Everett’s Elegant Conceit With Twists
In a new poetry collection, Sonnets for a Missing Key and some others, Percival Everett uniquely performs the Preludes of Chopin. Chopin composed these pieces for the piano, but Everett reimagines how they might sound in poetry.
If poetry is Everett’s instrument, this book is not Everett’s live, onstage performance. Rather, it’s a carefully produced studio recording. I visualize Sonnets for a Missing Key and some others as a two-CD set. When I put on disc one, I’m getting 23 tracks of Everett playing deep, measured, and resonant Petrarchan sonnets. When I switch to disc two, I get to hear Everett speed things up Art Tatum style1 . He plays jazzy, rhythmic couplets, composing 23 lighter, airier, faster tracks that come together as quintets and sestets.
Despite the collection’s distinct two sections, in this post, I’m going to focus only on the sonnets section. Perhaps, I’ll get into the couplets (which I loved) another time soon.
The Missing Sonnet
Everett’s opening sonnets are all uniquely paired with a different Prelude by Chopin. The thing is, there’s one missing! Chopin composed 24 Preludes, and Everett only wrote 23 sonnets, purposefully leaving one Prelude out.
In this post, I’m going to focus on the sonnets section, the first part of Everett’s new book of poetry.
Figuring out the missing Prelude (it’s Prelude No. 1 in C Major) was relatively easy. Understanding the reason it was left out has been tough though. Honestly, the mental gymnastics of it all has give me a little sense of déjà vu. If you’ve read The Trees by Percival Everett, you might recall that it has two missing parts. Traci Thomas and Lisa Lucas discussed this detail on The Stacks Pod, In a spoiler free reflection on missing chapters in The Trees, Traci captures my feelings exactly:
“Did you happen to notice that there are two missing chapters? There’s no chapter 74, and there’s no chapter 104, and I truly have no clue what to make of that. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if I’m supposed to know what that means.“
Ep. 234 The Trees by Percival Everett — The Stacks Book Club (Lisa Lucas)
Everett wrote 23 sonnets. Chopin composed 24 Preludes. There’s a missing sonnet, as the title of the collection suggests.
Figuring Out the Pairings
Pairing Everett’s sonnets with Preludes is not an entirely straightforward process. Chopin not only numbered his Preludes, he used a well-known musical theory to sequence them. Everett’s methodology, on the other hand, is still murky to me. He does not assign numbers to his sonnets, nor does he follow Chopin’s original order. I would love to figure out the rhyme and reason of Everett’s sonnet order one day.
All that said, marrying Chopin’s Preludes with Everett’s sonnets is not an impossible task. All it takes is looking at the key signatures in the titles. For example, Everett’s first sonnet is called “A Minor,” and Chopin’s second Prelude is played in A Minor. I felt pretty confident saying they went together because of this shared trait of the key of A Minor.
I would love to figure out the rhyme and reason to Everett’s sonnet order one day.
The Information You’ve Been Waiting For
Below is a list of Everett’s sonnets in the order they appear. Next to each sonnet, I’ve listed the Prelude by Chopin with the matching key signature.
It’s important to note, in the list below, that both Everett and Chopin do not repeat key signatures. They created 24 unique pieces that were intended to explore what the different musical keys emote.
Annotation Tips
I wrote all this information down in my copy on the table of contents page. If you don’t want to write this all down in your book, I recommend copying and pasting the information into a document so that you can print it and keep it in your book.
“Sonnets” & Preludes List
“A Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 2 in A minor, Lento
“Bb Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 21 in Bb Major, Cantabile.
“F♯ Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 13 in F♯ Major, Lento.
“G Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 3 in G Major, Vivace.
“Eb Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 14 in Eb Major, Allegro.
“Ab Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 17 in Ab Major, Allegretto.
“G Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 22 in G Minor, Molto Agitato.
“E Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 4 in E Minor, Largo.
“C♯ Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 10 in C♯ Minor, Allegro molto.
“B major” goes with Op. 28: No. 11 in B Major, Vivace.
“Eb Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 19 in Eb Major, Vivace.
“D Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 5 in D Major, Allegro molto.
“F Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 18 in F Minor, Allegro motto.
TRICKY ONE: “Ab Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 12 G♯ Minor, Presto.
Everett is possibly invoking enharmonics here. It can be said that his Prelude is played in either Ab Minor or G♯ Minor. These two key signatures share the same exact keys on the piano, even though the names are different.
“E Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 9 E Major, Largo.
“F♯ Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 8 in F♯ Minor, Molto agitato.
“C Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 20 in C Minor, Largo.
“B Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 6 in B Minor, Lento assai.
“D Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 24 in D Minor, Allegro appassionato.
“F Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 23 in F Major, Moderato.
“Bb Minor” goes with Op. 28: No. 16 in Bb Minor, Presto con fuoco.
TRICKY ONE: “C♯ Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 15 in Db Major, Sostenuto.
Everett is possibly invoking enharmonics again here. C♯ Major” is equivalent to Db Major.
“A Major” goes with Op. 28: No. 7 in A Major, Andantino.
Thank You for Reading
When I first heard about Percival Everett’s musically-inspired poetry collection, I could not wait for the book-music experience that it promised. I love the way books and music intersect, so much so that I always annotate music when I read–no matter the genre. What a joy to annotate something as musically infused as this poetry collection!
- Art Tatum was Everett’s other musical inspiration for this work, as cited on the back cover. ↩︎
Annotate With Sara 