I have chosen to include this in the article as for me it has such a depth of unquenchable sadness that it was vital to single it out. Only towards the end of the piece does the melody fly towards the highest note of the work only to tumble back towards the final dark cadence in e minor.Ĭomposed between 1912 to 1913, this piano piece is amongst the most musically and emotionally complex of all his works.
It is as if the composer himself is struggling to breathe such is the shallow rise and fall of the opening idea. Similar to the B minor Prelude above, Chopin uses a simple but elegant melody that struggles to move against the unrelenting pulse of the accompanying chords. Chopin writes smorzando, meaning dying away which adequately reflects the despair the composer was feeling at the time of writing from the Monastery in Majorca. Prelude in E Minor by Chopin (Op.28 No.4)įrom the final dynamic marking of this brief Prelude, we have a clear sense of the nature of the composition. The whole Prelude is barely two minutes in length with an unfaltering ostinato in the right-hand like a tolling bell that simply stops at the pianissimo close of the piece.ģ. Each time it is heard, it seems to attempt to reach upwards towards a light, only to fall each time back to where it came from. Melodically, Chopin chooses to write a rising arpeggio that climbs from the darker regions of the piano register. For example, if you have a I, IV, V chord base, it would be difficult to make the song sound sad, because all the chords are major.One of the more outwardly simplistic pieces that Chopin composed, this Prelude has a brooding pensiveness about it from the opening chord. They determine the mood more so than the melody and lyrics. However, I think that the chords and harmony are the foundation of the song. Some people think that it is not the chords progression itself that makes the music sad, but the melody and the lyrics. What makes music sound sad? I think that minor chords are sadder than major chords.
Am-Dm-Fm-C A little bit of tension is added due to the unusual minor iv chord, which resolves back to the I.
Em-Dm-C-C This one is different, because it starts on the iii chord.C-Bdim - Em-Em As you can see, sad progressions usually have many minor chords.The same sad chord progressions in the key of C are below vi-vi-iv-iii This is used in Requiem for a Dream by Clint Mansell.vi-V-IV-iii Descending chords like this can also sound quite sad.I-vi-IV-V Not as sad as some of the others, but fun to play with.I-vi-ii-V This one is more popular and used often.vi-ii-iv-I A little bit of tension is added due to the unusual minor iv chord, which resolves back to the I.iii-ii-I-I This one is different, because it starts on the iii chord.I-vii °- iii-iii As you can see, sad progressions usually have many minor chords.