Royalty Free Romantic Chamber Music

Description: The trio of Fr�d�ric Chopin's Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31 transports us into what seems like another world, not just into a new tonal sphere. The Arcadia into which the trio carries us takes three different characters in turn. The first barely marks its presence, with just a few bars of a bucolic sicilienne. The second embodiment of Arcadia is of a waltz-like character, singing and swinging; Chopin has it sung by four different voices at once. The third incarnation of carefree Arcadia also pulls us into the whirl of a waltz, of a ritornel character.

Description: The Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39, in C-sharp minor by Fr�d�ric Chopin, completed in 1839, was written in the abandoned monastery of Valldemossa on the Balearic island of Majorca, Spain. This is the most terse, ironic, and tightly constructed of the four scherzos, with an almost Beethovenian grandeur. The music is given over to a wild frenzy, mysteriously becalmed, then erupting a moment later with a return of the aggressive octaves.

Description: The trio of Fr�d�ric Chopin's Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31 transports us into what seems like another world, not just into a new tonal sphere. The Arcadia into which the trio carries us takes three different characters in turn. The first barely marks its presence, with just a few bars of a bucolic sicilienne. The second embodiment of Arcadia is of a waltz-like character, singing and swinging; Chopin has it sung by four different voices at once. The third incarnation of carefree Arcadia also pulls us into the whirl of a waltz, of a ritornel character.

Description: The Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39, in C-sharp minor by Fr�d�ric Chopin, completed in 1839, was written in the abandoned monastery of Valldemossa on the Balearic island of Majorca, Spain. This is the most terse, ironic, and tightly constructed of the four scherzos, with an almost Beethovenian grandeur. The music is given over to a wild frenzy, mysteriously becalmed, then erupting a moment later with a return of the aggressive octaves.

Description: After the pungent, robust motives of the principal theme of the Scherzo, played fortissimo and risoluto in double octaves, like a voice from another realm comes the focused, austere music of a chorale, interspersed with airy passages of beguiling sonorities. The chorale returns many times over, and with it those airy garlands of sound. As its song is reprised, it slips from the hard E major into the gentle, but sad and mysterious (uttered sotto voce), E minor. This altered theme concludes with question marks, imbued with mystery and expectation, soaring upwards in the utmost silence. And we have the most beautiful moment in the whole of the Scherzo: the apotheosis of the chorale. Through a sequence of chords that progress calmly upwards (now in C sharp major), the music attains ecstasy.

Description: The Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31 was composed and published in 1837. Schumann compared this scherzo to a Byronic poem, "so overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love and contempt." The renowned sotto voce opening was a question and the second phrase the answer. For Chopin it was never questioning enough, never soft enough, never vaulted enough. It must be a charnel-house. In popular culture, the piece is heard in the Woody Woodpecker episode "Musical Moments."

Description: The Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31 was composed and published in 1837. Schumann compared this scherzo to a Byronic poem, "so overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love and contempt." The renowned sotto voce opening was a question and the second phrase the answer. For Chopin it was never questioning enough, never soft enough, never vaulted enough. It must be a charnel-house. In popular culture, the piece is heard in the Woody Woodpecker episode "Musical Moments."

Description: The Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39, in C-sharp minor by Fr�d�ric Chopin, completed in 1839, was written in the abandoned monastery of Valldemossa on the Balearic island of Majorca, Spain. This is the most terse, ironic, and tightly constructed of the four scherzos, with an almost Beethovenian grandeur. The music is given over to a wild frenzy, mysteriously becalmed, then erupting a moment later with a return of the aggressive octaves.

Description: The Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39, in C-sharp minor by Fr�d�ric Chopin, completed in 1839, was written in the abandoned monastery of Valldemossa on the Balearic island of Majorca, Spain. This is the most terse, ironic, and tightly constructed of the four scherzos, with an almost Beethovenian grandeur. The music is given over to a wild frenzy, mysteriously becalmed, then erupting a moment later with a return of the aggressive octaves.

Description: After the pungent, robust motives of the principal theme of the Scherzo, played fortissimo and risoluto in double octaves, like a voice from another realm comes the focused, austere music of a chorale, interspersed with airy passages of beguiling sonorities. The chorale returns many times over, and with it those airy garlands of sound. As its song is reprised, it slips from the hard E major into the gentle, but sad and mysterious (uttered sotto voce), E minor. This altered theme concludes with question marks, imbued with mystery and expectation, soaring upwards in the utmost silence. And we have the most beautiful moment in the whole of the Scherzo: the apotheosis of the chorale. Through a sequence of chords that progress calmly upwards (now in C sharp major), the music attains ecstasy.