Prelude: Op. 28, No. 20
Prelude · in C minor · Op. 28 No. 20
Frédéric Chopin 1810–1849
C minor
Key
Prelude
Form
Largo
Tempo
Op. 28 No. 20
Catalogue
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Difficulty
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Themes & character
Solemn chord progression·Basis for later variations·Under a minute long·Funeral-march character
At a glance
- Catalogue
- Op. 28 No. 20
- Key
- C minor
- Tempo / character
- Largo
- Form
- Prelude
About the piece
The twentieth of Chopin's twenty four Preludes, a solemn sequence of chords lasting well under a minute. There is almost no melody in the ordinary sense, only a slow, weighted progression descending like a funeral march.
Its harmonic outline proved so memorable that both Rachmaninoff and Busoni later built large sets of variations on it, turning a piece Chopin wrote as a fragment into the seed of two substantial works.
The composer
Frédéric Chopin
1810–1849
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the early Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading composer of his era whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".
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