Préludes Book IX was begun in April, 2019. Titles in this book are names of flora in my yard.
Ailanthus (#81) takes off from uneven repeated notes played contrapuntally and against/with falling figures. Here is the MIDI crapfest.
Hydrangea (#82) is based on a figure from an academic memo -- members of a committee I am on were listed as Appointed or Elected, and there was a column that read AEAAEAE. I was challenged by the Provost, Lisa Lynch, to write a piece on those notes. So I did. Arabesques are followed by broken octaves are followed by parallel fifths, while that pitch sequence evaporates, comes back little by little, and are briefly the basis of an ostinato. Here is that crapfest midi.
Virginia Creeper (#83) is based on repeated notes ornamented with grace notes in the middle register with chords and some vigorous low register stuff around it. The persistent repeated note thing made Beff say it was about a vine, and so I found out what that five-leaf thing that so dominates the foresty sections of our yard is called: Virginia Creeper.
While we were looking for the name of the Virginia Creeper by googling "invasive vines northeast," one of the hits was the Mile-a-minute vine (or Mile-a-minute weed), with triangular leaves, which we have some of in a small garden. Thus was Mile-a-minute Vine (#84) born. Obviously it's fast, and gets progressively more tangled (one of them made 27 turns around a short mint plant). It starts high and progresses downward, and lo, broken octaves under arpeggations. Here is the crapfest midi.
Beff suggested that one prélude in Book 9 be called Rhubarb (#85), and so that's what I called this one. It's got a fast rising figure in double octaves counteracted by swing eighths figures, and over the course of the piece they become a little more like each other. Crappy midi follows.
Rhododendron (#86)consists of a stream of eighth notes arpeggiating chords, with an indication to be flexible and expressive. It moves slowly and requires intelligent pedaling, so I haven't put the MIDI here.
Oriental Bittersweet (#87) is the vine that grows everywhere, climbs up trees, infests bushes, etc., and I have done a lot of unraveling it and removing it, especially from bushes. One thing it does a lot is grow beyond the edge of the plant it is in, with sprouts simply reaching into the air. The piece tries to capture some of that, particularly the part where the vine make spirals around the branches. This is the crap MIDI, and the tempo is very fast.
Stinging Nettle (#88) has sharp chords posing as stings, and some fast notes posing as the tingling feel of stinging nettle. The crappy MIDI follows.
Queen Anne's Lace (#89) features complex sonorities accumulated with Pedal down, and then fingered chords emerging when the Pedal clears. Midi not here because so many ties in the score are just repurposed slurs, and the articulations aren't right.
Crocus (#90) is a slow one and the one from this book that I can play. It's built around descending dyads that melt into pedal points and then become both ascending and descending ones. The MIDI for this is too bad to put up here.
