Was it a lament of a broken heart, a funeral march, or an ode to despair? So many possible interpretations exist of the Prélude Op. 28, No. 4, by Frédéric Chopin.
It was the piece that the composer wanted played at his own funeral, performed on an organ by his friend and fellow composer Franz Liszt.
It is short, like life itself, yet, as each section plays, it feels as if the music might never end, with its slow marching beat and repeated melody with droning harmonies. Then, unexpectedly, the end approaches with a finality as heavy as gravity’s pull to the earth.
Hans von Bülow, a 19th century musician and devotee of Chopin’s music, famously came up with epithets for each of Chopin’s Opus 28 Preludes (for instance, the “Raindrop” for Prelude No. 15 in D-flat Major). Bülow named Prelude No. 4 the “Suffocation” Prelude given its profound despair.
George Sand’s daughter, Solange, who stayed with her mother and Chopin at a monastery in Mallora while the preludes were being composed said, “My mother gave a title to each of Chopin’s wonderful Preludes; these titles have been preserved on a score he gave to us.” Although that score was then lost, Solange recorded the names of the preludes. The title “Quelles larmes au fond du cloître humide?” – which means, “What tears (are shed) from the depths of the damp monastery?” has been attributed to Prelude No. 4.
The short prelude is only 25 bars long and follows a descending melodic line. It ends with Chopin’s dynamic instruction, smorzando, meaning “dying away.”
Yet amongst such despair, such sadness, there co-exists beauty and sweetness. One can only imagine how Chopin pondered these paradoxes during his own short, yet inspired, existence.