Prelude in A-flat minor, Op. 31 No. 8: Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer, by Alkan
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Get the practice plan for Prelude in A-flat minor, Op. 31 No. 8: Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (37 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 2 big beats to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in A♭ minor. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: A♭m, E♭, E♭7 and A♭. Play each one as a block in your left hand and say its name, so you know what the harmony is before the left hand has to move.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 37 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (56 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (about 2 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
Alkan's 25 Preludes, Op. 31 walk through every major and minor key, and this is the eighth: the song of a madwoman by the sea. The left hand stays almost the whole time in the very bottom of the keyboard, rolling like surf, while a thin tune floats far above it with nothing in between.
How to play it
Keep the deep bass chords soft and blurred together, more sea than harmony, and never let them swallow the melody. The empty space between the hands is the point, so resist filling it with pedal thunder.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
Edition: Mutopia Project #2232, licensed CC BY-SA. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Alkan sheet music
Who Alkan was
French virtuoso who was, by the account of everyone who heard him, the equal of Liszt and Chopin, and who withdrew almost entirely from public life for decades at a time. What he wrote in that retreat is some of the most difficult music ever put on paper, including a concerto and a symphony for solo piano with no orchestra anywhere near them. He was a scholar of Hebrew and lived surrounded by books. The story that a falling bookcase killed him is a myth that has comfortably outlived his music, which deserves better.
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including A♭ minor.