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The word \u201c\xe9tude\u201d means study \u2014 a practice piece, designed to exercise a particular technique. \xc9tudes for musicians are generally dry, repetitious pieces, not music to perform, but just exercises for practice. So Chopin\u2019s choice of that title may seem a little understated, or even ironic: his \xe9tudes certainly do exercise one\u2019s technique, but they are expressive, poetic, passionate, and anything but dry.

I think the title fits beautifully: shouldn\u2019t learning always be this way?

\n\n\n\n\n\nFr\xe9d\xe9ric Chopin\n\n\n\n\u25b6\ufe0f\n\xc9tude Op 25 No 1 (in A flat major)\n\n\nPaul Cantrell, piano\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2b07\ufe0f\nDownload\n\n\n(3:13 / 4.2 M)\n\n\n\n

An interesting aspect of the piece I work to bring out, one which you don\u2019t always hear, is the inner voices. This comes straight from my teacher, Don Betts, who is very particular about that in this piece. He quotes Schumann remarking on how Chopin himself brought them out. (To have a recording of Chopin\u2026!) That\u2019s thirdhand information, of course, but Chopin certainly does notate them clearly.

What\u2019s the \u201cinner voice?\u201d Well, the piece is made of sort of rapid, repeating cycle of notes, and a melody \u2014 a \u201cvoice\u201d \u2014 emerges from the topmost notes. That\u2019s the \u201cupper voice.\u201d But there are sections in the piece where other melodies emerge, not on the top, but in the middle, and those are the \u201cinner voices.\u201d Listen, for example, to 0:50\u20131:10, or 1:46\u20132:01. Does that make sense? Let me know if it\u2019s confusing, and I\u2019ll try to explain it better.

Don himself has a recording of this piece on this site, from his Chopin album, and our two versions make an interesting comparison, I think. Of course I love his handling of the inner voices. He\u2019s more technically adept, especially at the end. And his sense of the shape of the phrases is quite different in some spots \u2014 not the way I\u2019d play it, but the way he would! Sometimes, when I\u2019m in the middle of learning and understanding a piece, I can\u2019t stand to hear somebody else\u2019s version. But right now, hearing Don\u2019s version gives me tremendous pleasure, and makes me want to think through the piece all over again.

One of the marvelous things about composed music is just this: Don and I can both play this piece, and through that shared experience I can learn from the master even as I derive personal satisfaction from playing it my own way. A piece of music is not just its own world, but many worlds in many hands at many times, never perfected, always satisfying.