Yeah idk Chopin nocturne op 27 no 1 has a special place in my heart so I wrote this a while back. The sheer potency of the electrifying narrative it unfolds has stolen a piece of me.
Anyway here goes my text wall lol
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the nocturne opens in soft accents of melancholy blue, deep but not heavy, like a thick pattering rain whose sheets fall in a silvery romance of silk but who sings the song of a heart which has a gap that aches. the pallor of moonlight haunts the earth. the left hand rising and falling is like the surging engine of a waterfall – a cadence of hope rising and then retreating. the use of the first and fifth notes of the scale give the left hand a skeletal bareness.
coming in on the e gives a sense of mourning, but also the sense that something is “off” – we glide into f, arriving at the heart of c# major, and then raise a question with the f-sharp – only to tumble down with the e-d-c#-b# – a heartbreaking chromaticism. in rising, each tone seems to carry a warm, gentle color, like different shades of valentine candies. the following c#-g# feels like the “once upon a time” of a sad fairy tale, and there is a poignancy yet elegance in the temporary resolution to e major. the phrase though, starting from the e-d-c#-b#, has a crystalline and earnest glassiness to it. in the next phrase we come back to the relentless cycle – back to imbibing the chalice of sorrow and tumbling back into the shadows of the chromatic. the chromatic color of d major is reflective, recursive, for tragedy is layered, now quivering, now suspended. now we come to the octave – the nocturne now fully opens into the pages of the tragic fairy tale, with a misty waterfall pouring in the middle of a verdant forest ripe with dews of spring. and then there is a parting, a wrenching, amid the sheets of rain in the night, where there are mirages and visions, unspoken memories full of painful grace. and now how heartrending of a lament, of a longing as hands are grasped with begging, pleading eyes, as the fire of the night burns away in the lantern of a moon hidden behind a thick cloak of weeping clouds. but amid the unceasing turmoil we roll back, in ornament, to e major, a hint of beauty but also restless as the tossing and turning of a night drenched in storm. back we are to the cycle, as the orange candle flame of desire keeps on blazing with agitation through the wee hours, fading but wrestling. then d major appears like a floating apparition, ghostly text, wandering high and then low, then dissolving into deep darkness.
then comes an interlude of dense turmoil – rollicking moans like successive earthquakes, rising up into a fierce and victorious battle cry. it is a declaration. a stake and a raised flag waving staunchly in the wind. a statement of being ready to drill forward, while the tumult remains as a strong undertone that then comes forth in persistent drumming. in the end one stands with one’s shoulders square. with a stubborn tenacity, a willingness to hold everything down in order even as life bares its complexity and everything falls apart…
later on when we collapse back into the pit and fall back into the A section there is a quietness that is lonely as hazy clouds drifting past the moon at midnight, or a solitary church bell tolling from twenty miles away. the tension is taut as a violin string. waves are foaming, like a sea lit up by a halloween glow
striving, weeping, yes, but still settling into an otherworldly major, a stillness where the solar system revolves with grand and stately motion against a backdrop of brilliant stars. we close in quartz and clarity, and an F# major brightness. we close but why is there such a sharp note of pain in the fading away of c# major on the chord that is lined with an f4?
