Prélude in B minor

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Musical Terms (4)

• Prélude in B minor English
  Louis Couperin's Prélude in B minor is his most extended and celebrated unmeasured prelude — a large-scale piece of extraordinary harmonic freedom, encompassing a wide range of moods from brooding intensity to moments of great lyrical beauty. It is among the most impressive keyboard works of the entire 17th century: its harmonic language, its feeling for long-range architecture within a theoretically free form, and the quality of its emotional concentration are all exceptional. Virtually every performer who records the complete Couperin keyboard works treats this prelude as the culminating statement of the entire output.
  The Prélude in B minor is best prepared by learning the harmonic progression from beginning to end before committing to any rhythmic interpretation. Play through it as slow, evenly-paced chords until you know every harmonic arrival and departure. Then — and only then — begin to add rhythmic shaping. The slur marks are your guide to groupings and breath points. Build the performance from an understanding of the harmonic structure, not from mimicking another player's rhythm. Every good performance of this piece sounds different and none of them is wrong.
• French Baroque harpsichord style English
  The French Baroque harpsichord tradition of the mid-17th century, to which Louis Couperin belongs, is characterised by: unmeasured preludes, elaborate ornamentation, the suite as the primary formal unit, and a highly refined treatment of harmonic tension and resolution. The ornaments (ports de voix, tremblemens, coulés) are not decorations but structural elements that create the rhythmic and expressive life of the music. The notation of this period typically under-specifies rhythm and dynamics, leaving much to the performer's knowledge of the conventions. Couperin's teacher Chambonnières established the style, which Louis Couperin and d'Anglebert both extended before it reached its mature expression in François Couperin's four Livres de pièces de clavecin (1713–1730).
  When approaching French Baroque keyboard music from a modern piano background, three adjustments are essential. First: ornamentation. The trills begin on the upper note (the note above the written note) in French practice of this period, not on the written note as in German practice. Second: inégalité. In flowing passages of equal-looking notes, the convention requires that the first of each pair is lengthened and the second shortened — a lilting, gently dotted effect. Third: registration/tone. The harpsichord cannot crescendo. All dynamic shaping comes from rhythmic and harmonic emphasis, not key pressure. On piano, aim for a clean, articulate sound with varied touch.
• Tombeau French
  A French Baroque keyboard genre — a memorial piece written in honour of a recently deceased person, typically a musician or aristocratic patron. The tombeau emerged from the lute tradition in the early 17th century and was adopted by harpsichordists. Louis Couperin's Tombeau de M. de Blancrocher, written for the lutenist François Blancrocher (died 1652), is the most celebrated keyboard tombeau of the period: notated in unmeasured whole notes, it achieves a profound concentration of grief through slow, chromatically rich harmonies and bold dissonances. Denis Gaultier, Froberger, and others also wrote tombeaux for Blancrocher, making it one of the most memorialised deaths in early Baroque music history.
  The tombeau must move very slowly — the whole-note notation invites a tempo that approaches stillness. Let each chord sound fully before moving on; the dissonances should hurt slightly — that is their purpose. There is no need to 'perform' grief: play the harmony clearly and simply and the music will do its work. On piano, a very gentle touch with the sustain pedal will carry the harmony while allowing each new dissonance to register clearly against what has come before.
• Unmeasured prelude (prélude non mesuré) French
  A type of keyboard prelude unique to 17th-century French music in which the piece is notated entirely in whole notes with no bar lines, time signature, or durational indications other than slurs or ties. The performer is given complete freedom to interpret the rhythm, creating a spontaneous, improvisatory effect. Louis Couperin is the most important composer of these pieces: he left about thirteen, ranging from brief key-establishing preludes to the extended, harmonically adventurous Prélude in B minor. The notation derives from lute tablature practice and reflects the French practice of préluder — improvising a prelude before a formal piece.
  Learning an unmeasured prelude is fundamentally different from learning a normal piece of keyboard music. There is no fixed rhythm to learn — the slur marks indicate phrasing and harmonic groupings, not duration. Begin by playing the whole notes as chords, slowly and deliberately, hearing each harmony before moving on. Then apply duration freely: long notes where the harmony is rich and resonant, shorter notes where the music moves purposefully. Listen to several different performances and notice how radically they differ: this is correct. The goal is to sound as if you are improvising the piece in the moment.