Chopin's Prelude in A major, Op. 28 No. 7 is sixteen bars long — the shortest of the twenty-four Preludes, and over in under a minute. The set was written between 1835 and 1839, mostly in Paris, and partly during the winter of 1838 at the charterhouse of Valldemossa on Mallorca, where he was living with George Sand and where he was seriously ill. 0:55, with the full piano score on screen, note by note.
Twenty-four preludes, one per key — this is the seventh
Chopin ordered the set by the circle of fifths: each major key followed by its relative minor, working through all twenty-four keys. C major, A minor, G major, E minor, D major, B minor — and seventh in line comes A major, which is this one.
The idea of one prelude per key comes from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, but the ordering does not: Bach climbs by semitone, Chopin goes round the circle.
The set went out with two different dedicatees. The French and English editions were dedicated to the piano maker and publisher Camille Pleyel, who had commissioned the set for two thousand francs; the German edition kept the name written on the manuscript, Joseph Christoph Kessler. The same work carried different names in different countries.
And one thing that has nothing to do with music: in Japan a great many people know this piece from a stomach-medicine advertisement. Ohta's Isan has used it since the 1980s and has kept using it for decades — reportedly because the brand name sounds close to the Japanese for "A major".
The same sentence eight times — the sixth one tilts
One rhythm runs the whole way through: a long note, a short one, then two chords. Like someone beside you rocking gently and counting, never stopping.
That sentence comes round every two bars, eight times in all. The first five stay in the same place — settled, nothing about to happen.
On the sixth, the last chord leans outward, and it is spread out one note at a time. That is the only moment in the piece that leaves home. You feel yourself tip forward slightly with it.
Then it comes back. In the last two bars the left hand walks down three steps, the right hand holds still, and it is over. Under a minute, no climax and no big closing gesture — one gust of wind and it has gone by.
Sixteen bars, eight sentences of identical length
Sixteen bars, with a single upbeat before them. They fall into eight two-bar sentences, all the same length and all the same shape: in the right hand a dotted eighth, a sixteenth, then two chords; in the left a bass note on beat one and two chords on beats two and three. That is a mazurka — the triple-time dance of Chopin's Poland, where the weight falls late rather than on the first beat. The Peters edition even prints "The Polish Dance" as its subtitle.
Bar 12 holds the only chord in the piece marked to be spread, and the only moment that genuinely leaves A major: A♯ and C♯ in the right hand over F♯, C♯, E and F♯ in the left — an F♯ dominant seventh. It tilts the ear one step towards B minor, and the next bar takes it back.
In the final bar the right hand holds a chord still while the left walks out the remaining notes. One hundred and seventy-six notes in all (one of them a grace note), ranging from the lowest A up to a high C♯.
Few notes — and every one of them is exposed
This is often called the easiest way into Chopin: there really are very few notes and the hand never has to stretch. But a piece with few notes gives you nowhere to hide.
The dotted figure in the right hand is the whole character of the piece. If the long note is not long enough, or the short one arrives too early, the mazurka lilt disappears and it flattens into plain three-time.
In the left hand the bass on beat one and the two chords after it need to be distinct — the bass sinks, the chords land lightly on top. Not three equal thumps.
The spread chord in bar 12 is the one place you can linger slightly, and only slightly; Chopin wrote no instruction to slow down there.
We rate this 1 out of 5.
Twenty-three more in the same set
The two best known in the same set: No. 4 in E minor, slow and sinking, played at Chopin's own funeral; and No. 20 in C minor, thirteen bars long, which Rachmaninoff turned into a whole set of variations.
This one has been used the same way: the Spanish composer Federico Mompou built his Variations on a Theme of Chopin on these sixteen bars.
If you want the same composer at greater length: the Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64 No. 2.
