Reflections

Voices in unison proclaim the opening melody. Heavy, Russian. Reminiscent of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition in its original version for piano. A lighter counter melody/motive appears for contrast, unaccompanied save for the reverberations of the prior melody's final note. The heavy unison base takes the counter material while the original melody shifts to the lightness of the higher registers: they trade places. The remainder of the prelude is magnificent expression of two-part counterpoint, heavy with octave doublings, and so wonderfully melodic (Shostakovich loves to quote, was he here?). It ends with a turgid, iron clad darkness, smoldering . . .

Suddenly, up leaps the sprightly motive of the fugue as the subject is literally hurled to air born life. The subject plays in every sense of the word:

This fugue is bright and exhilarating, flashing like a brace of hummingbirds that evade your grasp with every clumsy attempt you might make. It is dizzy, giddy, play (ingeniously composed). Yield to its spirit by abandoning all but the feeling of it. The brace of winged ruby throats sings thusly: motive, subject, countersubject, motive (false entry), real entry, another countersubject and so on.

While counting the exact number of subject entries is less important than the steady awareness of the music it engenders, this fugue is curious with regard to such an exercise. The head motive appears many times in the fugue without continuing through a complete subject entry. There are at least five partial subject entries that come within measure of completing but still stop short. Sometimes, the early truncation is obvious, a feint which feels to be an intentional entertainment, a frequent aspect of the game of fugue. Other times, a partial entry, though partial, satisfies as a more or less complete representative of the subject, fulfilling our expectations despite its abbreviation. This is particularly the case during stretto where the sense of density takes precedence to the literal and precise quality of each individual entry. In the end, it is a subjective judgement, a musical experience which is somewhat loosely coupled with the precise technical details, especially with fugues exhibiting complex counterpoint. Regardless of how you count, this fugue exploits the partial subject entry as intentional fun as well as for textural exigency..

The very last subject entry is interesting: it is elongated or partially augmented at the beginning and even more so at the end. While the unadulterated subject lasts four and a half measures, the final entry lasts eight. The middle voice echoes the tail motive in a kind of partial imitation just as the final entry is finishing its long winded ending. It is always fascinating to see how the conclusion of a fugue uses novel transformations of its materials to bring its momentum to a satisfying and frequently clever end.