ABSTRACT
In this twentieth-century view, Chopin was a trendsetter who dropped the main dish and kept only the appetizer, blazing a trail for the sets of preludes by Debussy, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, and many others. Lamentably, Liszt neither elaborated his point further nor provides any details explaining Chopin's innovation. The terseness of Chopin's preludes creates, however, a different kind of predicamenta pragmatic rather than aesthetic or structural one. Preludes were routinely improvised, even on monophonic instruments, such as the flute, and not only before an entire composition but also, quite often, before each movement of a sonata. Only some of the printed preludes were intended for specific companion pieces mentioned in the prelude title; these preludes usually incorporated thematic ideas from the following main piece. The vast majority of published preludes were thematically neutral. Furthermore, continues Kramer, taken as a gestural sequence, the twenty-four preludes sound like an exaltation of random association.
