Ballade No.1, Op.23
Ballade · in G minor · Op. 23
Frédéric Chopin 1810–1849
G minor
Key
Ballade
Form
Largo, Moderato
Tempo
Op. 23
Catalogue
Score
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Themes & character
Narrative arc·Heroic yearning·Waltz-like tenderness·Tempestuous coda
At a glance
- Catalogue
- Op. 23
- Key
- G minor
- Tempo / character
- Largo, Moderato
- Form
- Ballade
About the piece
The first of Chopin's four ballades, composed between 1831 and 1835 and dedicated to Baron Nathaniel von Stockhausen, the Hanoverian ambassador in Paris. It was the piece that established the ballade, until then a literary and vocal form, as a genre for solo piano.
It reads like a wordless story, opening with a rising declamatory call before settling into a wistful main theme. From there it grows steadily more turbulent, gathering its ideas up and transforming them, until it breaks into a headlong presto coda that is one of the most thrilling and difficult endings in the Romantic repertoire.
The composer
Frédéric Chopin
1810–1849
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the early Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading composer of his era whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".
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