Music Mosaic - Chopin

Here is the music piece which I have chosen to do this assignment about:

Here are eight mosaics which go with the music:

For this assignment I chose to use Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 15, also commonly referred to as the “Raindrops Prelude.”  The piece begins very lightly on the piano, and sounds as if raindrops are falling onto something, be it a lake, or a puddle, or your head. 

With the first mosaic, I wanted to illustrate the rain by using diagonal lines, and then illustrate the puddle by having an organic form. I decided to take a photo of water on the windshield of my car (as it had rained previously), and then I composited that onto the puddle to give it a more added sense that it is water.  

In Dillard’s essay, she states that sight is only a template of the reality that we perceive, and that our other senses form the window into really discovering the reality around us. Chopin’s music has a very rhythmic pattern to it, which mostly stays consistent throughout the piece. I wanted to incorporate this into a mosaic somehow, and so I made a pattern. But the whole song doesn’t just go on in a predictable way, as it ends with a very solidary high note (not perfectly sure which note it is, but I digress). I incorporated this into the mosaic by filling in part of the pattern, which was not done in any other place, and thus unexpected, just like one of the ending notes of Chopin’s song. 

One of the constants in the song is the bass line, which feels like it has a constant rhythm throughout. This I indicate by using a solid, strong line across the bottom of my next mosaic, running throughout the piece. Another thing that I got from the Dillard essay is that people should stop to smell the roses, figuratively speaking. Notice the small things in life. Really see them, because every little thing matters, and is there for a reason. As the music swells and crescendos, I feel like there is conflict evident, and so I used red in my next mosaic to illustrate that. The bass line, as stated above, feels like a constant pattern, but the conflict is happening in the upper notes. Thus, the grey and red paint conflicting with each other, and seemingly overlapping, but while still in harmony with each other. 

The music piece feels fluid, but at times there are interjections .Thus, I used many curved lines and organic shapes, but I nearly always interjected those natural lines with very straight and rigid shapes, helping to illustrate the point that, while harmony is present, conflict is also present.