nocturne no. 2 in e-flat major, op. 9, no. 2

In the end, it can’t actually “barely exist,” but that’s its best starting point. The accompaniment needs a great deal of sophistication. Although suppression of the accompaniment is a necessary step, it is only one step in what is a more complex process. Suppressing the accompaniment would help distance the listener from the waltz idea. The rhythmic nature of a waltz accompaniment is critical to its character.

Secondly, you could suppress the accompaniment so far into the background that it barely exists. Piano playing that isn’t informed in this way is like a vampire: lifelike in some ways, but cold and dead on the inside. It also opens your eyes to the significant distance between the first two notes.

Singing it brings you into an intimate understanding of what is meant by the phrase’s length. You should actually open your mouth, and sing it as you play. I mean that both metaphorically and literally. However, I’m not sure it makes great strides toward steering clear of a waltz feeling. For expressive reasons alone, this is a must. You can apply what we discuss to the rest of the piece.įirst, you should play the melody as if it were in four, with triplet subdivisions, or maybe in two with sextuplet subdivisions. In the meantime though, here are some useful strategies that you, as the performer, can use to make this piece sound more like a nocturne than a waltz. My position is that there’s nothing inherent in the composition that will convey the meter in spite of what the performer does with the piece.

Is this matter solely in the hands of the performer?.

Has Chopin baked anything into this composition that would convey the written time signature to the listener over an easily-feasible, perceived-meter alternative?.

As part of this think-quest, consider two ideas: 2 is in 12/8? What will keep them from thinking that it’s in 3/4? You need to spend a solid day mulling that over before reading the rest of this post. How will the listener know that Chopin Nocturne, Op. 2: not a waltzĭate ApAuthor By Jeff Category Piano Lessons

Nocturne no. 2 in e-flat major, op. 9, no. 2