Chopin - Prélude op.28 no.13 in F sharp

Another installment in one of my slowly moving background projects.

This is perhaps the most sentimental of the préludes: if we're being a little harsh we must admit that it's pretty saccharine. However, it is not without interest; the slippery chromatics in the base are satisfyingly complex, the major key cousin of the super-chromatic étude op.10 no.6, while the trio features two somewhat jazzy II-V-I progressions with a delicate stress on the major seventh in the melody.  Furthermore, the trio features some interesting modal harmony, which sounds surprisingly modern if listened to closely.

The transcription presents a couple of challenges; the chromatic line at times fits perfectly under the hand and at others is rather uncomfortable, and as it is played mostly on the lowest strings you can hear that I've had trouble preventing squeaks and creaks as the left hand voicing shifts around. There are also a couple of polyrhythms, one is 5 over 6: a challenge to achieve in both hands at once. In the trio, the ornamental melodies necessitate leaving a rest where the piano's left hand part should be, and overall it should be played far more smoothly than I've achieved here. Lastly, the high notes in the last few bars are played as artificial harmonics, which presents its own little challenges, although is in keeping with the way it's played on the piano.

Only time will tell if I ever get the chance to finish these all off, it'll probably take at least a few years and who knows what will be happening then. There are ten done, there's a good few that are written but need to be thoroughly practised, and we'll see if I can make rudimentary recordings as we go along. I'm pretty shy about showing the transcriptions themselves, but maybe at some point I'd like an expert to have a look at them.

Anyway, more architectural stuff to come...

Chopin - Prélude No.21 in B flat, op.28

Another prélude; this time the slinky and oceanic No.21.

This is the ninth I've 'finished'. I think the transcriptions themselves are alright, but obviously my technique isn't really up to scratch for some of them, and it's doubtful whether any of the super-difficult ones (no.5, no8, no.16 (!!!), no.24) will ever be possible for me to play. I'll keep going though, see how far I can get.



Hope these are enjoyable in some way.

Some Préludes

I finished transcribing a few more Chopin préludes recently; here they are:



So that's 8 out of the 24...

What have I done?

What have I done recently then?

I wrote a review of François Dallegret's exhibition at the Architectural Association for BD. It's here, although paywalled. Dallegret is perhaps the lost member of the late 60s / early 70s utopian bunch of architects, too idiosyncratic to pin down and probably not ambitious enough to end up as powerful as the rest of them.

I also wrote a review for the Architect's Journal of the book 'RUINS' from the series 'documents of contemporary art', which is here. It's funny, the book that I have coming out soon deals with three of the themes of these books quite heavily - first they did ARCHIVES, then FAILURE and now RUINS. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that really, perhaps the book is coming out too late for the wave of interest but then it was written what feels like a ridiculously long time ago, so who knows. One mustn't expect too much anyway... Still, read the book - it's ace, well worth it.

More of my short journalistic work is in this month's ICON, where I write various pieces about Herzog & de Meuron, Ma Yansong, and Coop Himmelb(l)au. 

I went to Zagreb, which was great. I gave a talk about the ArcelorMittalOrbit sculpture, which I've written about on here quite a few times before. I was speaking as part of this event, along with Mark and Owen, who both gave very interesting talks, despite me still not being able to muster a toss about Pulp... Zagreb was a fascinating place, where I met some very lovely people, and it is also blessed with some incredible architecture. I also saw the funniest thing that I've seen in a long long time, which I hope I can share with you sometime soon.

On matters music/hobby related, two more Chopin preludes:

Chopin - Prelude No.7 in A - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht
Chopin - Prelude No.20 in C minor - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht

Oh well...

Chopin - Prelude No.22 in G minor

Chopin - Prelude No.22 in G minor by entschwindet und vergeht

Another of Chopin's Preludes given the once over by my clumsy fingers. This one is nasty, brutish and short, with a usually thundering bass melody (in octaves on the piano) being played stacatto entirely by the thumb, with the other fingers left to render the syncopated, angular chords draped over the top. I must say it's quite fun to bash the guitar around a bit in a way that isn't normally done, but I suppose that to play this piece properly requires a bit more precision than I've got, what with my miniscule practise regime these days.

Apropos of nothing, two classic stride pianists taking on classic romanticism. Lambert playing Wagner, & Tatum playing Chopin.

Chopin - Prelude No.14 in E flat minor - Guitar arrangement by E&V;

Chopin - Prelude No. 14 in Eb minor - guitar by entschwindet und vergeht
Here's another arrangement that I recorded the other day, as usual it's bloody scrappy...

Surplus surplus surplus

Here are more things to look at:


A video from the NYT about an unfinished Venezuelan skyscraper that is heavily squatted. If you disregard the pretty clunky politics then it's rather interesting.

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Two brilliant posts by Adam Curtis. I've mentioned it before, but his blog really is something else. As the nuclear accident at Fukushima rolls on, Curtis dug out a near-20 year old film he made about the nuclear industry, which is -as you might imagine- prescient.

And then, what with the fact that we Brits are suddenly and without warning committing belligerent acts in North Africa, Curtis has prepared a potted history of humanitarian intervention, which is consummate. It also features a brilliant final line which is well worth sticking around for.

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An excellent post on Bahrain by Bauzeitgeist, about revolution in a landscape of malls and business parks.

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There's a Xenakis Symposium down at Goldsmiths, this weekend. I might pop down if I get the chance, and you should too!

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The incomparable Giovanni Tiso has written a piece at his Bat Bean Beam blog that is just blistering, about Blair and his mediations. If you don't know it yet, his blog is both consistent (one big post a week), and consistently excellent.

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Francois Roche is being weird, as usual. Is this a rare example of a principled architect, or is it simply him showing off and playing up to his status as 'crazy frenchman'? I think I've met only one person who studied at Sci-Arc, and they were an arrogant cock, so there you go... Actually, hang on, I interviewed Benjamin Ball from Ball Nogues and he was lovely, so scratch that!

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Chopin - Prelude No.2 in A minor by entschwindet und vergeht
Another arrangement by yours truly. I'm trying to record them now; as I've written (or almost written) so very many, I have gotten archive fever. This one is a bit sketchy but it's done, so I can move onto something else.

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Geoffrey Hill's inaugural lecture at Oxford is online. I'm fairly new to his work compared to some people I know, but well, you know, everyone loves a bit of 'pinnacled corn'...

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And there is far far far too much news right now. Thoughts go to the Japanese, of course, and Libyans, and Bahrainians, and Yemenis, etc. etc.

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Back here in Blighty, we had a march the other day, which I attended.
I attended because I care about other people in the world, and also because I think that those in charge of our government and economy are thoroughly incompetent and must be immediately stopped from enacting their spiteful, vindictive, petty, damaging, greedy, myopic, thuggish agenda. It's as simple as that really.

dum dum da dum (VIII)

Here's a really sneaky one that I'd never noticed before, as it occurs only once near the very end of the piece. Needless to say it's Chopin yet again, from the Nocturne in C minor, Op.48 No.1


This is Rubenstein playing, the dumdumdadum is at 4:45...

dum dum da dum (VI)

If you listen to radio 3 at all, then for the last week or so you'll have noticed an onslaught of mazurkas, waltzes, preludes, nocturnes, ballades etc., and all because it's Chopin's 200th birthday.
Unfortunately I haven't finished my stupidly ambitious other Chopin project in time, but until that day, here's my happy birthday to the guy, my own recording of his funeral march. I must say; I've always found it rather funny that of all the world famous melodies one could give the world, Chopin would give us the universal sonic signifier of death. So here's to him!

dum dum da dum (IV)

Chopin, Funeral March op.72, (1827)

A bit obvious this, but oh well; he did write another one when he was 17...

dum dum da dum (III)

Chopin - Mazurka, op.30 No.3 in D flat. (1836/7)

dum dum da dum (II)

Chopin - Etude No.11, Op.25, (1836)

dum dum da dum

The 'original' dum-dum-da-dum. Chopin's Funeral March (1837)


Chopin's Prelude No.2 in A minor (1838)

many more to come...

A very brief note on arranging.

One of the most common textures in piano music is a slow right hand part with a quicker left hand part, often outlining a self-similar arpeggio whose consistency ties the piece together logically, and whose variation helps to emphasise the harmony of the piece. When arranging piano music of this character for the guitar, there are a few very common problems that occur. I'd like to have a wee look at them, using bars 18-19 of Chopin's Prelude No.3 in G as the basis.

Example 1
This is the original music written as a guitar part (on one stave and written an octave above natural) We're in the sub-dominant region at this point, and in a few bars we'll prepare for and move onto the last cadence. At the moment though, it looks pretty non-sensical when written out this way, we'd need a lot of extra guitar and a few new hands to play it.


Example 2
Often the first step in arranging piano for the guitar is to move one of the hands a whole octave. Depending on whether you're transposing (we're not here), it's usually pretty obvious which hand to move, one usually drops the right hand, but that lowering is somewhat offset by the brighter tone of the guitar. Often various sections of a piece will have to remain and others moved up or down, and that presents its own set of problems. Another thing that is usually helpful is to get rid of doubles, which we've done here, as the low E is not a significant voice in the piece. The problem is; the low C in what was the left hand part is still a major third below the low E of the guitar. We'll have to do something about that.
(ps - the overlapping of the G in the right hand melody with the A and G at the top of the left hand melody is a crack one has to smooth over in performance).


Example 3
Leopold Godowsky's arrangements of Chopin for the left hand only have been invaluable in suggesting ways in which the character of a piece can be preserved even while condensing it drastically. A technique that he is often forced to use is to eliminate the first note of the left hand part, before jumping down to continue the lower melody (see his version of etude 6, op.10). I've also seen Mahler use this left hand rest in arrangements of his own pieces for piano. If you do utilise this approach, the next problem is that you then have a melody whose lowest note is the fifth of the chord, and we don't want this to sound like a 6-4 chord. One advantage is that left hand parts like this are often spread out in the lower register, meaning that you can replace a melody such as C₂,G₂,C₃,G₃... with rest,C₃,E₃,G3... with only a small change in the character of the melody. In this case that isn't possible, so...


Example 4
We reinstate the root, but an octave above. This might be better, but in my opinion this is a rather ugly solution, with the low G still being conspicuous after the root.


Example 5
This is my preferred solution to this particular problem, a quasi-turnaround of a B after the root, creating a more sinuous melodic effect in keeping with the curvaceous feel of the piece. The G at the end of the bar is retained to create a stronger dominant effect.

Chopin, op.35 part III, played by Raoul Pugno

Circa 1903. Thanks to Al for drawing this to my attention.
Apparently "the sound is distorted because the record was cut on a defective turntable with fluctuating speed" (see also)...

Romantic coincidence

The top search terms for my blog at this moment (discounting 'blogspot' and 'the') are 'chopin' and 'prelude', primarily due to me posting an early arrangement of No.20 in C minor, which is obviously being searched out by hungry guitarists. Those close to me might recognise a mild significance in the fact that this is still the most searched for aspect of the blog, but to me it's generally worth noting that today, during the ridiculous storms that battered London, I spent a little time working on my arrangement of No.15 in D flat; the 'raindrop' prelude.

Godowsky plays Chopin

Before I put any new writing up, I recently found these videos. There's a post on the way all about Godowsky, and how his transcriptions exemplify an approach to early twentieth century compositional innovation that never really caught on, and how this aesthetic method can be abstracted as a lost, alternative form of avant-gardeism.

This recording is apparantly from 1930, the year that Godowsky suffered a stroke in the recording studio that put an end to his career, part of the string of bad luck that made his final years some of the worst that you could possibly hope not to have to go through.

It's Chopin's B flat minor sonata, op.35, the third movement of which I've just finished a new guitar arrangement of, which I might post up soon once I've edited it properly.

Happy Valentines Day!

Chopin, Prelude No.20 in C minor, op.28

Fiddling while Rome burns, here's another arrangement, far more reasonable in terms of difficulty. The task of arranging this is fairly simple, the piece is built up of very 'guitar-ish' chords, lots of fourths and fifths, nothing that translates into bastard stretches.

What we admire most about this piece is its form. It has an ABB structure, but in a reversal of the typical dynamic, it starts loud and bombastic, before diminishing to end on a simple whisper, unable to maintain the grandeur of the opening. In that sense it feels rather more realistic than your usual musical fare.