Prelude and Fugue In A minor

Loved it; the prelude more than the fugue this time. I wonder if your idea for your set of preludes & fugues is to have a few linking ideas? I only ask because I notice that this piece uses some ideas from the previous entry, though in a slightly different way; e.g., in the prelude, the third-runs and the soprano figure used in the mss. 30-31 as well as places in the fugue, to name but a couple.

Not necessarily - the thirds are probably ingrained in my idiom, and the soprano figure in ms.31 is a development of the main theme (see the four note ascending scale, and the notes after). That, and tritone "oscillations" - although this occurs only once in the C major fugue.

Was the fugue disappointing? I supposed I got too carried away towards the end ...

Well, you know me, and, so, that I can't exactly dish out any perspicacious comments; but I can certainly give my opinion, if that interests you.

What I meant about this figure is that it appears in both pieces as part of the development. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but it stuck out to me; not that it's in any way a bad thing.

I don't like to say it, but I didn't think that the fugue was nearly as engaging as the prelude was. It seemed, to me, to, kind of, plod along, without much to grab your interest, before oddly shifting into much faster repeated chords for the end, in contrast to its prelude which I thought was extremely interesting and attention-grabbing and ran smoothly back into the first section nearing the end.

I liked the prelude more as well. I agree with what wayne says, but it may also be because the fugue is so complex. I could easily hear the form of the prelude, while I had a hard enough time following the sheet music for the fugue, much less playing attention to all the things you listed in the description.

I think writing things that are too hard is a legitimate criticism, even though this is playable. I am basically repeating myself with this review. I'll leave with a verbal rating: pretty kinda awesome.

I don't exactly expect anyone to do an analysis here, which is why I've always spoilered my comments on the fugue's structure - thus it should be a foregone conclusion that I do want your opinion ...

Yes, but it's not in any way intentional. I suppose one tends to reuse motifs and melodies.

Fair enough - I have thought of that myself. The drop in speed from the prelude is meant to be a shock - a preparation for the more exciting second fugue. To me it is un-interesting in the sense that I do not develop the subject directly with the old ways (augmentation, inversion), but by fragmenting the two themes and developing those fragments in the episodes, and at that speed each episode would take up a considerable amount of time (plodding, yes, sluggish even, but at least you cannot complain about the absence of slow sections ). The same probably applies (except speed) to the second fugue, until we see a massive influx of free counterpoint material from circa ms 81 to the end. The return to the recapitulation, however, does bother me a little - if anything was unintentionally abrupt or disjointed, this would be it. My plan was such that the final section is to be the climax of the entire prelude and fugue, but from your remarks it probably did not work out as well as I had hoped for ...

I hate the fact you cannot edit stuff now!

Everything is very well playable - I think you can play the prelude (please with lumps of sugar! ) - until the last half (83 onwards) of the fugue, which is, well, a bitch to play, and intentionally so. There are many tempo nuances which would make the coda more manageable that i have not included in the score - e.g. an agogic accent on the first quaver of ms 151. Or you could just substitute the entire section from 119 with an A minor chord

I want the prelude. Send me the prelude, I really want to learn it. I was less into the fugue. It was a good fugue, just much interesting than the prelude. I definitely enjoyed both works though, they fit together really well. I enjoyed it. That intro to the third part seems a bit disjointed, and somewhat of an odd place to go, although I can hear you are trying to tie in the fugue to the prelude, I don't really think it's necessary. I felt the natural build up of the fugue was good enough. In any case, nice piece!

The fugue is ingenious, clever and well constructed. But that has never been the issue. I think. It is is cerebral exercise, and when I listened to it for the first time I was not ready to swallow that. Maybe this explains the peoples preference of the prelude over the fugue? Just guessing here.

But Ok, when you are prepared to get the brain working, you can see it is well crafted. What remains are some musical/form issues I have.

The effect of the first tonerow-subject, is lack of harmonic ground. That is pleasant, interesting to hear for me. But in a way becomes all background, atmospheric. I do not know how to describe this. The illusion I got was that pitch content did not matter (which is rather the oposite of a fugue exposition, ironicly maybe just an effect of tonreows in general? iono?)
What made listening the hardest was the fact that, ignoring pitch, that the rhythmic texture (including trills, marking the middle of the countersubject) kept a bit long the same...

Now I think of it, did you use the retrograde row? or the retrograde inversion. The interval of the first 2 and the last two are the same, which can be exploited, whilst maintaining some harmonic cohesion. But this as a side note.

There is in this fugue much thematic material. After much of the 2nd exposition, I lost the idea of the first. Add to that the sudden tempo changes, and it feels a bit disconnected. For clarity I would add some text indicating the double speed at ms 49, but rewrite that in the the double speed would make more sense, maybe?
The return of the first fugue theme in ms 91 is great. (seems to contradict my previous experience of losing the first theme, well, considder this review the result of multiple listens )
But now it is in the double speed again. Is the original speed still somewhere? I would love to see that... I think that would add to the cohesion as well.

And then the end. At first I missed the pedal point, so after a peek in the spoiler I found it. The dominant was well hidden (115-118). I think making that pedal point longer, or more obvious would help me prepare for the otherness of the coda. I like that the waltz idea gives closure to the feel of the prelude. That is well done, but I would prepare the listener further. I would even consider making the coda a separate postlude, played attaca, and making it a bit longer.

The prelude was nice, but I felt you gave away all your cards in the beginning. I would have saved the low low octaves on the down-beats for the recapitulation.

To me, the genius is found in the pairing of the prelude and the fugue. When the prelude went right into a fugue with very different thematic material, my jaw dropped at how lovely the juxtaposition was.

My personal preference would have been to not bring back the prelude material at the ending. To just leave it as a dichtype of complementary colors.