer Johann Baptist Wanhal (1739 - 1813) --but here established tradition overrides accuracy.)

Likewise it would be inappropriate to pronounce "Nepomuk" precisely as a Czech would. 

In an English language context, I'd suggest an anglicized pronunciation like nepp-uh-muke. Stress is on the first and third syllables. (In Czech the primary stress is actually on the third syllable, but mimicking that in English risks sounding pretentious.) The third syllable should be anglicized to rhyme with "Luke" (the Czech vowel sound is more boomy, similar to the way that our royal family pronounce the word "spoon"). Likewise I'd suggest it's OK to pronounce the unstressed second syllable as "uh" (schwa) -- the general fate of unstressed vowels in English. There's no need to give it the definite "o" value that it has in Czech. 

A debate, obviously, that will go on and on!