I think Koshkin acquits
himself well with this prelude and fugue and it's suitably emblematic to his
approach to composing generally and for this cycle. Despite the key signature
being E minor this is a prelude and fugue in drop D tuning.
Prelude
This is a languid and
dark prelude. It opens with a short half measure gesture in common time, a
widely spaced low range tonic triad with a melody rising up by arpeggiated
eighth notes to an E minor ninth chord with an omitted fifth that is tacitly
taken as having a fermata. This gesture
is the introductory gesture and it eventually gets its own thematic expansion
later in the prelude but the dominating idea is a slow and descending melodic
line in the bass strings that is accompanied by a steady stream of sixteenth
note figuration on the treble strings.
Measures 2 and 3 are the bass melody gesture that establishes what we
can think of as the first identifiably thematic/melodic material. This is followed by the sequential
development of an idea in the bass strings that can be read as quarter note,
dotted quarter note, eighth note and quarter note with different intervallic
values and movements depending on context, which prevails from measures 6-9
(and 11-14).
A good rule of thumb
I'd suggest for this prelude is that while you want to pay attention to the
sixteenths as accompaniment throughout never think of them as the melodic
content of this prelude. For that focus
attention on all the notes that are longer than sixteenth note values.
The opening motto
returns at measure 9 and gets a brief sequential expansion in measure 10. This
leads to a new episode of the quarter, dotted quarter, eighth and quarter
gesture with more sequential development. This passage ranges from measure 11
to the first half of measure 14.
In the second half of
measure 14 through measure 15 we get another sequential presentation of the
opening motto. This time the harmonies are not a static presentation of the
tonic. An E minor triad sifts its way
toward a first inversion A major chord and then a G major seventh chord with
the F sharp at the bottom that, arguably, is an E minor ninth chord with an
omitted tonic that doesn't formally appear until measure 16 with the return of
the descending melodic gesture we've already identified as Theme 1 (as distinct
from motto) material. If we think of the
motto and the bass strings melody as being two distinct sections this prelude
can be thought of as having a strophic form (a, a', a'', etc.) in which each
episode is announced and offset by a presentation and/or sequential development
of the motto followed by a bass strings melodic episode with sixteenth note
figuration providing accompaniment in the treble strings.
Eventually the languid
bass strings melody becomes less and less dominant as the prelude moves along
and the motto takes on stronger and stronger thematic significance until it is
finally the dominant thematic material.
This prelude, short
though it is, is saturated with Phrygian and locrian elements and when it is
minor it tends to be natural minor rather than a harmonic or melodic minor
prelude. Even the penultimate harmony of
this prelude, an E flat ninth chord without a fifth) "could" be
construed as a leading tone that proceeds to the tonic of E minor but the
melodic activity DESCENDS to E rather than rises to E natural as would be expected
in a more parochial Western ideal of voice-leading.
The mood of the prelude
is somber, even desolate, like something from a late period Shostakovich string
quartet, if not quite as insistently despairing or dissonant.
As with the prelude, so
with the fugue, we have a subject that is best described as E natural minor
with a D natural and no leading tone.
This subject is a short and punchy three-measure subject that,
personally, I felt could have been a four-measure subject. It's not, and it works, but it feels like it
could have been slightly longer.
Now what's interesting
about this subject and exposition is that Koshkin could have introduced an
answer at the dominant but instead he introduces an answer at the subdominant.
Traditionally in Western contrapuntal practice the reason you answer at the
subdominant is because your subject starts on the dominant scale degree and
providing even a tonal answer at the dominant would destabilize your key
regions too quickly (unless you're Anton Reicha and don't care about that in
his 36 Fugues). In this case an answer
at the dominant (i.e. having an A natural or even an A sharp that rises up to B
before falling a fourth, as would be prescribed in the linear movement of the
subject) drops the subject down to the subtonic degree of the minor mode. In other words, at a practical level, the
dominant answer doesn't introduce enough pitches from the tonic chord to
stabilize the key regions of the answers enough whereas a transposed modal
answer at the subdominant DOES accomplish this, which is why Koshkin opted to
answer at the subdominant (see measures 36-38). After a short transition the
third voice enters at measure 40, giving us a clear-cut descending order of
voices entering as soprano, alto and tenor/bass in this exposition.
The subject is agitated
and gloomy, in the natural minor mode but with a brief chromatic turn into
parallel major that presages some mutations that will appear later in the
fugue. There are no countersubjects.
The first middle entry
appears very early in this fugue (2:46) in D minor (measure 44). The next
middle entry is in A minor at measure 45. Now at measure 53 we're firmly back
in E minor with an episode full of stretto where the opening kernel of the subject
is presented in successive stretto a beat apart. This builds up steadily through to measure 60
where we have a preliminary climax or false recapitulation in which the subject
appears in E minor but modified so as to fit within the confines of the scordatura
of the instrument. Koshkin signals that this is not, in fact, the climax of the
fugue at about 3:25 (measure 63) by abruptly dropping down to piano and into
the key of B flat, a tritone away from the tonic, as tonally far removed from
"home" as we can possibly be in any kind of tonal traditions.
From 66 onward Koshkin
feints at statements of the subject in F major but these sequential gestures
never complete the subject and keep shifting downwards, so to speak, until we
get to the next middle entry in D major (measure 71-73). At this point we can hear how the subject
lends itself to modal mutation into parallel major by way of transposition and
recontextualized harmony. As August Halm put it, a fugue subject needs to sound
good subjected to mutation into parallel minor or major, it needs a melodic
profile that can be subjected to any and every kind of modal mutation while
still in some way being recognizable, and for all that sound pleasing,
too. Koshkin hear demonstrates that his
fugue subject sounds very pleasing in minor and major forms.
And, no surprise, he
completes his middle entry in D major by going straight into an episode where
he modally mutates back into D minor to re-establish the minor-key mood of the
fugue overall at the end of measure 74. He sequentially extends the last
measure of his subject toward a recapitulation of the subject in the tonic
key. He hammers away at upper pedal
tones on the topmost open strings but when the subject returns in full force
it's presented in tenths and chromatically altered. The effect, which you can hear starting at 1:47, is loud and explosive. This is a quintessentially explosive Koshkin
climax and it sounds boisterous and fun.
Now at this point,
arguably, this spectacular, boisterous climax is great for a sonata but it is
not necessarily a really polyphonic climax.
There are two ways of responding to this observation. One is to say, yes, it's not exactly
polyphonic at this point and perhaps a guitarist composer could or
"should" choose to compose polyphony where the identifiable
independence of the contrapuntal strands should be more perceivable and
present. There's room for that
conviction as ideas about counterpoint for guitar go. But there's a second response, which is to
observe how very few cycles of fugues we have. Even in Bach's works, when he
builds toward a climactic passage, he cuts loose and thickens his textures and
expands his materials. He even modifies
subjects and countersubjects as the interests of this or that musical work provide. I enjoy this piece so I am giving it a pass
even if the contrapuntist in me could imagine ways in which fully invertible
counterpoint might be provided for a subject like this. Not everybody has to think or feel the same
way about this stuff.
By measure 91 we
hit what could be the half cadence preparation (dominant pedal tone of D
natural) for a jump into relative major.
However, because of the persistence of the D natural as a MODAL minor
subject we know that this pedal point on the subtonic is really setting up a
winding down push for a cadence in E. In
modal contexts there is no leading tone but the subtonic harmony frequently
still plays a dominant or quasi-dominant role that leads back to the tonic
rather than necessarily always setting up a relative major. This would be easier to site in any number of
songs by, say, David Bowie than in Baroque counterpoint but seeing as we're in
the 21st rather than the 18th or 19th century it's worth noting that in modal
contrapuntal thinking we don't have a "leading tone" so the
"rules" (whatever those may be) for tonal resolutions in modal ways
of thinking aren't the same as textbook approaches to polyphony.
The fugue winds down
steadily and relentless to measure 99, where we hear the initial
motto of the subject in augmentation and presented in a canon of call and
response between bass strings and trebles. The last time the trebles take up
the motto they sequence it down to another point of repose (first half of
measure 105) before winding up for the final phrase in which the motto of the
fugue resolves into a bright E major chord that bursts out of the treble
strings and ends the fugue.
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