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An old favorite, brought from the past to the present for your listening enjoyment.

\\nFr\\xe9d\\xe9ric Chopin\\n
\\nPrelude Op 28 No 9 (in E major)\\n
\\nPaul Cantrell,\\npiano\\n
\\n\\u266b\\nDownload\\n(1:36 / 2.4 M)\\n

I love the steady outpouring of energy, the unbrokenness of the flow as it goes through such a dramatic series of changes, the perfect balance of the different sections, the tremendous sense of scope of this mere 95 seconds, a single printed page of music. Chopin is totally my hero.

Esoteric Musicological Aside

There\\u2019s an interesting controversy about this piece: in certain places, Chopin notated the melody as dotted eighth + sixteenth on top of three triplets. For those of you who don\\u2019t know music notation, that\\u2019s corresponds to the fractions 3/4 + 1/4 = 1 beat on the top, and 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1 beat underneath. With me so far?

Now if you work out the math, the sixteenth note (that 1/4 of a beat) should come slightly after the last of the three triplets \\u2014 but in the autograph Chopin very clearly and consistently notated it directly above that last triplet, implying that they should come at the same time. So his math and his visual language contradict each other; which do we take?

Composers did sometimes write dotted-eight + sixteenth as a shorthand for (quarter + eight) triplet \\u2014 that is, the rhythm that would make them line up. That was a sort of outdated practice in Chopin\\u2019s time, but it\\u2019s still quite possible he would have done it. His obvious visual positioning, which really is quite consistent in the autograph, suggests that\\u2019s what he was doing. And at other points, he used a double-dotted rhythm to show very clearly that last note of the melody coming after the three triplets (at 1:02, for example), and in those spots, he doesn\\u2019t align the notes vertically in the autograph. I really think that \\u201cat the same time\\u201d is what he meant, and that\\u2019s how I play it. (I differ with the venerable Paderewski edition on this question.) For a fun home experiment, compare to your favorite recording!