ABSTRACT

By the end of September 1841, Chopin had finished the Prelude Op. 45 and was negotiating its release with Maurice Schlesinger in Paris and Pietro Mechetti in Viending it latter wanted a work for an album of ‘morceaux brillants’ destined to raise funds for the Beethoven monument in Bonn, and although Chopin had initially offered his new Polonaise Op. 44, Mechetti thought this too grandiose for the collection. As for the genre title of Op. 45, the views of musicologists and commentators have differed for more than a century. While Frederick Niecks finds the term ‘prelude’ more appropriate for this work than for Op. 28, Arthur Hedley and Jim Samson are inclined to group it with the Nocturnes. Although a systematic survey of Op. 45’s reception is neither possible nor desirable here, certain salient assessments are nevertheless worth citing.