Ch.V. Alkan - Le chemin de fer Op. 27 (Sheet+Audio) (Yui Morishita)

Le chemin de fer (French for "the railway" or "the railroad"), Op. 27, is a programmatic étude for piano composed by Charles-Valentin Alkan in 1844,[1] frequently cited as the first musical representation of a railway.[2][3] It is a perpetuum mobile composition at an extremely fast tempo, in D minor,[3] and performance at tempo lasts approximately five minutes.[4]
The composition is marked vivacissimamente (extremely brisk, from vivace),[5] 112 half notes per minute. The first theme is sixteenth notes accompanied by a repetitive ostinato bass in eighth notes, illustrating the fleeting steam locomotive.[3] The second is a more lightweight melody that appears first in the submediant major, B-flat major, then in C major, still comprising just sixteenth notes, which depicts the happy journey of the passengers.[6] The only respite from the torrent comes at the coda, in which the note durations lengthen and the piece comes to a close, portraying the train pulling into a station.[4] The piece's length, in printing (506 measures), not performance (5 minutes), is humorously referred to as describing a very long trip.[7]