In the winter of 1838-39, Chopin and George Sand (the pen name of Aurore, Baronne Dudevant, a well-known novelist and Chopin's friend, companion, and lover) planned an extended visit to the resort island of Majorca to improve Chopin's failing health. Although the climate and rustic atmosphere were reputed to be helpful for convalescence, in fact the primitive conditions and cold worsened Chopin's already precarious position. George Sand wrote: Although it was not really that cold, never have I suffered more from cold: for us who are used to heat in the winter, this house without a fireplace was like a mantle of ice on our shoulders . . . [O]ur invalid began to suffer and to cough.
The party was forced to leave its first accommodations and spend the remaining months of the stay in an abandoned monastery high in the hills. The conditions were difficult all around--the arrival of Chopin's Pleyel piano was delayed interminably by inept transportation and customs officials, so for months he made do with a small, local piano, barely in playable condition. But in January, 1839 Chopin sent the finished manuscript of the Preludes to his friend Julian Fontana in Paris.
George Sand, in her books A Winter in Majorca (1841) and Story of My Life (1853), gave many imaginative details about the stay in Majorca and the conditions and states of mind of Chopin and his group as he composed the Preludes. Historians have tended to discount the literal details of Sand's accounts; there is little doubt that Sand was more interested in portraying the psychological and artistic heart of the situation than its literal truth. Her stories tell us perhaps more about George Sand and her creative viewpoint than about Chopin and his.
Nevertheless, the stories are fascinating. Undoubtedly the most famous example of this writing is traditionally linked with the Prelude in Db major. Sand wrote:
There is one that came to him through an evening of dismal rain--it casts the soul into a terrible dejection. Maurice and I had left him in good health one morning to go shopping in Palma for things we needed at our "encampment." The rain came in overflowing torrents. We made three leagues in six hours, only to return in the middle of a flood. We got back in absolute dark, shoeless, having been abandoned by our driver to cross unheard of perils. We hurried, knowing how our sick one would worry. Indeed he had, but now was as though congealed in a kind of quiet desperation, and, weeping, he was playing his wonderful Prelude. Seeing us come in, he got up with a cry, then said with a bewildered air and a strange tone, "Ah, I was sure that you were dead."
When he recovered his spirits and saw the state we were in, he was ill, picturing the dangers we had been through, but he confessed to me that while waiting for us he had seen it all in a dream, and no longer distinguishing the dream from reality, he became calm and drowsy. While playing the piano, persuaded that he was dead himself. He saw himself drowned in a lake. Heavy drops of icy water fell in a regular rhythm on his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water indeed falling in rhythm on the roof, he denied having heard it. He was even angry that I should interpret this in terms of imitative sounds. He protested with all his might--and he was right to--against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky.
Sand does not specify the key or number of the prelude written on this occasion, and, although the Db major Prelude is usually given the informal title "Raindrop", in fact the story could apply to any of the melancholy preludes with a repetitive figure (A minor, E minor, and B minor come to mind, as well as Db major).
J. S. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier (WTC) was Chopin's primary model for the Preludes--Chopin kept a copy of the Well Tempered Clavier on his music stand as he worked on the Preludes. Bach had composed a prelude and fugue in each major and minor key (WTC Book I) and then done it again (WTC Book II) Like Bach, Chopin composed a set 24 preludes, one in each major and minor key. Unlike Bach, Chopin's Preludes follow the order of the circle of fifths: first the two keys with no sharps or flats, then the keys with one sharp, two sharps, three sharps, and so on.
Chopin's Preludes, like J. S. Bach's, are short, improvisatory works that explore textures and capabilities unique to the medium of the keyboard. Each prelude typically explores a single mood, texture, and musical idea. Since there is little variety of mood within a single prelude (there is little need, since most preludes are between 30 and 60 seconds in length) the set of preludes is arranged to give maximum contrast and variety when going from one prelude to the next.
Chopin was a composer who operated on inspiration, improvisation, and subtle musical shades and colors. These qualities are seen at their best in his short works, and of the short works, the preludes are the best of the best--a collection of 24 sparkling miniature gems.
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