Still on holiday

The blog is on holiday until Wednesday, December 27, 2017. All the best from my local beach. Music hints if you click on …

Music lineage

It is from an album – Chopin: Selected Works – played by Lithuanian pianist Aldona Dvarionaité.

This track is my favourite – Prelude in E Minor Opus 28 No 4 – one of 24 preludes that Chopin wrote.

In his will, Chopin instructed that this particular prelude should be played at his funeral.

It is the easiest piece by Chopin for piano and has a very distinctive descending left-hand pattern, which has become common in modern Jazz standards. Chopin was way ahead of his time.

I spent some of yesterday transcriping the original piano work into guitar, which required combining both the left-hand (chords) and right-hand (melody) sections into an arrangement that could be played by the left-hand only on guitar. That was fun.

The jazz standard played by Wes Montgomery that I provided yesterday – In Sensitive – was inspired melodically by Chopin’s prelude. Hence the reference to lineage.

My blog will resume tomorrow (December 27, 2017).

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2017 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.