seminal, case, the observation serves to introduce us to a general
understanding of these pieces. For if a prelude in the earlier sense
is intended to establish a mood, and these preludes succeed only in
doing that (in the sense of omitting the presumably more impor-
tant matter to follow), then the whole notion of setting mood, of
striking poses, is thrown into stark relief.

Indeed, emotional and stylistic mood is the very hallmark of the
nineteenth century, the romantic style. The prior periods featured
in some variety their own allowable moods, but the nineteenth
century specializes in it--starting, of course, with the emotionally
charged moods of Beethoven, and typified most simply by the
feeling-laden world of grand opera, ballet, and tone poem. In the
Chopin preludes we have twenty-four distinct moods, each in
miniature. The group as a whole may stand almost as a summary
of the imaginable mood types available to the romantic composer,
a veritable museum of the expressive possibilities opening up to
the composer in Chopin's century.

Taken as a whole, the preludes present each mood attempted,
posed, considered, and then dropped delicately as the silence
between the pieces ushers in the next, while also setting to rest
the previous. So we find among these types the combative, the
brooding, the proud, the tender, the skittish, and so forth: words
being plainly inadequate, even in the introspective sense, to cap-
ture their emotionally concrete suggestions. They may likewise
be seen as experiments in musical surface, in the formation of sur-
face expressive of a certain frame of musical attitude or mind.
One may be enigmatic, another despairing, another jubilant, and
the like.

The question of the organic unity and status of the collection--
are these preludes twenty-four pieces, or one (in twenty-four
parts)?--is not just interesting, but perhaps unique. Clues to an
answer may lie in comparison with other like groupings. Chopin
himself, as any piano student knows, wrote pieces in clusters, the
title--indicating a "type"--held in common. Thus there are the
waltzes, the mazurkas, and so forth, where "the" ought really to
appear in quotes, to cast doubt on the significance of the grouping
as any more than a convenience. When we hear in succession a
number of his waltzes, say, we experience one and then another of
a certain kind of piece; they don't fit together as much as simply

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