November

23/11/2023: Maurice Ravel ⋅ Le Tombeau de Couperin

Maurice Ravel was a French composer. The title "Le Tombeau de Couperin" translates to "the grave of Couperin". While tombeau means tomb in French, it was also a popular term (in the 17th century) to refer to a musical composition that is in memory of someone's death. Here, Couperin is thought to be François Couperin, a French Baroque composer from the 17th century (the Couperin family is itself a musical family, much of the members are famous composers as well). However, Ravel did not write this piece in memory of Couperin, but instead in memory of his friends that died in WW1 while he served in the army. The piece does incorporate Barqoue elements, which is why Couperin's name shows up.

The piece is divided into six parts: Prélude: 0:00, Fugue: 3:02, Forlane: 6:02, Rigaudon: 12:11, Menuet: 15:17, Toccata: 20:16. With each part corresponding to specific people (my favorite is prelude).

11/11/2023: Frédéric Chopin ⋅ Étude Op. 25, No. 5

This piece is also often nicknamed "Wrong Note", the reason for it is apparent once you start listening to the song (and if you have a bit of a musical ear). Chopin intentionally plays the "wrong note", creating a dissonance, a phenomenon where the sounds of two notes sort of clash and don't sound nice together. Chopin however quickly switches back to playing the correct note, making things sound nice again. He repeats this pattern for the first part of the song, and for those of you that can read sheet music you can see this in action below:

This etude, and many other classical songs, were made popular by the anime "Your lie in April" ⋅ 四月は君の嘘. The video above in particular is a performance of "Wrong Note" from the anime's soundtrack: ”四月は君の嘘　僕と君との音楽帳”. I played the piano as a kid and that was what got me into watching this anime and exploring more about classical music. There are many more interesting pieces I've run into as a result, which I'll try to post here at some point.