Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin,was a Polish composer and
virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era, who wrote
primarily for the solo piano. He gained and has
maintained renown worldwide as one of the leading
musicians of his era, whose "poetic genius was based on
a professional technique that was without equal in his
generation." Chopin was born in what was then the Duchy
of Warsaw, and grew up in Warsaw, which after 1815
became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he
completed his musical education...(+)
Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin,was a Polish composer and
virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era, who wrote
primarily for the solo piano. He gained and has
maintained renown worldwide as one of the leading
musicians of his era, whose "poetic genius was based on
a professional technique that was without equal in his
generation." Chopin was born in what was then the Duchy
of Warsaw, and grew up in Warsaw, which after 1815
became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he
completed his musical education and composed many of
his works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of
20, less than a month before the outbreak of the
November 1830 Uprising.
The Nocturne in E Minor, published posthumously as Op
72 No 1, was composed by Frédéric Chopin for solo
piano in 1826. It was Chopin's first composed nocturne,
although it was the nineteenth to be published, in
1855, along with two other early works: a funeral march
in C minor and three écossaises. The composition
features an unbroken line of quaver triplets in the
left hand set against a slow melody of minims,
crotchets, quaver duplets and triplets. It consists of
57 bars of common time with the tempo given as Andante,
quarter note = 69 bpm. The conceptual closeness of the
vocal model is especially clear in those passages where
Chopin set the melody in parallel thirds, a favorite
technique in vocal nocturnes.
The high opus number of this Nocturne is misleading,
since the work dates to the earlier part of Chopin's
rather short career. The piece was not published until
1855, six years after the composer's death, when it was
assigned Op. 72. It may have been written as early as
1827 or been contemporary with Chopin's piano concertos
(1829-1830). In any event, it was his first Nocturne
and clearly bears the composer's stylistic imprint both
in its intimate sense of melancholy and in its lyrical
character, traits brimming with a passionate
Romanticism, while not yet free of the elegance and
leaner sonorities of Classicism.
It opens with a gentle, slowly paced running
accompaniment, over which Chopin presents a lovely, sad
melody that exudes a strong sense of loss. But as the
theme develops, with its considerable and long-breathed
secondary material, it grows agitated and conveys a
feeling of yearning, briefly building to what seems on
the verge of an eruption of passion. But the music
retreats to the more gentle, restrained melancholy of
the opening and then ends quietly. Lasting just under
five minutes, this lesser-known work is very nearly on
the same level as Chopin's more popular Nocturnes.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturne_in_E_minor,_Op.
_posth._72_(Chopin)).
Although composed for solo piano, I created this
Interpretation of the Nocturne in E Minor (Op. 72 No.
1) for Flute, Oboe & Classical Guitar.
