WenatcheeTheHatchet: Koshkin 24 preludes and fugues

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Monday, March 02, 2020

SCGS newsletter has review of CDs by Asya Selyutina and Kostas Tosidis, recordings of Koshkin's preludes and fugues vol. 1 and Cycling Modes

Saturday, February 08, 2020

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in G sharp minor

Here, at last, we're on the Prelude and Fugue in G sharp minor. This is a work where Koshkin's wearing the influence of Shostakovich on his sleeve, and since I'm a Shostakovich fan I'm fond of this one! I'll describe which Shostakovich (and Mahler) works I think can be helpful to understanding what Koshkin does in this prelude and fugue after the break.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in B major

In the home stretch for the first half of Nikita Koshkin's preludes and fugues as recorded by Asya Selyutina on Naxos. More discussion of this prelude and fugue after the break.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor

This has become one of my favorite preludes and fugues in the entire cycle because of the passacaglia. The fugue is also pretty cool but the passacaglia is one of Koshkin's most compelling creations in his long career. I admit to the bias of having admired Koshkin's music for twenty years so without further ado, the discussion starts after the break.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in E major

Prelude (2:08)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIejkpS_1DQ

Despite the "Allegretto" indication and the quarter note equals 144 beats per minute in the score, this prelude feels as though its harmonic rhythm is anchored to the half note and could have been scored at 72bpm in 2/4. Music analysis in general and formal analysis in particular can become a realm of debate quickly and I know that other guitarists and music analysts could dispute this overarching point I'm about to make. Nevertheless, I suggest we think of this prelude as a gentle and pastoral sonata, of the "Type 1” variety classified by Hepokoski and Darcy. I realize that that is potentially a hard sell but I'm going to explain what I'm doing with the "elements" in Elements of Sonata Theory that I am using to make this argument.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor

One of my personal favorites, the rambunctious Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor. In the interest of economizing all the links into one blog page I'm saving discussion of the works for after you get past the page breaks.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in A major

This is another case where the earlier film was so nicely done I didn't see a need to use the Naxos release as the reference.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in B minor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45-o8NxFIX0

This is another prelude and fugue from the cycle for which we have a video performance. In this case the prelude is melodically simple but harmonically complex. It makes sense to provide a schematic analysis that doesn't attempt to get too involved in the harmonic activity of this prelude, even though a theoretical analysis could be a lot of fun to do. This is a series of blog posts, after all, and for blog posts it should suffice to give guitarists and theorists a foundation for more detailed score analysis at their leisure.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in D major

I blogged about this prelude and fugue earlier using a live performance and am using the Naxos recording as a reference. Discussion after the break.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in E minor

E major and E minor are arguably the most guitaristic keys in which a guitarist or non-guitarist can possibly compose. It's a key that is both forgiving and unforgiving. It's forgiving in the sense that there are a lot of things you can write and play that are idiomatic and rest easily on the instrument but it's an unforgiving key in the sense that whatever you bring to this key stands up against the entire history of the instrument in a way that a prelude and fugue in F sharp major never has to because very, very few guitarists are writing preludes and fugues in F sharp major.

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.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in G major

When I first blogged about this prelude and fugue I had to do it with guitar in hand and score in front of me. Several things jump out more vividly when I have had the luxury (and pleasure) of listening to Asya Selyutina's performance on the new Naxos release.

Discussion after the break.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in A minor

In cases where a film of the performed piece has already been up and doesn't seem surpassed by the recent Naxos recording I've stuck with using the older films as reference.

The prelude and fugue gets discussed after the break.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in C major

I've decided that although I've posted on many of the preludes and fugues in Koshkin's cycle before I'm reposting on the preludes and fugues I've written about and, where applicable, have written new thoughts and observations as my perspective changed.

Discussion of the prelude and fugue shows up after the break.

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in E major

Well, happy new year. To kick off 2020 Wenatchee The Hatchet has finally gotten back, however belatedly, to blogging about Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo guitar. Thanks to the wonderful recording Asya Selyutina has out on Naxos we can resume going through these pieces and I don't have to worry that only guitarists who 1) have the scores and 2) can also play through them(!) will be able to follow anything I've been writing about these pieces. So with that out of the way, let's move along to Prelude and Fugue in E major.

Prelude (2:08)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIejkpS_1DQ

Hepokoski and Darcy define sonata forms as explicable in terms of a number of concepts and one of the key concepts is called "rotation". This means that a theme 1 and a theme 2 and so on will often appear in the same order across the larger structure, deformations of form excepted. For instance, in a Type 3 ("textbook" sonata form) a process of Theme 1 and Theme 2 and Theme 3 in the exposition would be repeated in the development. We'd see the themes appear in numeric order in the development more or less as they did in the exposition, and they will appear in 1-2-3 order in the recapitulation. In a Type 2 sonata theme 1 may be dominant in the development and never appear in what we could call the recapitulation but theme 2 and 3 will appear. The best example of a Type 2 sonata form in the guitar literature I can think of that explicates Hepokoski and Darcy's roadmap for Type 2 sonatas at large would be Diabelli'sOp. 29, No. 3 guitar sonata in F major. Another less inspired and inspiring example, for me, would be Molitor's Op. 7 guitar sonata. We'll come back to the idea of rotation in time.

What a Type 1 sonata has are themes, identifiable themes that appear in what's called a "double rotation" form. Theme 1 shows up, Theme 2 shows up, then Theme 1 shows up in the recap and Theme 2 shows up in the recap. There is no development as we'd normally think of it and also little to no transitions.

Another aspect about "rotation" and sonata forms Hepokoski and Darcy highlight is that one of the common ways some composers chose to shake things up and subvert expectation was to start the recapitulation with the right theme (i.e. Theme 1) but bring it back in the wrong key. If in a sonata the recapitulation norm would be that if you started in C major your Theme 1 would recapitulate in C major then one of the tricks composers could play is to bring Theme 1 back in A major or E major or A flat major or, basically, any key that was not the "home" key. The recapitulation might eventually get to the "right" key but possibly only half-way through Theme 1 and sometimes not until the transition (if applicable). I mention this because this kind of fake-out recapitulation in which Theme 1 comes back in a defiantly wrong key and doesn't get to the appropriate recapitulation key is a stunt Wenzel Matiegka pulls in his Op. 31 No.1 guitar sonata in C major and, personally, I think it's a very funny stunt.

Why am I mentioning all of this stuff about early 19th century guitar sonatas and contested aspects of Elements of Sonata Theory? Koshkin's little gentle prelude in E major makes sense to me as a Type 1 sonata. It could also be mapped out as a simple ABAB form but I intend to explain why the modulations and key regions suggest sonata form to me. A simple reason merely describing this prelude as ABAB is not going to suffice is although we can map out ABAB the key regions key shifting across A and B material.

Theme 1 of Koshkin's prelude opens gently with an arpeggiation theme in E major, exactly the guitar-friendly key we'd expect in a prelude. About this theme there are two things I want to highlight.

First, there's a descending melodic line inside the upper-string arpeggios that can be thought of as the "official" tune but it tends to center on beats 2 and 3 of the measures. There's a counter-melody in the bass that has sustained notes and its melodic activity clusters around beats 1 and 4. As the melody in the bass register rises the melody lurking within the arpeggios in the upper register gently tip toes down.

The call and response between registers clustering in beats 4-1 and 2-3 respectively would, in another context, be what Mark Burford describes as the "gospel seesaw" that shows up in recordings done by Mahalia Jackson and Mildred Falls. Koshkin's got an elegant and simple Theme 1 in E major but what's less simple when you get past the rippling arpeggiated surface is there are two strands of melodic activity at work that move in alternating beat region spaces. Asya Selyutina does a wonderful job of both separating these rhythmic regions to let the melodic interest come through for both the upper and lower lines and doing so in a way that lets an alert listener sense that there's a lot going on here. What looks on the page like a merely two-line texture is, in an actual performance a harmonically rich soundworld that has four to six note chords shimmering in ways that the notes on the page don't really convey.

Second, the theme never completes when it's introduced. By measure 9 we're at a new phrase (0:19) but the key is now C major. With the call-and-response "seesaw" texture abandoned this would be the appearance of our "B" material in an ABAB structure but since the phrases are continuous it's tough to say this is binary or even rounded binary. We have a theme 1 gesture that lasts 8 measures and what sounds like a theme 2 or a continuation phrase that continues to move further and further away from the opening tonic key. This new theme is a simple descending tune that dips down and then rises back up with steady pulsing accompaniment figuration underneath it. But ...

the melody in this second gesture (aka Theme 2) overshoots its theoretical destination and instead of returning to a chord in C major shifts up to a melodic note of B flat above an E flat chord. Koshkin's working with short 4 and 8 measure phrases that refuse to land on their expected cadential landing points. Noting in passing as I have that guitar sonata movements by Molitor and Molino can be built around what seem like half-themes in the piano literature (which Matiegka also did in one of his etudes), I'm suggesting here that Koshkin is working on a very small scale but he's outlined two contrasting thematic ideas with contrasting figuration and contrasting key regions. It may be a very small exposition but I think it fulfills the structural and rhetorical functions of a sonata form in spite of the fact that there are no firm cadences and we have more of a "continuous melody" thing going on.

The common thread in the first half of the prelude is that Koshkin gives us a melodic line that deliberately spins off target from whatever the just-established tonal region is to go in a new developmental direction. Theme 2, like Theme 1 before it, doesn't complete. Instead Theme 2 spirals up to a high E floating (0:34) atop an F major seventh chord with a melodic line that reprises the Theme 1 "seesaw" material. This, I propose, is where we get a tiny, tiny development section that will transition us back to a more formal return of Theme 1.

Theme 1 does return at 0:46) but we're firmly in the key of A flat. Now we're at the point for which I've written so much earlier about how composers can subvert expectations at one level while fulfilling them at other levels. Koshkin, if he were writing this as a sonata form, has brought back Theme 1 where it would be expected, either in a repeating exposition or in a recapitulation or in a development but only in a development would presenting Theme 1 material in A flat major "make sense" if we've started in the key of E major. It isn't too long before the loping "seesaw" theme moves to Theme 2 material which now, finally, is in E major (1:02) and moves to G major by 1:11. We keep having phrases and continuation phrases and then new phrases but Koshkin avoids cadences across this little prelude. As Theme 2 material moves along we get a sequence of teardrop chromatic lines in the bass rising above a sequence of thirds in the treble strings sounding out in half note values (G sharp to B to D). At measure 45 Koshkin sets up an extended half cadence in which Theme 1 material is pulsing over a dominant pedal point. It's not until measure 51 we finally get a cadence in a spacious E sonority with a 12th fret harmonic on string 1 floating above the open sixth string.

While this little prelude is a mere two minutes long I would suggest that the way to make sense of it musically is to think of it as a beautiful little sonata, a Type 1 sonata as Hepokoski and Darcy have their types. It’s true Koshkin avoids all of the cadences that would be expected but the thing that makes Elements of Sonata Theory useful is that we musicians can use whatever elements work in helping to elucidate what seems to be a sonata form and then jettison all the other elements (like the necessity of firm cadences as non-negotiable points of structural delineation) that don’t apply to this particular piece of music.

Finally, should it seem I’ve played a bit fast and loose with how small “themes” can be when Koshkin’s prelude seems to be phrase after phrase that avoids firm cadences, let me quote Fernando Sor on the issue of accompanying. Sor explained how, if you will, the symphony is to a life-sized portrait of a person what the guitar might be as a reproduction in book might be. By way of Merrick’s translation:

Method for the Spanish Guitar

Fernando Sor, translation by A. Merrick

page 36

A pianoforte accompaniment, if well made, should be constructed like an orchestral quartett or trio. Now, by taking that accompaniment as a pattern, I can, thereby, regúlate that of the guitar. Comparisons greatly assist the comprehension, and I request the reader to allow me one to prove, that if the guitar does not give the same notes as the orchestra, either in quantity or pitch, the accompaniment will not be less the same. If a portrait be made as large as life, it may exhibit all the smallest details that are observed in the original: this is the orchestra. Let a copy be made of this portrait in dimensions only one third of the former, a great part of the little details will be suppressed: other parts, which in the full size were developed, will be represented perhaps by a single point—the relative proportion of the features will always be the same, and although each will receive fewer touches of the pencil, the same object will be seen: this is the pionoforte. If of this copy another be made again reduced one-third, it will be necessary to make many more suppressions. A small circle of the original may be represented by a point, and yet produce the effect of the small circle; so that the means of seizing the resemblance being fewer in detail, the likeness will be perfect if the features preserve the same relative proportions ; and this is the guitar.

When we assess what sound to be sonata forms written on and for the guitar we should not necessarily dismiss the possibility that a guitarist composer has written a sonata form because guitar sonatas since the 1790s have not behaved the way piano sonatas by Beethoven or Schubert or Haydn or Mozart have behaved. There are possibilities, constraints and material exigencies to writing for the guitar we guitarists must always keep in mind but we should be conversant enough in theoretical and historical literature to be able to recognize, as I’ve just argued, that Koshkin’s Prelude in E major can be taken as a lyric sonata movement even if by the “textbook” definitions handed down by pianists and conductors it would not seem as though a sonata has been written at all.

Of course if Koshkin wasn’t thinking of writing a sonata form he’s welcome to say so but I’ve had fun making a case that he did write a wonderful little sonata movement along the way. As one of my music professors said long ago, the beautiful thing about music theory is that you and I could have different convictions about what just happened in the music and we “could” both still actually be right. Now let’s get to the fugue.

Fugue (2:57)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR7oohK4D3Q

Call it the conviction or bias of an American guitarist but I wonder if it’s possible to write a fugue in E major in the twenty-first century and not have its subject be some kind of blues riff. Koshkin’s subject for this fugue is a laconic blues riff. He starts on E, goes to F double sharp and drops down to E before jumping up to G sharp and dropping down to E to end the first phrase in the subject. The subject is a three-measure line that doesn’t resolve or even start to resolve until the answer shows up at 0:10. By this time the original line has moved from F double sharp down to F sharp and sets up a half-cadence that leads to the countersubject in the lower voice (also about 0:10)

What makes this countersubject fun is it’s a nice little ominous rising figure that starts on the second half of beat 3 at measure 60—D, E, F# in eighth notes through the end of the measure; G natural and F# in quarters at measure 61 on beats 1 and 2 which is followed up by a rest and then three eighth notes moving through B, C#, C double sharp at the end of the measure; then quarter notes throughout measure 62 on D, E#, F# and F double sharp. What makes this countersubject fun is, you can see from the notes, ending on F double sharp means Koshkin can lead by way of a bluesy augmented second to G sharp in what will become an inner voice for the entrance of the subject in the third, lowermost voice at 0:49. At this point the countersubject has been transposed and moves through G#, A, B on to C natural and B. The upper voice goes into half notes on E above and below this line, which is voice-crossing for those unfamiliar with the score at this point.

What Koshkin does next is move fairly directly by 0:28 to a middle entry in A major. He’s made a point of having his middle entry perform the subdominant harmonic function that we might expect to show up in a blues vocabulary at this point. That the musical lines here in the fugue, as they were in the prelude, never neatly resolve into a cadence is played to the advantage of keeping momentum going in this fugue and doing so in a way that pays homage to blues as a musical language, one which, we might have to add, is more than a century old and has spanned the globe.

Koshkin didn’t really need a second real countersubject. His subject and countersubject are good enough to build the entire fugue around, which is what we’re going to hear and see him do.

At 0:37 there is a new idea introduced, a descending trio of quarter notes. G, E and D in quarter note values one after the other comes out sounding like a rhythmic augmentation of some kind of pentatonic ragtime riff. This motto has the ability to let Koshkin rework the lower voices so that his harmonies shift from G major to C major and the cumulative effect with his high G notes is oblique motion. It also lets him prepare for a rapid modulation to D minor by 0:46.

At 0:46 we get what sounds like a new middle entry in the key of D minor but Koshkin never completes the three-measure subject in this passage. He pits two-thirds of his subject and countersubject against each other in what could be a middle entry but more strictly speaking is an episode. By 0:54 he brings back the subject in E but this is a feint, as he harmonizes the subject as if it were cycling around the third factor of C major. By 0:57 we have another sequence of the descending quarter note motto, now starting from B flat and going to G and F. This time Koshkin uses the motto to set up a modal mutation that prepares for a new episode at measure 79 (1:08) in B flat minor based on a stretto of his countersubject. This is followed up with another stretto episode on the countersubject at 1:13 in C sharp minor that leads to another stretto episode that sequentially develops this staggered presentation of the countersubject in three voices in A minor at 1:22. As with the prelude what we’re seeing and hearing here is that Koshkin exploits thematic relationships and harmonic contrasts anchored in rising (or falling) thirds of different sizes.

By 1:32 he’s setting up a drive to a new middle entry which shows up at 1:37 in G minor. Instead of presenting the countersubject here he creates quasi stretto effects in which the subject is stated in the uppermost voice and sneaks in half a beat after by showing up at beat 2 in an inner voice. By 1:46 he drops us out of G major into E, signaling that we’re back in the “home” key and are reaching the structural climax of the fugue. He embellishes the key ideas of the subject in sixteenth and thirty-second note flourishes before creating a big chorale style riff at 1:56 that places the subject as a kind of dominant pedal decoration that prepares us for the real contrapuntal feat to show off at 2:07. This is the point where Koshkin presents the subject in augmentation in the treble voice against the subject in normal rhythmic values in the alto voice a measure later, while the bass register takes up the core of the subject to create the effect of a stretto across the three voices in the fugue. With a fugue this versatile it’s possible Koshkin could have created a passage in which his subject was in the bass and he had it answered by the inversion of the subject harmonized in thirds in the upper two voices. That would have been a fun passage to have in a fugue like this and … he’s got the right as the composer to have not chosen that possibility. I mention it because for me, being a guitarist composer myself, such a possibility with this wonderful little subject would be irresistible. Still, a kind of grand stretto where the subject is set in augmentation up top and answered by a quasi-canon on the subject in the lower voices is also pretty wonderful. From 2:24 on Koshkin winds down the fugue with a little march of chords that call back to some of the more remote modulations and harmonies of the prelude and that could be fun to analyze on the basis of some kind of Audacious Euphony basis but I confess I don’t feel up to trying to analyze the coda at that level, though maybe someone else will want to.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

classical guitar Naxos releases for December--Ourkouzounov, Cycling Modes by Kostas Tosidis and Koshkin, 24 Preludes and Fugues volume 1 by Asya Selyutina (update-playlists on YT)

Herein is the most unabashed advertisement for recordings of musicians whose work I admire I have yet written.

Go buy these albums!

Ourkouzounov, Guitar Sonatas, performed by Kostas Tosidis
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.574117
Koshkin, 24 Preludes and Fugues, volume 1, performed by Asya Selyutina
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.579058

Go buy these albums now! If physical media isn't your thing you can find them on iTunes and as digital download albums and there's always direct from Naxos.

Congratulations to Koshkin and Selyutina and also congratulations to Atanas and to Tosidis for these releases coming out!

I most assuredly plan to write about these CDs and the music on them in 2020 but only after I've soaked up the music and had several weeks to do some serious score study because, of course, I've got the scores for these musical works. :)

Unless something really unusual happens the plan is that this be the last post for 2019. Enjoy the holidays and unless something really unusual comes up Wenatchee The Hatchet is going to take a break from blogging to do more reading and music study for 2020 stuff.

UPDATE 12-21-2019

Somebody set up a playlist for the recordings.

Here's Guitar Sonata 1-5 by Ourkouzounov
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m-tInGRewMHdr31kslslhpPJA5qOTdzZQ

Here's Koshkin's Preludes and Fugues for solo guitar, volume 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_ljZkUNqMA&list=OLAK5uy_lcdpmpzliQMXH2iFp-hD7_YIDNmO6Jc8o

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnQJqAxQMiY

Prelude (starts at 0:25)

This prelude is in 6/8 and maps out as A A' a" B with coda.
The prelude opens with a rocking 6/8 bass line of F#, C# and D natural. Despite the 6/8 meter in the score what this most evokes is the moderato con moto from the Third string quartet by Shostakovich. If you want to hear for yourself go over here and start listening at 7:04.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDeJeBvln6E

Nothing wrong with a sound that evokes one of the greatest string quartets of the 20th century! Since Koshkin has mentioned Shostakovich as an influence if you want to play or study music written for the guitar that draws on Shostakovich and Stravinsky then Koshkin's music is what you'll want to keep coming back to.

So, we've got ourselves what can be thought of as a macabre waltz that's "disguised" in 6/8. The reason I have charted out this music as I have is that each block of melodic/harmonic activity can be defined by its resolution with a descending run in the bass strings (measures 10 and 22 specifically).

This macabre waltz features a couple of secondary dominants and also a phrygian supertonic because if you're a guitarist and you're writing in any kind of F sharp the phrygian supertonic (i.e. neapolitan) chord is G major, the guitarist's best friend. For the most part guitarist composers who have written in F sharp or G flat find the neapolitan supertonic irresistible. They do not necessarily go for a more "locrian" vibe which could let them exploit the key of G major but from a modal rotational perspective of always coming back to F sharp, although personally I endorse this option because locrian F sharp sounds pretty cool.

I'm writing in a more nebulous way about this one because there are so many charming little details in this prelude. Take measure 11 where Koshkin breaks out of the lilt of compound meter to introduce a duple rhythm march in just this one measure (50-52)

A (measures 1-11) is defined by a consistently lilting compound meter approach to 6/8.
A' (measures 11-22) starts with a duple meter eruption that feints toward a meter change in duple time but quickly reveals a more "3/4" approach to compound meter.

a" (measures 23-33) introduces a hemiola of dotted eighth notes against eighth notes.

Here the duple is really duple against triple and can be thought of as the B in a larger scale A B structure. Splitting measures down the middle in each measure is demonstrated more clearly by the descending lines in the first half of measure 33 that culminate in an F sharp major theme that is the new B material that rounds off the prelude (which you can hear at 1:48) I consider this transitional passage work because the duple against triple creates tension but after six measures Koshkin leads us back into the lilting, rocking rhythms of straightforward 6/8 as he moves toward the B material in F sharp major at the previously mentioned second half of measure 33 (1:48).

The syntactic climax of the prelude is at 2:09 (measure 41) we get a recapitulation of the F#, C# and D natural bass line but the harmonies are in F sharp major in the treble strings. This fits a Shostakovich-style happy-sad or tragicomic coda, an ending that is somewhat more optimistic than the music was at the start but still permeated with a tone of macabre humor. Like a Shostakovich waltz there's something lurking within all this laconic crepuscular music. The prelude winds down toward an unresolved half cadence that suggests an end that is never arrived at. We're hearing stirrings that intermittently creep up as if from behind shadows, such as the duple meter moment at measure 11, that suggest there is something just beyond view that is waiting to erupt from behind this prelude.

Fugue (starts at 2:44)
What does erupt is the fugue. This is an explosive two-voiced fugue but it has three presentations of the subject that simulates a three-voiced exposition. They appear as follows

Subject enters at measure 53 in the tonic on the sixth string (2:45)
Subject answered at measure 56 in the dominant at the fifth string (2:49)
Subject enters at measure 60 in the tonic in the treble strings (2:53)

The exposition is over by 2:57. Even with the third entrance of the subject up top that is a 12 second fugue exposition.

This is a three-measure subject in 2/4 that is much more like a rock or metal guitar riff than what might conventionally be described as a "fugue subject" by any measure of the keyboard or string literature. It almost seems too explosive and brief to be a fugue subject but it has a vivid melodic profile and enough constituent parts within it to break them apart and to build a fugue from these fragments and possibilities. The violence and brevity of the subject gives all the more reason for the "false" third entry that completes the exposition. If Koshkin restricted himself to only as many presentations of the subject as would be strictly required in a "scholastic" fugue the exposition would be over before inattentive listeners would have been able to perceive there was even a fugue exposition.

What makes this fugue subject so fun is not just its pentatonic blues/rock character, it's that the subject by its nature does not resolve but rushes headlong toward whatever is next. August Halm wrote that a good fugue subject must never have too firm a resolution since it is supposed to be the catalyst for continual development and transformation but it must also have a recognizable enough a melodic shape that the subject can withstand or catalyze such growth. I believe that's what Koshkin's subject, brief and explosive as it is, provides in this fugue.

The initial episode culminates in a run in measures 67-68 where we get something very guitaristic that is not so "good" for fugues, strong beat accented parallel motion by compound fifths. Guitars are great for parallel fifths but for fugues, for polyphonic writing generally, parallel fifths and compound parallel fifths weaken the independence of line.

In this case I would have leaned toward the sixteenth note figures at top of the clef in 67 would sequence downward while substituting E for C and D sharp for D natural. That uses contrary motion to get the two lines of the fugue to contract inward for the arrival of the first middle entry at measure 68 and the topmost note could be G natural--tenths are stronger than open compound fifths in terms of traditions of polyphonic writing. Don't get me wrong, I like this fugue a lot, it's just that there are moments in this fugue where it is, so to speak, guitaristic to a degree where some things that are guitaristic aplenty would be considered weakness in counterpoint in a more traditional sense. You can do parallelism if you want to, and Koshkin wanted to.

The first middle entry is at measure 68 (3:03) and the subject appears in E minor in the lower register. This is followed by an agitated descending episode in tenths and sixths every other measure that arrives at a new middle entry at measure 74 in B minor (3:10).

This is immediately followed by a new middle entry in F sharp minor (3:13). We can hear how swiftly this subject moves along and if you can read along with the score we get the voices exchanged. It's not so much that there's a countersubject in this fugue as that Koshkin presents the subject in the lower register and has a descant in the upper register and then in the next middle entry he effectively flips the relationship. This is an incomplete presentation of the subject, though, as the rising of the subject in a middle entry that completed its line at measure 79 would make the melodic activity in the bass strings impossible on technical grounds, if not theoretical grounds. But the linear trajectory of the subject is restored at measure 80. There's room for rewriting a subject in a middle entry when technical and musical necessities call for that and this is a good example of how, at the practical level of writing a fugue, you can change the subject through interpolation or intervallic revision and still have an identifiable subject.

From this middle entry Koshkin writes out a length episode with bustling sixteenth note runs and jump bass lines in counterpoint against the runs. This winds through a couple of key regions to reach a new middle entry in the second half of measure 95 in A minor (3:35). This is followed up by single line riffs that evoke, if briefly, a kind of Shostakovich-style ragtime that destabilizes the key. By measure 105 (3:47) Koshkin brings the melodies down to the lowermost strings with a dark perpetual motion evocation of the subject in running sixteenth notes, emphasizing the F sharp minor again but with a strong phrygian, almost metal sense of foreboding.

Koshkin revels in the agitated churning of sixteenth notes in the bass strings right up to measure 117 (about 3:58) when the guitar is called to play a blistering rising solo line that takes it the upper reaches of its register at measure 199 (4:02). From measures 122 to 123 there's a pattern of two sixteenth notes followed by a triplet of sixteenth notes that, honestly, reminded me of a drum beat from a Guns `n Roses song. This really is the fugue in the cycle where Koshkin rocks out. The triplets on sixteenth nots carry measures 124 to 125. In the middle of 125 Koshkin presents the subject in F sharp minor and introduces quasi stretto presentation of the subject in the upper register (4:10 to 4:15)

From there Koshkin rushes along with sequential development of the initial fragment of the subject. It rises up to a presentation of the subject at measure 138 (4:23) that's in E minor where the subject is presented as at the fifth rather than the root. This is an inspired way to redeploy the subject within the coda. It's not a middle entry and it's certainly not the syntactic climax of the fugue but it's a fine passage showing how you can take a solid subject and present it as being on a different factor of a chord (i.e. the third or fifth rather than the root) than it was in its "prime" form, thereby revealing new possibilities about the subject. This is something I wish Koshkin had done more and more extensively with this fugue but I'll get to that later on.

At measure 143 (4:31) Koshkin gives us an abrupt F minor triad and octave shifting presentations of the initial fragment of the subject rising from octave to octave like the turnaround passage in a ragtime. This is a short interrupting moment that leads to a relentless run of scale-work on sixteenth notes over a pulsing dominant pedal point. This is the wind up to concluding the fugue. As Koshkin gets closer to the finish line he reintroduces the triplets of sixteenth notes and uses descending chains of parallel fifths floating above the triplet figuration to prepare final cadence, a modal tonic-subtonic, tonic burst on F sharp major that leads the fugue to an abrupt but triumphant finish.

Although I've had a few quibbles with parallelism a whole lot can be forgiven when the overall mood of this fugue is so aggressive. The other thing too, is that at this tempo any of the flaws in polyphonic writing go by so swiftly you can't hear them unless you have trained your ear through study or your own writing of fugues.

As fun as this fugue is and as much as it rocks out in a rock and roll style I do feel strongly that in this fugue there are some fantastic possibilities that went unexplored in the fugue. The subject is pentatonic in the first two measures and introduces a diatonic descent on a sixteenth, sixteenth, sixteenth rest, and sixteenth pulsing figure. For those of you who have the score I'll spell it out this way--that fugue subject can be presented in its prime form, its retrograde, its inversion and retrograde inversion and sounds really good in every one of those permutations. This is a difference of conviction and compositional method, I suppose, but with a subject that has mixed pentatonic and diatonic writing where the dominant pitch class is pentatonic the possibilities of a fugue subject being presented in all four forms is something I find irresistible.

I'm not saying Koshkin had to use all four forms of the subject as middle entries. Nobody could recognize the retrograde and retrograde inversion for what they are if they appeared as middle entries but they could be the basis for episodic material. But the inversion, the inversion of the subject sounds great. Just flip the score upside down and transpose the subject into F sharp major and you can sing through it yourself and hear how fun it sounds! Schoenberg has his detractors and defenders but one of the discoveries I've made is that a really great fugue subject can manage to sound good in more than just its primary form.

Koshkin has a fantastic little fugue subject here and the E minor transposed form of the subject at measure 138 gets me thinking about how an inversion of the subject at the fifth rather than the root of the chord and in parallel major would be a fantastic middle entry. In polyphonic cycles from Russian composers and composers from the formerly Soviet region subjects may often not be presented in inversion even when this is possible. This has been noted about the Shostakovich cycle of preludes and fugues. Sometimes you'll get a cycle like Rodion Shchedrin's where it's obvious he "could" present a subject in inversion as in his C major fugue and then you'll discover at the very end of the cycle that his prelude and fugue in D minor is a mirror/inversion of the prelude and fugue that opened the cycle. That's cool and I like Shchedrin's cycle in general but I do feel that in the Russian tradition of cycles of fugues there can be a risk of cyclical thinking in large-scale terms that can sideline some amazing musical possibilities that, on a fugue by fugue basis, I think should be explored.

Of course there aren't any rules against recomposing good ideas in new contexts to explore new possibilities. Composers like Haydn did this as a matter of course. There are a lot of untapped possibilities in this fugue but perhaps it’s just as well that this fugue in two voices has done as much as probably can be done given the speed and aggression of the subject. For a chamber work in which there's more than one instrument, though, this fugue subject has a wealth of possibilities that in a strictly solo guitar fugue are swirling behind the subject itself.
Seeing as we've gotten through most of the preludes and fugues in Koshkin's cycle for which there are videos of performances it's going to be tougher going moving forward, dear reader, if you don't yourself own a copy of the cycle. I hope by now I've made a case for why you, if you're a guitarist, should have a copy of this cycle by now. It's a monumental achievement for the guitar and deserves to be regarded as one of the most substantial of Koshkin's works and not merely on the basis of its sheer length.

Wednesday, May 09, 2018

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in A major

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDxYmhze5Do
This is another entry in the cycle for which we have a video of a performance, by Asya Selyutina. This is, owing to the key of A major, one of the brightest and most festive of the entries in the cycle.

Prelude (starts at 0:22)

This is a laconic 3/4 work marked "Andante largo". While Koshkin is famous among classical guitarists for his macabre Poe-inspired "Usher Waltz" this waltz in A major is about as far away in mood and idiom as Koshkin could while still being Koshkin and still being in 3/4. A predominantly chorale texture permeates this prelude, though a chorale with many ninth chords and secondary leading tone chords. I would do a more detailed harmonic analysis if there were a way to do so without actually showing you what's in the score but I'm not in a hurry to get into any infringement activities. The prelude is dominated by four-measure phrases. Koshkin plays a lot with secondary leading tone chords and what are known as passing chords. He opens with a bright A major that shifts by measure 2 in what looks on paper to be a second inversion minor dominant chord but because of the laconic harmonic rhythm what this signals to us (especially if we're listening to this performed) is that this opening A major chord has been swiftly transformed into a secondary dominant, that of the subdominant. Sure enough we get a subdominant in measure 3, though it's in first inversion and it's a D major seventh chord. This leads to an F major chord with an added sixth (the D natural hidden in the middle of the texture at the third beat) but this is a passing chord. It has linear contrapuntal meaning but is not easily defined in terms of functional harmony. You get used to seeing a lot of this in Russian music in general in my experience; it's one of the things that make Russian music fun. The D major seventh in first inversion is transformed into B dominant seventh, which, of course, is the secondary dominant to the dominant and the dominant is precisely what we get at measure five, which augurs in the second phrase.

All of this transpires quickly within the first few seconds of the prelude and like any good prelude it telegraphs the harmonic and melodic language we'll be hearing to the end of the prelude. I mention that and make a point of it because when I was studying Igor Rekhin's cycle of preludes and fugues I found myself liking his subjects and thinking his fugues were okay, and I liked his preludes about half the time but I found myself puzzled by what could be the wild disconnect between his preludes and the subsequent fugues. For instance, there's an abrupt mood shift between his prelude in B flat major and the fugue in B flat major.

Again, if you're reading this and don't have a copy of the score at hand there's only so much I can do in a mere blog post, but the modal ambiguity of this prelude has to be seen as well as hear to be fully understood. Koshkin uses passing chords to shift in and out of the key of A major at will but quickly gets back "on key" throughout. He may land on a C major seventh chord with a ninth at measure 11 (); or he may build up to a deceptive cadence that leads to a subtonic that simmers in lydian inflections at measures 21 and 22 (starts at 1:16) but there's only so much I can describe here. This is an A major piece, to be sure, but there's something wistful and detached in this prelude and it has everything to do with subtle and rapid modal mutation on a chord by chord basis as the simple and faintly plaintive melody makes its way from start to finish.

We do, however, get a very upfront and obvious dominant pedal section at 1:37 and we get a very firm harmonic and melodic resolution at 1:50 that signals the syntactic climax of the prelude has been reached. From that point Koshkin gently winds down an already gentle prelude and closes with a series of chords to be played using natural harmonics.

Now, about those chords in harmonics--measure 43 is easy. Take your fourth finger and lay it across strings 1 through 5 at the seventh fret exactly as instructed in the score. With your first finger touch the sixth string at the fourth fret as indicated. Easy-peasy. It's that simple. Koshkin's instructions are aligned with the rising order of the pitches. Having written a dozen studies in natural harmonics over the years, and having a handful of them up online for consultation, I could improve my right hand technique but I think my left hand technique is basically competent. So I can walk you through the basics of how to execute the closing chords of this prelude. If you're an experienced guitarist and saw how Selyutina played the chords already you won't really need to read the rest of this discussion of the prelude. Now I think the kinds of chords in harmonic Koshkin calls for should be chords any and every guitarist learns how to play. It's just part of mastering the full range of musical possibilities on the instrument.

IF there's any tricky part in the chord at measure 43 for those not already used to this kind of playing it's the RIGHT hand, not the left. The G sharp should be taken by p, which could also take the E natural. Nevertheless I recommend you play the E with i rather than p because depending on how your nails and attack are you get noises you don't want. You also won't be able to pull off the chord with the completely unrolled effect that is patently in the score for guitarists who may need to be reminded that you never just roll chords just because that's what you're used to doing if the score doesn't explicitly call for it. That leaves the F sharp and D respectively to be taken by the a and m. You'll likely need all four of pima from the right hand to execute the chord all in one go but it's worth it and the left hand part really is as easy as I just described in the preceding paragraph.

Now for that second chord in harmonics at 44. The principle of execution is similar. You create a barre with your fourth finger at the twelfth fret and you're good to go for that part. The tricky part for an inexperienced guitarist is the A and C sharp. You get the A, as instructed, at the seventh fret of the fourth string. You get the C sharp at the ninth fret of the fifth string. Play the A with the first finger of the left hand and the C sharp with the second finger, and just see to it the third finger stays out of the way. That should make the second chord manageable. It may be difficult at first and you may have to practice the preliminary stretch but the left hand and right hand execution are, in principle, more or less like the previous chord.

The last "chord" is the C sharp and A dyad that ends the prelude. This is a charmer and it will be scary for guitarists who up until now have gone their whole playing careers not realizing all the harmonics you can play at the third and fourth frets in addition to the usual suspects. Sor knew where the third fret harmonics were, and the ones at the sixth fret, too. In this case all you have to do is place your first finger at the third fret of the fourth string and your second finger at the fourth fret of the fifth string. An important proviso here is that depending on the fingerboard and intonation of your instrument you may want to position the first finger JUST BELOW the third fret rather than on the third fret, which will feel weird at first because it will look like you're cramming two fingers together on adjacent strings within the space of two frets rather than having a fret for each digit. Don't worry about that. What you do want to worry about is making sure that high A harmonic sounds properly and experience has taught me over the last twenty years that you put your fingers where the natural harmonics ring out best and if it's not literally, exactly ON the third fret you don't sweat that part.
Having written a dozen studies in harmonics I'm hugely biased here but I think this resolution to the prelude is gorgeous. I'd expect nothing less from Koshkin.

Now for the fugue

Fugue (starts at 2:30)
The fugue opens with an elegant and lengthy subject in 3/4 full of ascending runs. The first thing that comes to mind is that it's kind of an upside down guitar version of the subject from the final movement of the Hammerklavier which you can hear at 2:53 in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XEY2ej_U0I

Koshkin's fugue subject rises where Beethoven's falls and it rises up to a peak before steadily descending where Beethoven's subject rises but the overall arc feels similar, which is hardly a bad thing, I happen to like late Beethoven. This eight measure fugue subject gets an answer at measure 55 (2:39) at the dominant and gets a countersubject before the third and final entry of the subject, in the lowest voice, appears at 2:50. We get a soprano, alto, tenor/bass series of entries which is nice and dramatic for the guitar in this key.

Now given such a long subject (eight measures) episodes for a fugue such as this can actually be pretty short because the sheer level of fragmentation you can subject the subject or countersubject to can let you effect a modulation with a few changes without having to let the entire subject run its course. So the first middle entry shows up bright and early at 3:01 in B minor. The next episode begins at 3:11 and is pretty large, full of sequential runs, bouncing bass lines, and antiphonal back and forth between voices taking up the initial measures of the subject. There is constantly the promise of a middle entry in which the subject will be presented in full but that doesn't arrive until measure 108 at 3:38, when we get a middle entry in F major.

A mere ten seconds later, at measure 117 (3:48), we're in a new middle entry in B flat major. From here we get another extensive episode and I could try to describe it but there's such a thing as recognizing that you can't really explain a fugue that moves this quickly and brightly with mere words to people who don't already have the score. Koshkin does work toward a dominant pedal tone on the low open E that prepares the way for an A major appearance of the subject which springs up at 4:29. Having played the subject in full in so many middle entries Koshkin doesn't present the entire subject unaltered. Instead he transforms the subject into a tonic and chromatic submediant alternation that signals the climax of the fugue having been reached, we're heading in for the home stretch.

Part of that journey is a brief detour into parallel minor at 4:40 (measure 161). Instead of building up to a giant, bright, explosive resolution Koshkin winds things down to an impudently quiet authentic cadence at 4:57.

This is a charming, fun fugue. Having sung it's praises I do feel there was a missed opportunity here. A diatonic inversion of this subject would have made for a fantastic middle entry in an already pretty good fugue.

Sunday, May 06, 2018

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in B minor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45-o8NxFIX0

This is another prelude and fugue from the cycle for which we have a video performance. In this case the prelude is melodically simple but harmonically complex. It makes sense to provide a schematic analysis that doesn't attempt to get too involved in the harmonic activity of this prelude, even though a theoretical analysis could be a lot of fun to do. This is a series of blog posts, after all, and for blog posts it should suffice to give guitarists and theorists a foundation for more detailed score analysis at their leisure.

Prelude (0:06)

This block chord chorale is 39 measures long and is predominantly in four measure phrases in common time. Its form is probably best described as a kind of rounded binary form that can be mapped out as follows:

A   (0:06 to 0:35) measures 1-8
A' (0:35 to 1:00) measures 9-16
B   (1:01 to 1:24) measures 17-24
A'' (1:25 to 2:23) measures 25-39)

Although the phrases are in four-measure increments the larger phrase units tend to be eight-measure phrases. A is firmly in B minor while A' shifts into D major with the promise of a resolution back into B minor which is deceptively resolved not to the submediant key as would be typical, but to an F major added sixth chord that is the dominant to B flat major that is the tonality that the B material moves within. On the whole all the melodic activity is reliably diatonic until we get to this B section, even if the harmonic support is often chromatically divergent from the "home" key. The B material closes with a presentation of the G major chord that would be the "expected" submediant chord of a conventional deceptive cadence--we get the expected chord for such a deceptive resolution but it's postponed until the end of the B material in this rounded binary form. A short chromatic rising passage leads us to a recapitulation of the A material as A''. The initial idea returns but the phrases are shortened and more halting, the rhythmic values more expansive. We're obviously winding things down. It's worth noting, for those into this kind of analysis, that the return of the A material at measure 25 corresponds closely to the Golden Mean of the prelude.

As to the mood of this prelude, which I like, it gives me the impression of a kind of Scriabinesque take on the old American song "My Funny Valentine".

The fugue is introduced in the film by a change from a black background to a white background in this film, which makes it very easy to point out when the fugue begins.

Fugue (2:25)

This is a serpentine 6/8 subject that's four measures long and is dominated by a chromatic descent that winds up into eighth notes that lead to a countersubject in the uppermost voice as the alto enters at measure 5 with a tonal answer that affirms the dominant (2:31). The countersubject appears in a transposed form at measure 48 (2:36). It's worth noting here that tonal answers modify the subject in some way to adhere to the prevailing tonality of the exposition. When a subject starts on the dominant scale degree and you don't want to change the character of the subject's linear activity then you may want to provide a real or tonal answer at the subdominant, but if you want an answer at the dominant to affirm the key of your fugue exposition and you are willing to "bend" the contour of the subject then tonal answers are more satisfying. It's possible to favor tonal answers (Bach) or real answers (Handel) depending on preference. Neither is necessarily easier than the other to master. In this case Koshkin opts for a tonal answer at the dominant in which the subject starts on the third scale degree. As noted previously, he has a countersubject that is transposed for the appearance of the third and final voice in the texture which arrives in the tenor/bass voice on F sharp just as would be expected.

We move from the end of the exposition into development at measure 52 (2:42) and right away Koshkin shifts to F natural, signaling that the chromaticism of the subject opens up possibilities for abrupt modal mutation and chromatic shifts into remote keys. Despite the three voices of the exposition by its completion this fugue will be characterized by two voiced textures. This is not a weakness in a fugue such as this, given the activity of the subject and its brevity. As George Oldroyd put it in The Technique and Spirit of Fugue, if memory serves (and it may not) one of the mistakes music students make in writing fugues is assuming that once all three or four voices in a fugal exposition are introduced every last one of them must be active constantly throughout the duration of the fugue. Anyone who has surveyed the fugues of Bach or Buxtehude or ... just pick someone, you'll find they rarely ever did that. So you don’t' have to, either. Koshkin demonstrates a firm grasp of contrapuntal writing by recognizing he doesn't need all three of his voices active all the way through this fugue.

The first middle entry appears at 2:50 and is in the very remote key of C minor at measure 58. After another episode the second middle entry appears at measure 70 in the key of F minor, yet another wildly remote key from the initial B minor key we started in. A very brief transitional episode takes place and by measure 75 (3:13) we're already in a new middle entry in E minor. Koshkin clearly grasped that one of the things you can do with a fugal subject like this one is move quickly from middle entry to middle entry with little episode transition thanks to the chromaticism inherent in the subject. This passage in the fugue is also noteworthy for the way in which the F minor middle entry places the subject in the tenor/bass voice while the E minor middle entry places it in the alto voice. He also features the countersubject in the earlier middle entry and omits it in the later middle entry, which is something else you can do when writing fugues.

By measure 3:20 we have still another middle entry at measure 80, in G minor. This is followed up by an extended modulating episode that downshifts with descending sequential activity in linear terms but which culminates in an "uplift" at measure 92 (3:35) in a new middle entry in A major.

By measure 100 (3:48) we have a new middle entry in which the subject appears to have returned in B minor but it's not B minor. Though the F sharp appears at the top of the treble clef just like it did at the start of the fugue it is floating above a harmonic tenth of E at the bottom and G in the upper part of a dyad. The fugue subject has returned but as the ninth rather than the fifth, part of a middle entry that is more readily identified as E minor than B minor. That's something else that makes fugue subjects with a pronounced chromatic character so much fun, you don't have to bring them in at the tonic or dominant if you know you can transpose them in some other way. If you want an example of a fugue that runs with the possibilities of a chromatically ambiguous subject as being able to appear at any factoral relationship in a chord (tonic, third, fifth, seventh) go over and listen to fugue no. 2 from Rodion Shchedrin's cycle of preludes and fugues. Go over here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0KH-wDfTlc&t=36s
His fugue in A minor starts at 2:55.

Now, back to Koshkin's fugue.

The E minor middle entry with the subject at the ninth leads to an extended episode that can be thought of as a preparation for a "real" E minor middle entry that finally arrives at measure 112 (4:02) with the subject appearing at the fifth of the chord as we would expect. There's even a quasi-stretto going on in which the subject in the treble strings gets a semi-canonic response by a transposed form of the subject in the middle voice. This overall rhetorical flourish is, by the way, almost a Haydnesque trick, giving the subject in a middle entry at an unexpected interval in a harmony and then preparing for a payoff in which the subject appears at the "correct" register later in the work. This is followed by a flurry of sixteenth note scalar runs that begin to get support from an F sharp in the lower register. As wind ups to fugal climaxes go this is a class decorative series of runs on a dominant pedal point; this is exactly what makes sense for a guitarist to do in a fugue in B minor and it makes for a satisfying climax in which the fugue subject arrives in its original B minor as B minor at measure 123 at 4:18.

As the subject reaches its end it gets interrupted by florid runs that preempt a full resolution of the subject in harmonic and linear terms. Koshkin goes through a series of evaded cadences to build suspense. He finally gets back to the motto of his subject at 4:42 (measure 137) where the subject becomes fragmented and the basis for winding down coda that reaches an E major chord (though it has an added sixth and no fifth) at measure 147 that turns into a florid scalar ascent culminating in a natural harmonic that is followed by a subdued piano tonic chord close.
Oh, one more thing about the fugue subject, if you take it and subject it to modal mutation the retrograde of the subject would sound fun in E major. You could also take this fugue subject and tonally invert it and it would sound charming. Koshkin didn't do that with the subject in the fugue so far as I can tell but they are both legitimate possibilities for a fugue subject such as this. My own philosophical approach to fugal writing for the guitar is you discover that you can get a non-prime version of your fugue subject to work you should look into having at least one middle entry in which that form of the subject can be presented, whether it's the inversion, the retrograde or even a retrograde inversion. It doesn't even have to be a middle entry as such, it could appear in the coda or you could work the alternate form of the subject into a counterfugue if that is your thing.

Which is not to say that what Koshkin did with this fugue isn't beautifully well-made, it certainly is. I'm just noting as a guitarist composer who has written a set of preludes and fugues that there's room for fugal writing in which the subject doesn't always have to appear in its prime form.

That said, this is another fine entry in the cycle and it's fortunate we have a video that helps us walk through the prelude and fugue to discuss Koshkin's compositional approach. Many of the videos are for works in the first half of the cycle. We'll be more and more "on our own" the further into the second half we get.

Saturday, May 05, 2018

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in D major

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDKgZV0E66I

In this case we have a film of a live performance that was posted to Youtube. Since the prelude and fugue comprise an even more organically unified whole than is typical of this cycle it's almost moot to discuss the prelude and fugue separately. But for sake of readability that's exactly what we'll do.

Prelude (starts 10 seconds in)
This prelude is a lyric pastoral and while it could be described as very broadly binary in form the two themes are in D major and A major, with the second theme ending in such a way as to lead into the fugue as a kind of developmental interruption.

The movement is scored as "Andante" but if I were to try to describe this prelude it would be as a Koshkinesque take on the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, weird as that is likely to sound to fans of either Mahler or Koshkin or possibly to fans of both. That's just the kind of mood this prelude suggests to me. Others will, naturally, have a different set of impressions.

While all the phrases are in simple two-measure building blocks the first two larger phrases are six measures each before settling into more persistently duple patterns across the phrases. I identify Theme 1 as spanning the entirety of measures 1-17 with the transition to Theme 2 starting at 18 (1:21) where Koshkin switches from D major to D minor and introduces a more agitated take on the gently pulsing eighth note accompaniment figuration.

Theme 2, in A major (1:44) starts at 24 and is gentle and quiet. The pulsing accompaniment hasn't changed but the melody is written out in half note values, making it seem more restrained and subdued than even the opening theme. It's a simple motto of C#, F#, F natural and E, transposed up an octave in the second phrase (measures 26-28) This is very nearly simple a cadential formula presented as a secondary theme, which in many respects it is, but it accomplishes an A major chord that prepares for what's coming next. It could almost be thought of as a kind of slow sonata form in which the development is substituted out for a fugue, to which we now turn.

Fugue (2:26)
The fugue subject is not necessarily related to the initial theme of the prelude. At first glance you can see that the whole thing is scored in a single voice and ask whether or not this thing is even a fugue. It is, it's just that the subject and associated material is so staccato it makes sense to score it as a single voice rather than attempted to flood staves with notational indicators of how each of the lines in the fugue need to be delineated. If this were scored for string quartet, by contrast, highlighting the separate melodic lines would be easier.

The subject is a four on the floor quasi-blues riff and the subject and respective answers are presented no less than five times.

presentation 1 is in the tonic at 2:26
presentation 2 is in the dominant at 2:33
presentation 3 is in the tonic at 2:39 (or 2:40 depending on sync issues)
presentation 4 is in the dominant at 2:46
presentation 5 is in the tonic at 2:53

Once you recognize the subject you can hear the five presentations of it in the spritely exposition. With a subject this springy and short we unsurprisingly have just a few middle entries. The first middle entry shows up in C sharp minor at 3:05 (measure 62). After another episode the second middle entry appears at 3:24 but it's ambiguous. If you were to merely look at the score and the linear patterns you could see the fugue subject appears in F major BUT there's a preliminary appearance of D natural in the bass strings at the end of measure 68. I would say this recontextualizes the entire middle entry as really being in D minor.

At 3:37 (measure 76 Koshkin introduces a flurry of sixteenth note arpeggios that rise up aggressively six measures into a two chord pedal point at measure 82 (3:52) that prepares for the formal return of the subject in D major, which happens after a dramatic pause at measure 83 (4:00). This gentle piano climax lets the subject wind down still further into a half-cadence which resolves itself at measure 91 (4:27) into a recapitulation of the opening measures of the prelude. The fugue can be thought of as an eruption of energy intervening as an interlude between what could be thought of as the B section and the reprised A section of a truncated ternary form. The opening two measures are brought back with the melody in the trebles and then in the bass strings before coming to pianissimo close at 5:05. There's more than a little bit of coughing throughout this live performance, which is too bad. Despite the coughing the performance itself is solid and conveys the substance of the prelude and fugue.

Thursday, May 03, 2018

another, relatively short and general review of Nikita Koshkin's 24 preludes and fugues, this time in English, courtesy of the Seattle Classic Guitar Society newsletter

you'll find the review on page 6 in this month's newsletter for the Seattle Classic Guitar Society

http://www.seattleguitar.org/soundings593.pdf

WenatcheeTheHatchet

Pages

Monday, March 02, 2020

SCGS newsletter has review of CDs by Asya Selyutina and Kostas Tosidis, recordings of Koshkin's preludes and fugues vol. 1 and Cycling Modes

Saturday, February 08, 2020

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in G sharp minor

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in B major

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in E major

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in A major

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in B minor

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in D major

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in E minor

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in G major

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in A minor

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in C major

Wednesday, January 01, 2020

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in E major

Sunday, December 15, 2019

classical guitar Naxos releases for December--Ourkouzounov, Cycling Modes by Kostas Tosidis and Koshkin, 24 Preludes and Fugues volume 1 by Asya Selyutina (update-playlists on YT)

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor

Wednesday, May 09, 2018

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in A major

Sunday, May 06, 2018

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in B minor

Saturday, May 05, 2018

Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues: Prelude and Fugue in D major

Thursday, May 03, 2018

another, relatively short and general review of Nikita Koshkin's 24 preludes and fugues, this time in English, courtesy of the Seattle Classic Guitar Society newsletter