Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Préludes Book 10

Préludes Book 10 was started in December, 2019 and finished in June, 2020. The titles are fragments of well-known proverbs.

Two in the Bush (#91) is rhythmically like quick swing eighths, though it's usually not particularly swingy. The left hand plays only on the beat and the right hand plays only off the beat. Towards the climax, some hesitant stride happens and then fades away. Here is MIDI.



Where There's Smoke (#92) is a fairly fast piece built on only major triads and repeated notes. MIDI here.



More Than You Can Chew (#93) starts with fast broken octaves, breaks them into chords, settles on repeated notes, and then busts out. MIDI.



What You Can Do Today (#94) mashes very wide-spaced bebop licks (five octaves apart) together with syncopated chords and rather fast, and brief, comping. MIDI.



While The Iron Is Hot (#95) puts fits of thick chorale chords against a broken octave walking bass. Hier ist midi.



Eggs in One Basket (#96) was prompted by me remembering the surprise boogie woogie near the end of Yehudi Wyner's piano concerto, and it's based on that common left-hand pattern all messed up and blown to pieces. MIDI here, with the right hand getting pretty soft in two places.



Don't Fix It (#97) is derived from a texture of overlapped broken octaves, and the pun is obvious. MIDI here.



What Goes Around (#98) develops a terse quick repeated-chord figure, interrupting in the middle with some slow swing eighths. MIDI.



With A Single Step (#99) is the one from Book 10 that I can play. It's a serious slow chorale adapted from my song cycle The Mystery of Deep Candor. Here is some serious midi.



All Good Things (#100) is a manic piece based around a 7-6 figure, and quotes Étude #1 E-Machines three times. MIDI.