Esteban Colucci has posted a video of Prelude and Fugue in C major by German Dzhaparidze, this time with a read-along score. Naturally, Wenatchee The Hatchet, who has had a long-standing habit of discussing preludes and fugues for classical guitar, had to make a few notes. The internet being what it is, my idea of a brief analysis is 1,607 words. I am assuming that you not only watched the video link but read through the entire score. If you haven't done that by the time you read what comes after the link then, well, this blog post wasn't written for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7upUfeTXM8
Prelude 00:00 to 01:31
This is moto
perpetuo prelude evokes both J. S. Bach's Prelude Number 1 from Book 1 of the
Well-Tempered Clavier and, in my oblique way of hearing, Heitor Villa-Lobos'
iconic Etude No. 1 from his 12 Studies.
Because I am
more of a fan of guitar fugues I'm not going to say too much about the
prelude. I like it. It sounds charming and has a fun vibe.
On to the fugue.
Fugue 01:38 to 04:10
Exposition 01:38 to 01:58 (measures
39-47)
The subject is
stately, and gives off the vibe of an 18th century royal precession. The
subject starts at middle C and spans the G below to the E above. There’s kind of a Mussorgsky Promenade
mood to this with a notably narrower melodic range and much squarer rhythms.
The subject is
answered at the dominant by a higher voice and the third entry has the subject
enter on the C below middle C. This is a
good case study for showing how fugues often do not present the voices in
strictly ascending or descending order.
As for what kind
of fugue this is, it’s what many theory books would call a simple fugue. There are no countersubjects and there is no
convertible counterpoint. Dzhaparidze
freely introduces new material as he fleshes out his three-voiced texture
without attempting to create melodic lines that interlock and can be presented
in double or triple counterpoint. For an example of a fugue in C major for the
guitar that has convertible counterpoint you can go here.
So, here’s the
breakdown of the exposition.
Subject (C) 01:38 to 01:43
Answer (G) 01:44
to 01:50
Bridge 01:51 to 01:52
Subject (C) 01:53 to 01:58
Let’s get to the
first episode.
Episode 1 01:58 to 02:08 (measures
48-53)
Dzhaparidze took
a snippet from the second half of the first measure of his subject and creates
an undulating episode of the G-A-G rippling riff alternating between the middle
and lower voices under a high open E string.
Before long he’s taken us into A minor, which is where he gives us the
first middle entry.
What’s a middle
entry, you ask? It is when the composer
presents the entire subject of the fugue in a new key that didn’t appear in the
fugue’s exposition. The subject may
appear in any voice but so long as it runs its full course you can count it as
a middle entry. Because Dzhaparidze has
paired presentations of his subject in different registers I will talk about
middle entries in an admittedly fuzzy way because entries of a subject don’t
always indicate middle entries. The
cascade of subject entries in Bach’s C major fugue from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered
Clavier come some fast and furious that fugue is often called a stretto
fugue. This fugue has what I would call
middle entries but Dzhaparidze layers entries of the subject as he goes through
keys. Now let’s get to the A minor passage.
Middle Entries 1
& 2 02:09 to 02:21 (measures
54-59)
A minor (prime,
middle) and E minor (prime, upper)
A minor 02:09 to 02:15
E minor 02:15 to 02:21
Here we get two
middle entries, as it were, with the subject presented in A minor and then,
just as it seems to have run its course a new form of the subject appears in an
upper voice in the key of E minor.
Dzhaparidze has
either cut short the resolution of his first middle entry by abruptly changing
keys or, another way to think of it, has introduced a second middle entry in a
related key that is elided into the end of his preceding middle entry. This
fugue subject is very square, maybe a bit too square. It’s good that he introduced this gambit in
his first pair subject presentations in this middle entry. He thereby destabilizes both the key and the
harmonic rhythm of the fugue by bringing in the second middle entry half a
measure too early for where the downbeat of the prevailing meter is, and
introducing a new key just as the first middle entry has resolved itself in A
minor.
Episode 2 02:22 to 02:39 (measures 60-67)
To be honest, I
don’t think the episodes are particularly mysterious and don’t feel much need
to explain the composer’s compositional technique in them. They’re fun episodes.
What is
interesting is where the composer goes next.
He sets up a middle entry in G major but is what he does next really a
middle entry?
The first voice
that appears to have the subject has a form of the subject, but it’s upside
down. Middle entries can be made of
inversions of a subject and countersubject
But then we see that Dzhaparidze introduces the subject in a higher
voice before the subject in the lower registered (in its inverted form) has
finished. That is a big tell that what
we are looking at hear is not a normal middle entry. When the subject appears across all the voices
of a fugal texture and each appearance of the subject appears before the
previous statement of the subject has been finished that is what is traditionally
called a …
Stretto 02:40 to 02:54 (measures 68-73)
Entries 3, 4
& 5
G major (lower,
inversion) and G major (upper, prime)
This isn't a grand
stretto in the "strict" sense because the first entry of the
subject, though in the lowermost voice, is presented in a free tonal inversion.
The second entrance is in the middle voice and features the subject in G major
in its prime form but the subject is revised so that when the third entry, in
the uppermost voice, enters, the material is changed. Actually, Dzhaparidze could have done a canon
on this subject. but just opted not to.
This stretto is
obscured by the two upper voices being active but it is definitely a
stretto. This is, however, an unusual
placement for a stretto. Traditionally
composers tend to put a stretto at the syntactic or structural climax of a
fugue. They do not normally put
something as grand as a stretto right in
the middle of a fugue and then move along to some other episode or middle
entry.
Episode 3 02:54 to 03:08 (measures 75-80)
The tonic of G
is destabilized by the introduction of an F natural. Without further ado, the episode leads not to
C, because the composer doesn’t want to “go home” yet. No, instead we get a somewhat unusual modulation
to the key of F major.
Middle Entries 5
& 6 03:09 to 03:19 (measures
81-86)
F major (prime,
lower) and F major (prime, upper)
Like the first
middle entry this has a double presentation of the subject in a lower and then
an upper voice. In contrast to the first
middle entry that began with the subject in A minor and was followed by the subject
in E minor, this is a monotonal middle entry.
What’s happening here is Dzhaparidze is making sure his paired
presentation of the subject stabilize rather than destabilize whatever key he
is in.
Notice how in
this middle entry the music seems stripped down to two voices and when the
third appears it’s moving in nice, easy thirds?
That’s because every guitarist knows that F major is a devious key to
play in for long stretches of time.
On to the next
episode.
Episode 4 03:20 to 03:35 (measures 87-92)
This episode
moves from F major to what promises to be a half-cadence on A7 that resolves to
D minor. Are we going to get that? No.
There’s a deceptive resolution to B-flat and before long the episode is
wrapped up and we get to the syntactic climax of the fugue, the reappearance of
the subject in the tonic key after a whole fugue’s worth of other keys.
Something I note
in passing, if you’ve read along the score with me you’ll have noticed whole
systems in which there are only two voices. That’s an easily overlooked lesson
in composing fugues. As George Oldroyd
put it so memorably in The
Technique and Spirit of Fugue (though I am freely paraphrasing), it’s
rookies who think you have to have very voice in a fugal texture active at all
times.
Climax/Coda 03:36 to 04:10 (measures 93 t0 end)
The subject
appears in C major in the lowest voice for the first time since the end of the
exposition. A nice touch with the end of
the subject is how Dzhaparidze shifts into parallel minor at the very end of
the phrase. I like this fugue but a
misgiving I have about the subject is how long that half note is at the end of
the subject. It feels too firm, too final, and it's the end of the subject,
which means I can understand why Dzhaparidze leaned so much into stretto and
eliding subject statements across his middle entries. At any given middle entry the finality of
that half note on the second half of the fourth measure in relentless
four-measure phrases would bring closure anywhere you land.
This is a fun
fugue and I had meant to do some analytical writing about it for years but the
work has never been formally published in score form to my knowledge. So much thanks to Esteban Colucci for
revisiting this recording and sharing the score.
I hope that
German Dzhaparidze's 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo guitar gets
published. I have meant to do more
analytical work on Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues when the
second half of that cycle should get recorded and released.
POSTSCRIPT
For regular readers (I guess I might still have those), I realize my blogging has become sporadic in the last six years and I don't write as much here as I used to. This kind of post, and the Matiegka series are technical. When I roll out an entire public domain score and then include alternate ways of handling musical material in a sonata form or a menuet that's not just analytical work on published music, there's also new composition afoot, showing how there were unexplored possibilities in musical works I really do like.
If I had my druthers the entire Dzhaparidze cycle would have been published by now and I could ell you where to find the score. We're living in an exciting time for the classical guitar. There are several cycles of preludes and fugues out there in our time. Maybe that kind of music isn't your jam but I am excited by the possibilities being explored in contemporary guitar music. It's one of the reasons I kind of roll my eyes a bit when people talk about the state of classical music as if the plight of the orchestra were the "real" state of the art.
I still have to get to Matiegka's Op. 23, III and I mean to do that but this weekend had a surprise, a good surprise as far as I'm concerned. So I felt I had to strike while the iron was hot, while inspiration was with me, and because a video with a read-along score is up, I had been wanting to write a blog post like this one for literally years and to finally be able to do so was a treat. Thanks to Colucci for his YT post and I hope that the analysis may be of some interest to people who read it this weekend (or whenever they happen to read it).
