Almost six years ago, passing an idle night at a different sort of keyboard, I wrote a little number I came to call the “Raindropédienne” and which surprised me by becoming one of the more popular pieces I had on Last.FM. The name is a stitching together of the titles of Chopin’s “Raindrop” prelude with Satie’s first “Gympnopédie” and “Gnossienne”, as the music itself brings the three together. It is, in its way, a sort of classical “mash-up”.

The first and final third take a transposition of the opening melody of Chopin’s prelude in the right hand and set it over a bass in the left like that Satie used in his first Gnossienne. The midsection has two parts: in the first, the right hand opens with a transposition of the Gnossienne melody which transforms in the second part to the melodic form of the Gympnopédie; the bass follows the midsection bass of the molto tenuto movement in the prelude. In the original release, that was the whole of it. Playing about today, I chose to transpose the first and third part to a different key, and I brought in the long neglected ostinato that gave the original prelude its popular nickname.

It’s only a small novelty, but perhaps some will enjoy it.

(Source: danieldockery.com)