Five Preludes for piano solo

Five Preludes for piano were composed from 2008 to 2016 and have a special meaning for me. This is the first time I have written an Opus number.

Prelude no.1 was composed in 2008 as 4 voices homework for my harmony classed. After the lesson, my professor advised me to arrange it for solo piano. Therefore, I changed it into a piano version, lengthened it a bit and entitled “Prelude for piano”. Composed in ABA form, it is lightly jazzy style combined with various piano technique.

This work of F major shows variety of harmony colours mainly thanks to chords and bitonal chords which were added between phrases. However, the melody is simple since I wanted it to be recognized easily.

Prelude no.2 and no.3 were composed after the prelude no.1 in 2008 in one set format for the premiere concert. No.1 is moderato, no.2 is grave, quite heavy, and no.3 is presto like finale, like virtuoso.
Prelude no.2 has very slow tempo with a perfect 4th melody, like monotone style. This work is slightly oriental, because I used pentatonic scale which is typical for traditional Korean music. It does not have the third chord in the harmony, so the 5th or 4th chords are used a lot. Indeed, I chose a complex chord which overlapped the pitch of the perfect fourth.

You can really feel there the beauty of the long echo sound characteristic for traditional Korean music.
Prelude no.3 makes us think about virtuoso, has a rhythmical impact and fast passage resembling to finale.

No.4 is recollection of my being a child. Unfortunately, I have many sad memories from my childhood. I was alone, had heavy situation and the time went so slowly. In the composition, I repeated the bass note with a very slow tempo of the flow of time, expressing the nothingness and emptiness that I felt then. And the bass major chord in the middle of the piece reminded me of the eager message of "Give me the light". I also listened to Chopin Prelude for piano no.4 every day to ease the melancholy, but, the piece being short, I had to press “repeat” on the cd player many, many times. Then I thought "Ah! I would like to rewrite it a bit longer, what if chord was a major? ". Then, I wrote the tempo extremely slow and major chords in repeating part.

Prelude no.5 is simple minimal music. Many composers write their works in a minimal style. In my case, the minimal element is also a frequent musical tool for most of my works. For me, minimal means "communication", because repetition and simplification are believed to be "unity", "recognition", and "memory". I think it is a way to easily convey a somehow metaphorical and abstract expression of modern music to audience.