Let’s get the name out of the way first. Chopin didn’t title the piece “Raindrop,” nor did he give catchy nicknames to any of his other preludes. The names were given later by a fan named Hans von Bülow. Chopin’s actual title of this piece is “12 Préludes, Opus 28 Number 15 in D-Flat Major.” That’s not very memorable, though, so von Bülow’s name stuck.
The most conspicuous feature of this prelude is the near-constant A-flat/G-sharp pedal point. It’s a gentle pulse in the first and last sections, but it builds to a relentless pounding in the middle section. George Sand told a story about Chopin writing the piece on a rainy day, or in response to a rainy day, but that is probably not true. Another theory is that Chopin was trying to symbolize the tolling of a bell to evoke death coming for us all. Maybe so, but the likeliest explanation is that the pedal point just sounds good, and that it evokes too many different feelings and associations to be neatly expressible by language. I mean, if you could verbally convey the meaning of music, you wouldn’t need the music. Rather than trying to figure out what the pedal “represents,” it makes more sense to me to understand the prelude as being about the idea of pedal point.
I was confused when I read that the first and last sections of the prelude are in D-flat major, but that the middle section is in C-sharp minor. Switching between major and minor keys on the same root is a common compositional technique–you can hear it in the Bach Chaconne too. But why didn’t Chopin write the middle part in D-flat minor? Or write the first and last parts in C-sharp major? Either way, it would sound exactly the same. The reason has nothing to do with how the music sounds; it’s a practical issue with key signatures. D-flat major has five flats, whereas C-sharp major has seven sharps, so D-flat major is less annoying to write and read. Conversely, C-sharp minor has only four sharps, whereas D-flat minor has six flats and a double flat–it shares the same horrifying key signature as F-flat major. So you can see why Chopin would rather write in C-sharp minor.
The first eight bars of the prelude alternate back and forth between the I and V chords in D-flat major, Db and Ab7. The melody has a nursery-rhyme-like simplicity, aside from a few ninths and thirteenths on the V chord. At measure 9, there’s a neat modulation as the chord changes from Ab7 to Abm, the V chord in D-flat major moving to the ii chord in G-flat major. Two bars later, there’s another Abm, but this time it feels like the tonic in the key of A-flat minor. Then there’s a lovely haunting passage that takes us through E-flat minor to a long stay in B-flat minor. The turns on the V chords here make you really feel the European-ness. The rhythms stay simple until the end of measure 23, when Chopin uses a classic Chopin-ism, jamming too many chromatic embellishments into the bar than are supposed to fit, to create a weird tuplet.
In measure 27, the drama starts to intensify. You’re waiting for the Ab7 chord to resolve back to Db, but it doesn’t, it just hangs in the air. When it does finally resolve in measure 28, you don’t land back in warm, sunny D-flat major; instead, you’re plunged into the icy waters of C-sharp minor, where you’ll be staying until measure 75. Why is this section so cinematic? It isn’t just the minor key or slow, simple rhythms. It’s the specific way that Chopin voices these chords. The official classical music term is “horn fifths,” but rock musicians like me know a better name: power chords. Chopin uses the power chords to do simple walks up and down the C-sharp minor scale, but he starts and ends the phrases in unexpected spots in the bar, so you’re constantly feeling unsettled.
At measure 40, Chopin moves into relative E major. However, it feels more tragic than happy, especially when he quickly jumps over to G-sharp minor. At measure 60, the melody climbs up above the pedal point. The feeling is kind of triumphant, but mostly adds to the pathos. There’s a clangingly dissonant minor chord with an added second at measure 62 that will get repeated several times in the passage that follows. Even though the piece ends with a reassuring return to D-flat major, it’s the dramatic minor part that sticks with you.
The prelude’s epic grandeur of makes it a favorite of film music supervisors. It appears in Moonraker, Shine, Kurosawa’s Dreams, Face/Off, Margin Call, Prometheus, and this ridiculous video game ad.
As with so much of Chopin’s music, the surprising rhythmic phrasing is easier to hear over a metronomic grid and some breakbeats.
Bouillabaise Sky points out a similarity between the minor section of the prelude and Gershwin’s Prelude No. 2 in C Sharp Minor. I don’t know whether Gershwin intended this as an homage or not, but it seems pretty likely.
If, like me, you enjoy a good pedal point, here’s some more recommended listening. First, here’s Henry Purcell’s “Fantasia Upon One Note,” supposedly written because he had a friend who wasn’t a good musician but who wanted to participate in a performance:
Like Chopin, Purcell’s pedal is on scale degree five. This is a good place to put your pedal, because it fits with both the tonic and dominant, as well as many other chords.
Bach did tons of pedal point, though his pedals don’t usually have a long duration. The prelude to the G major cello suite has some good examples, especially toward the end.
Much as I loathe Wagner, I do appreciate the opening minutes of Das Rheingold, a long slow build on an E-flat pedal.
Ravel’s “Le Gibet” does the “pedal tone as church bell” metaphor literally, to nightmarish effect.
Stockhausen’s “Stimmung” is kind of a pedal point, in that it’s all about the harmonics of a single note, held out for more than an hour and a quarter.
Pedal tones are common in modern jazz, particularly in the work of Coltrane (both John and Alice.) For example, listen to “Naima.”
Funk and soul musicians do a ton of pedal tone too. The coolest and weirdest example I can think of is Stevie Wonder’s “Too High.”
In Hindustani classical music and other drone-based musics, everything has a “pedal.” It’s generally easier to do pedals and drones in loop-based music, where the whole point is to create an open-ended mood rather than a linear narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end. In Western classical music, pedals are hard to sustain for any length of time, because they intrinsically conflict with the goal of linear harmonic progression. Chopin’s prelude can only use a lot of pedal because the piece is so short and harmonically static. In groove-based music, on the other hand, pedals are effortless. Jazz organists like Jimmy Smith routinely hold extended pedals out when they’re improvising, which you can only do confidently when you know they aren’t going to fight the chords too hard.
Leave me your recommendations for more classical (and non-classical) pedals and drones in the comments.