The word “étude” means study — a practice piece, designed to exercise a particular technique. Études for musicians are generally dry, repetitious pieces, not music to perform, but just exercises for practice. So Chopin’s choice of that title may seem a little understated, or even ironic: his études certainly do exercise one’s technique, but they are expressive, poetic, passionate, and anything but dry.

I think the title fits beautifully: shouldn’t learning always be this way?

Frédéric Chopin
Étude Op 25 No 1 (in A flat major)

Download (3:13 / 3.7 M)

An interesting aspect of the piece I work to bring out, one which you don’t always hear, is the inner voices. This comes straight from my teacher, Don Betts, who is very particular about that in this piece. He quotes Schumann remarking on how Chopin himself brought them out. (To have a recording of Chopin…!) That’s thirdhand information, of course, but Chopin certainly does notate them clearly.

What’s the “inner voice?” Well, the piece is made of sort of rapid, repeating cycle of notes, and a melody — a “voice” — emerges from the topmost notes. That’s the “upper voice.” But there are sections in the piece where other melodies emerge, not on the top, but in the middle, and those are the “inner voices.” Listen, for example, to 0:50–1:10, or 1:46–2:01. Does that make sense? Let me know if it’s confusing, and I’ll try to explain it better.

Don himself has a recording of this piece on this site, from his Chopin album, and our two versions make an interesting comparison, I think. Of course I love his handling of the inner voices. He’s more technically adept, especially at the end. And his sense of the shape of the phrases is quite different in some spots — not the way I’d play it, but the way he would! Sometimes, when I’m in the middle of learning and understanding a piece, I can’t stand to hear somebody else’s version. But right now, hearing Don’s version gives me tremendous pleasure, and makes me want to think through the piece all over again.

One of the marvelous things about composed music is just this: Don and I can both play this piece, and through that shared experience I can learn from the master even as I derive personal satisfaction from playing it my own way. A piece of music is not just its own world, but many worlds in many hands at many times, never perfected, always satisfying.

Here’s a preview of a piece I’m working on — this is the march that opens Chopin’s Fantasty. The whole piece is quite an epic (about 14 minutes), and rather difficult, so I’m not going to be posting the whole thing in the near future.

This opening, however, is neither so long nor so difficult, and so I’m posting a rough version of it as a little appetizer. It almost stands as a little piece on its own, but right where I stop in this recording, instead of winding to a close, the music takes off full throttle.

Frédéric Chopin
Fantasy in F minor (introduction)

Download (3:18 / 3.8 M)

In the future, the whole thing!

Today’s recording brings In the Hands over the one hour mark: since I started this blog at the end of August, it’s brought over 65 minutes of free piano music to the web. Yay!

This recording also marks a more dubious milestone: for the first time I’m late with the post (it just turned Wednesday in Minnesota as I type this). I’m not sure anyone cares, or even notices, but I do try to keep myself honest with this Tuesday/Saturday plan.

Chopin can get very complex, virtuosic, or just generally full of big piano sounds. But always, in everything he writes, there’s something pure and elemental at the heart of his music. In this waltz, that elemental core is bare. In a piece like this, it’s hard for me not to look at the score and wonder: It’s so simple! How can there be so much in so few notes? Where is the magic hiding?

Frédéric Chopin
Waltz Op 34 No 2 (in A minor)

Download (7:06 / 8.2 M)

This Chopin waltz is doubly special to me — not only because it’s a great piece, but also because, like this nocturne from a few entries back, my mom plays it too. (Her glasses have changed since that photo was taken, but not her smile!)

One of the most fundamental, most important principles in music is return: when things happen, they come back. Throughout a piece of music, there are recurring elements that unite the whole. The beginning and the end connect. If we depart from where we started, we return there — or at least look back.

The familiar verse / chorus / bridge form that underlies so many pop songs follows this principle: we might get a new melody, the bridge ("Why she had to leave, I don’t know"), but we still come back to the original repeating verse / chorus music ("Yesterday…"). Many, many classical pieces (especially Chopin nocturnes) follow ternary or “ABA” form: thing 1, thing 2, thing 1 again. That includes many of the pieces I’ve posted in this blog. Even in a less clearly delineated structure, you’ll hear the principle of return: listen to Bach letting new material unfold continuously so that same initial idea keeps resurfacing in new forms, or Brahms letting several distinct ideas mingle and interact with one another.

Return can be the operating principle even when it’s not immediately obvious: the three parts of Three Places are all built out of the same material, and the melody that was floating on top of a thick swirl of sound at the beginning comes back at the very end, transformed (the swirl is gone, and it’s bare now) but still present. The point is: look for return, and you’ll find it.

Then we have today’s piece by Chopin. Everything in it happens twice … and then never comes back. It’s like a series of matryoshka dolls that you cannot put back together once you’ve opened them. It moves through four distinct musical worlds, each more inward than the last, constantly curling in on itself and finally leaving us far from where we started, as if, having gone into whatever strange interior world this is, it is impossible to return to the place where we began, or even to imagine what that place was like.

There is no reason this piece should work. It is, to my mind, a miracle. This is one I keep returning to, searching for its secret as a composer, and marveling at it as a human.

Frédéric Chopin
Nocturne Op 15 No 3 (in G minor)

Download (5:54 / 6.8 M)

It’s organic, and sounds almost improvised — except that it is impossibly perfect in every detail. Its soundscape is vast, deep, and richly pianistic, but look at the construction and you’ll see the spare elegance of Bach. It has a loving tenderness, and a longing, that’s unlike anything else, yet seems instantly familiar. And it’s gorgeous.

What is it? Chopin, of course!

Frédéric Chopin
Nocturne Op 15 No 2 (in F sharp major)

Download (4:30 / 5.2 M)

In addition to being a masterpiece of music, this is a masterpiece of notation. Thanks to the Sheet Music Archive and the perpetually threatened public domain, there’s a free score for this piece you can download. (It’s not a great engraving, and it has some editorial mangling, but it gives you the idea, at least.) Chopin’s rendering of the ornaments is incredibly nuanced, and the double-stemming in the middle section to create three layers in the right hand is a little touch of genius my fingers are still struggling to realize properly.

You probably were all wondering when I’d get to some Chopin, no? Well, wonder no longer! Voici!

Frédéric Chopin
Nocturne Op 55 No 1 (in F minor)

Download (6:04 / 7.0 M)

I especially hope Nick enjoys this one!