A short while back, I came upon this very funny and inspiring TED talk by conductor/cellist/composer/pianist/educator/comedian Benjamin Zander:

Some thoughts of my own:

One of the several reasons “the c makes the b sad” is that, in the symbolic language of Classical Music, the descending semitone figure (in this instance, c” to b’) signifies a sigh – probably a kind of musical onomatopoesis.  Another sadness-related interval in this piece is the descending tritone (here, c” to f#’), symbolic of a sob (more musical onomatopoesis, more than likely…); though filled in, and somewhat obscured by the emphasis on b’, this interval is still pretty prominent, since c” is the highest tone of the opening section, and since it’s on the arrival at f#’ that the first section ends, and the melody turns around and starts over. 

Even more striking is something that the composer (that would be Frédéric Chopin) leaves out, namely the picardy third at the very end of the piece.  In Classical Music, compositions in the minor modes will often end on a major chord, both for a better resolution (from a purely acoustic point of view, that is, since major chords more closely track the overtone series), and for a slight sense of uplift in spite of all the preceding dolorosity.  But Chopin concludes this piece on a very dark e-minor chord, voiced in the mid-range of the piano but, with the root reinforced in an octave much deeper down, probably symbolizing a kind of deep rest in sadness.  All of which is particularly poignant, since e-major (the chord on which the music would have ended up had Chopin deployed the aforementioned picardy third) is generally used as a symbol of heaven. 

(For more on this symbolic musical language, mostly skipped over in musicological discourse and pedagogy on this side of the Atlantic – though I’m sure Zander is cognizant of it, due to his having been born, brought up, and educated in England – see The Language of Music, by the British musicologist/critic/composer Deryck Cooke; there is also what a very interesting-looking series of twenty-four articles about the the closely-related subject of the feelings and emotions generally associated with the various keys of Classical Music, as derived from the theories of Austrian pianist/composer/educator Ernst Pauer, at a website called Interlude.)

Also note how, in this piece, the slow, ultra-simple, almost oscillating, melodic figures in the right hand seem to subtly change pitch as the underlying chords played by the left hand shift slowly downward.  Said shifting is also worthy of note, since, rather than going from one discrete chord to another, the harmonic texture transforms gradually, almost one tone at a time (I’ve sometimes heard this referred to as “the creepy-crawly technique”…). 

Finally, if this music sounds familiar, it’s because just about everybody who studies piano under conventional pedagogy learns it at some point or another. Since popular music is full of people who’ve studied piano that way, various bits and pieces of this composition have been percolating out into the wider world for at least the past century. 

(The piece under discussion here is Chopin’s Prelude, Opus 28, Number 4 (often known as the E Minor Prelude or Prelude in E Minor), for more on which, click here and here; for the score, click here.  For Benjamin Zander’s own website, click here; for more Benjamin Zander on YouTube, click here.)